Wing Lam EnterPrises - The Premiere Source for Martial Art Supplies and Knowledge!

We arrived in the evening at Dengfeng, the town closest to Shaolin village and the home to no less than 63 KungFu schools with a total of about 44,000 students training hard. Overly excited to have arrived at the legendary Shaolin (though the actual village and temple were a dozen kilometres away), I think we all took about a dozen hasty photographs out the bus window at a simple town-park pagoda built atop a hill. Nevertheless, we visited the park later that evening to relax and prepared ourselves for the training to begin the next morning.

As the Wushu Guan at Shaolin was closed for renovations, this year the tour trained at a private school run by Grandmaster Lian Yiquan, one of the top ten grandmasters in China and former head of the Wushu Guan. With 4000 students, it is one of the best-known and most respected schools in China. Despite its (not surprisingly) large physical size, there was not enough room all the students to practice. Indeed, the sight out the bus windows of the blue-uniformed students practicing in the fields outside the school walls became our daily notice that our bus had arrived for training.

While the training was not as intense as it might have been at the Wushu Guan proper, our assigned instructors still managed to give us a good workout each of the 5 days we trained. Our warm-ups were, on the whole, short and not intended to be a full 'conditioning' workout; instead it demonstrated to us just how physically inflexible we really were compared to the students (though, with the constant heat of China, it is quite amazing how much the muscles can stretch further than you're used to). Instruction-wise, it took our 'monks' (advanced students from the school in monk robes) a day or so to get used to teaching a large group of westerners through the language barrier. However, we were all quick to adapt, and in the end language seemed superfluous and surprisingly unnecessary.

Wing Lam students in practice under Shaolin Monks instructions

To handle such a large group and to account for our disparity in martial experience and/or familiarity with the Shaolin style, we broke down into two smaller training groups. For the hand set, one could chose to learn Wu Bu Quan (Five Step Fist), a beginner form that taught footwork, or Tong Bi Quan (Arm Goes Through Boxing), a more involved set for those more experienced that contained the gamut of stances, movements and flying kicks. With the weapon sets, the choice was between Shao Lin Zheng Shan Gun, a staff set, or Shao Lin Shi San Qiang, a spear set. Later, our group came together as a whole once more to learn Baduanjin, the infamous eight section brocade, and to practice some sparring applications and take-downs with our über-instructor who possessed a wicked smile and the ability to move at blinding speeds while jumping as though lighter-than-air.

As can be expected, the training was a lot of fun, whether it was on the cobblestones outside or on the large red carpet inside the second-level training hall. Modern-day Songshan Shaolin forms are indeed different from the Bei Shao Lin (Bak Sil Lum) sets in the style that I train at the Lam Kwoon, but at the same time they felt very familiar and recognisable as being from the same root theory, if a little performance-enhanced (modern-day wushu). While there were subtle differences in the stances and transitions, the hand set felt the most comfortable, with power and movement being generated in pretty much the same fashion. Certainly that the set began by moving to the left and finishing in the hero stance, just as do all the Bei Shao Lin sets learnt back home, leant a definite air of familiarity. Differences were more pronounced in the weapon sets, with the introduction of many interesting manoeuvres. Again, as the core foundations and power generation remained the same learning was made easier. With only a couple of days to learn the sets one had to learn fast; embedding the base movements into the muscles while finesse and linking would come later during practice back home. Eight section brocade, however, has immediately become part of my warm-up before class.

We trained at the school for five days, learning as quickly as we could, and practicing the forms on our own each morning behind the hotel. Grandmaster Lian Yiquan honoured our class one afternoon with a visit, where we demonstrated for him the sets we had learned (both hand and weapon) before he gave us some detailed corrections and applications, and then taught us a bit of Chi Na. The final two days of instruction were taken up by sparring practice that had us performing rolls and falls during the warm-up, and much less graceful falls during the actual take-down applications. Quick snap kicks and counter kicks along with various blocks, twists and responses were all drilled.

Wing Lam students and Shaolin Monks

At the end of our stay, it's probably safe to say we were all sore from the five hours of training we had done each day (even accounting for the massages some of us had opted for in the evenings) and the repeated falls onto the thick-but-still-on-concrete carpets during sparring practice. With this soreness, however, came a sense of satisfaction and joy at having learned Shaolin Kung Fu so near to its source.

Our last afternoon in the region was reserved for our visit to the Shaolin Temple proper. Preceding the temple, we visited the Pagoda Forest, where monks are entombed after being cremated. Monument-sized pagodas were plentiful for the 'important' monks (ones with many deciples, for they were the ones who paid to have them built post-mortem), while with 3 'communal' pagodas served the 'everyday' monks. Though I'd say we saw more monks at the pagoda forest (albeit hidden in their monuments) than at the temple itself, for the main courtyards at the temple were quite public and thus primarily full of tourists (although we were the only western tourists). Due to fame and numerous documentaries and movies, there were few surprises at the temple, and having been burned and re-built so often, the temple also carried a certain air of the contemporary that didn't quite evoke the full history of the site.

That is not to say that the temple was not a worthwhile visit, quite the contrary. Reflecting the practice of Chen Buddhism (which later formed the basis of Zen Buddhism in Japan), the procession of courtyards and their attendant buildings were a sight to behold. Not to mention the opportunity to see the famous training hall with the depressions in the stone floor from so many years of practice, along with the equally famous murals depicting scenes of temple Kung Fu training. As a special treat for those who did not take the trek up the mountain (see below), the monks began to emerge as the public began to leave near the end of the day, reclaiming their temple space and beginning to perform their evening rituals.

For the rest of us, our pilgrimage was completed by climbing the mountain (Mount Song) behind the temple to visit Damo's cave. Lore recounts Bodhidharma's nine-year retreat to the mountain, meditating on the solution to the monk's poor health; it is the answer that led to the founding of Kung Fu. Lighting incense and kneeling before a simple altar inside the cave we paused before finishing the climb to the top of the mountain. The climb seemed a short one (except perhaps for our sore legs), and gazing about the valley from atop the mountain our five days at Shaolin felt much longer, recollecting on the exceptional days of training and connection that made our visit immensely fulfilling.

Oliver Bollmann is a student of Northern Shaolin Kung Fu at the Lam Kwoon in Sunnyvale, CA.

Back >>>