Sky and Aja's Great Adventure

Shaolin Temple August 24

Shaolin sits nestled between steep mountains in a place the Taoists consider the center of the world. There are thousands of Kung Fu students wearing differen uniforms representing the many local schools. They practice their moves in the temple ground's many courtyards and open spaces. The mountains come and go behind clouds of mist. Barely a trickle flows through the canalized river full of plants in front of Shaolin Temple and the ground above it is dry and cracked. The monks, or perhaps it is the other people who live here -- people who run hotels or old ladies who collect plastic bottles--have patches of corn, chilies and other crops growin on the hills, barely kept separate from the wild vegetation.
In the morning and evening, the traffic shifts from being that of tourists to the rusty, clunky tractor-wagons that the farmers and workers drive. On hills, even motorcycles turn off their engines and cruise slowly with squeaky brakes and rarely with only a single passenger. When we arrived in Dengfeng, shaolin's supporting city, we were immediately harangued by a crowd of men waving Shaolin flyers and who shout Hello at any foreigner. One who spoke only the English required to give a repetitive speech about how he would give us a ride and that Shaolin is 17km from Dengfeng and that there were no busses and no places to stay inside Shaolin so we should go to a hotel he knows attached himself to us until we agreed to take his ride. A thoroughly obnoxious man whose lie about there being no busses we believed after asking a bus station worker who carelessly answered our questions with no, no, no. Or driver didn't want to take us to the temple. He insisted it was too late in the day to see the temple and that if we bought tickets, we would not have time and we would not find a place to stay, and we really should go with him to a hotel he knows. If he hadn't been so annoying, we may have taken his advice.
We didn't worry about finding a place to stay. Wearing our large backpacks, we stood out as people who hadn't yet found a hotel and we became the target of, first one, then two, three, four, and finally five ladies waving hotel business cards at us and refusing to go away. Every time they felt they had lost our attention, they shouted a crisp "hello" at us. We wanted them to leave, we wanted to look around and go to them when we wanted their services. I tried to write to them using the Japanese Kanji I know, which got them excited and they began writing to me in Chinese instead of shouting. Aja ran away to some Italian guys to ask them where they were staying so we could rid ourselves of the pack of ladies who were firmly latched on to us. They gave us the business card of the hotel, and when we showed it to the ladies to show that we had made up our minds and didn't need them, they reached into their purses and pulled out the same business card. We ate an ice cream, and set off.
To get to the hotel, we had to buy tickets and go inside the temple grounds. The most aggressive of ladies following us was stopped at the ticket gate. She tried to run around it, but was stopped again. The Italians and we went down a slope and waited for a van to pick us up. Just before we got in, not one, but two of the haggling ladies had evaded security and were running towards us. They got to the van, but were shoed away by the driver because there was no room. They didn't stop them. They pushed the Italians over and one sat on the other's lap. We laughed and laughed from the back seat. At this point, they served no purpose, but hoped desperately to receive a commission.


Our hotel is in a tall cement building painted to look like a grey brick building. The women working here are quite curious and nosy about everything we do. One young girl who works here wants to be our friend, and tries to teach us Chinese. Other times, she just sits close and smiles.

Shaolin temple is a large walled complex with tall pagodas that are freshly painted with bright colors under the eaves. There are big golden statues of Buddahs and past Kung Fu masters with wild expressions carved on their faces. There is a courtyard full of stelae, and one ofthem, under an ancient Gingko treeis from Courtney's master in Albuquerque.

Next to the temple is an area with older, unrestored buildings, dirt roads and piles of rubble. In this area, we went in a brick building with a plastic roof and dirt floor that smelled like earth worms to watch a performance. The performers pushed their bodies to do almost superhuman things. One person tied himself in a knot and twisted around like a rubber toy. Another became a monkey and climbed to the top of a pole he was carrying. They sped across the stage, movingflimsy and rattling weapons in all directions as fast as lightning. A drunken master flailed across the stage with a controlled sword.
We caught a few stories behind some of the buildings by placing ourselves with a passing tour group of Spaniards and Aja translated for me:
The Pagoda got its name because Damo refused to take any students, saying he would teach when it snows red. One determined monk decided one snowy day to chop off h is arm and ask for teaching. To remember this act of self-sacrifice, this shrine was built.
I assume the one armed monk became Damo's disciple, but the guide didn't mention it.

Trying to escape from another commission-seeking salesman of sorts, who attached himself to us at our hotel and followed us saying "hello, hello" and pointing to places we didn't want to go, we slipped into the first temple we passed. We had to show our tickets, so he couldn't follow us.
In this temple, we were first greeted by a huge Buddha, and then went to a winding system of dimly lit corridors filled with the most interesting statues. They were people from all over the world made out of shiny glazed clay and in the dim light, they almost came alive. They were all doing different things. Some were meditating, some doing Kung Fu. They had thoughtful, sleepy, angry and joyful expressions. One frightened looking statue stood with one foot on a tiger.





Pagoda forest in Shaolin