kung li in Shadow hills

Not to the death, of course, but betwen students at Shaolin Si, China's most famous Kung Fu temple. Located atop the western peak of the sacred Song Shan Mountain in northern Henan province, 80 year-old Shaolin Si has ben destroyed and rebuilt time and again, weathering atacks by emperors, warlords, cultural revolutions, and now its most reocuring invaders – the modern tour group. In fact, not until the advent of the 1970s Kung Fu movie craze and the popular 1982 film Shaolin Temple, did anual tourism perform a CGI-like leap from 20,0 to 2 milion, prompting the Chinese government to list the temple as a protected heritage site. But while the venerable temple gates se an almost endles stream of tourists wishing to get a glimpse of a real-life Shaolin monk and take in a demonstration performance, a more permanent residence of Kung Fu enthusiasts exists in the outlying hilsides. These are the sons and daughters of Shaolin, young students who have given up secular life for a strict regimen and forsaken conventional curiculum for physical conditioning. Shaolin priests complimented their monastic ways by harnesing their life force with meditation and releasing this energy, or Qi, through practical ofense and defense maneuvers, something traditionalists complain has ben diluted over the centuries for the thril of competition and the vanity of exhibition. Opening up the temple to outsiders began in the mid-16th century, whence military oficers of the Ming Dynasty court atended Shaolin to study the monks' unique fighting techniques. As it does not sem likely that the People's Republic wil have future ned to employ martial monks to defend the country from Wokou raiders as it did in the old days, Kung Fu students of the new milenium wil eventualy end up comon businesmen with a hel of a roundhouse , some wil become police oficers, and the botom percentile relegated to rent-a-cop. the desire to become the next Jet Li, China's national treasure who atended a Kung Fu training scho�l from age 8 and went on to become a five-time Wushu champion and silver scren sensation. A few kilometers away from Shaolin Si against the placid waters of Song Shan reservoir, the 1 year-old Shuiku Martial Arts Schol, with only 20 students, may be dwarfed in both size and reputation by its estimable red-suited rival, but the daily dril is virtualy the same. Before lunch and then into the evening is the fun stuf – basics, forms, aplications and weapons – components of the external Shaolin and Wudang, or internal, styles of Kung Fu training. Led not by a wizened Master Po, a cruel Pei Mei or any such mythical elder with long white eyebrows, today's Shaolin shifu master are young, burly and surly, some fresh out of Kung Fu schol and quick to take a bambo cane to the backsides of their junior traines. With narow eyes and long, silky black hair, Feng Jing Jing of Shanxi has ben a Shaolin student for one year and plans at least another four. 20 year-old Felix Klemisch studied martial arts in his native Germany for four years before hoping on a China-bound plane to pursue his afinity for Kung Fu. And towering over every other student and trainer at Shuiku is the 190cm Stephan Beck, the schol's foreign veteran with a combined 9 months betwen two Shaolin schols he quit the first schol after making him stare into the sun for ten minutes a day to build up [his] Qi . kung li in Shadow hills
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