In China’s Kung Fu Capital, Thousands Lunge for Glory

There is the 4-year-old who still wets his bed. The 6-year-old who can’t fetch his own food. The 14-year-old who just arrived. And the 21-year-old who never wants to leave.

At home, they were nobodies. Here, they are part of legend. As swords cross, spears pierce, legs fly and knuckles crunch, these ragtag boys become one with the backdrop of sacred mountains and ancient rooftops.

They are the modern disciples of Shaolin. This is the Graceland of kung fu.

As many as 30,000 youngsters, most of them the children of poor farmers, have put their dreams in the hands of private martial arts schools that have sprung up in recent years here in central Henan province at the doorstep of the centuries-old Buddhist monastery called the Shaolin Temple.

Few of them have ever heard of the movie “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” which introduced Shaolin martial arts to millions in the West. But they grew up watching other kung fu flicks on pirated tapes. They idolize Chow Yun Fat, the Hong Kong action hero, and they dream of becoming another Jet Li, the original on-screen Shaolin monk.

But mostly they come here to the birthplace of Chinese martial arts to fulfill a more practical wish of their parents: that they kick and punch their way to a better tomorrow.

“Historically, only the elite could afford to study martial arts,” said Li Zhanggong, director of Tagou Wushu School, the biggest and oldest in the area, with 8,700 students. “Now, rich people are unwilling to put up with the harsh training. Ninety percent of our students are poor peasants. That’s because we are cheaper than the regular [public] schools. We offer room and board and some useful skills.”

Already, more than 18,000 students have graduated from his school, which opened in the 1980s. Most have become security guards, police officers, physical education teachers and army cadets. Only the best of them have a chance to compete professionally or go into the film business.

But that’s better than staying home, most parents say, because at the very least, these young people have exercised their bodies and learned how to read and write. All the centers offer basic academic courses on a part-time basis.

Since the end of cradle-to-grave welfare in China, the state no longer pays for schooling or guarantees jobs. Most rural children either can’t afford an education or don’t see the point. Millions have fled to urban centers to hack out a living as manual laborers.

Having a marketable skill such as martial arts, or wushu in Chinese, can be a godsend. Even urban parents are banking on it to help their kids.

Li Tian is a 60-year-old grandfather from the northern rust-belt city of Jilin. He traveled a day and a half to deliver two grandsons to one of the more than 60 schools here.

“There are too many people without jobs up north,” said Li, a former worker at a tractor factory that went belly up. “We wanted to give these kids a better chance.”

As the grandfather counted his cash, about $500 for both boys, the 14- and 15-year-old newcomers were mesmerized by the action outside. Thousands of Jet Li wannabes in brightly colored uniforms were drilling and screaming like soldiers, turning this side of Mt. Songshan into a battlefield of dreams.

There would be no martial arts schools without the drawing power of the fabled Shaolin Temple, nestled in the hills above. And few people these days would know about the monastery without the Hong Kong movie of the same name, made in the early 1980s. Jet Li was its star.

Back then, not only were there no private kung fu schools, but even the Shaolin Temple was all but shuttered.

China’s oldest Zen Buddhist monastery, the temple dates back roughly 1,500 years. According to legend, an Indian monk meditated in a local cave for nine years. In the process, he achieved enlightenment and created the basic movement of Shaolin kung fu by imitating the movement of animals and the flight of birds.

At its peak, the temple housed more than 2,000 monks, their power boosted after some of their number rescued a distressed emperor in the 7th century.

But trouble came in the 20th century. First, warlords burned down much of the monastery in the 1920s. Then, the Communists came to power in 1949 and made it obsolete with the institution of official atheism. Most of the monks fled, and the state redistributed hundreds of acres of farmland. By the 1970s, only four elderly monks remained.

They stayed alive only because the youngest among them, himself blind and in his 60s, grew a garden of soybeans. He crushed them to make tofu and exchanged them at the local market for corn to feed the other elders, said Shi Yanxiang, a monk at the temple.

After the movie “Shaolin Temple” became an international success, both the government and local entrepreneurs realized what a cash cow they had on their hands. The state made the monastery a landmark and invited former monks to come back. Hundreds of vendors set up shops to cater to the millions of tourists and kung fu aficionados who visit every year.

About 200 monks train directly with the masters inside the temple. Outside, new schools absorb students who want to learn kung fu but aren’t ready to take the monastery’s oath of chastity.

Not all of the children are poor. Some better-heeled families see the schools as boot camps for children with behavior problems.

“Here we teach them discipline,” said Shi Yongsheng, a Shaolin-trained master and director of the 3-year-old Shaolin Zen Wushu School.

At sunrise, entire hillsides are alive with the sound of children, many with shaved heads, hiking and training next to fields of peach blossoms and budding willows. After breakfast, the town quiets down as the students retreat to their studies, often in shabby classrooms with broken windows.

By afternoon, the silence is broken again. Children line up on the yellow earth, squatting, stretching, flipping and flying, until dinner is served in large tin mugs. They sleep 10 to a room on dingy bunk beds and soak their bruised feet and bloodied elbows in plastic tubs.

But the pain seems to be their bliss.

“I want to be a star!” screams a 12-year-old boy from Shanxi province. “I dream about it every night!” shouts a 10-year-old from Shandong province. The boys crack up.

“We all worship Chow Yun Fat,” the 12-year-old goes on. “He is all grace. But we are for real!” More laughter.

Then the boys dash off, as the bell tolls for more kung fu.