Way Too Much to Talk About (Shaolin Temple Part 1)

So it's already been more than two weeks since my last post (which probably won't go over well with the Light Fellowship people), but you can't blame me because all of last week was spent at the Shaolin Temple, without any internet access. Even so, I have a feeling that had there been an opportunity to get on the internet I still wouldn't have had time to write anything given the nature of my week. I don't really know how to go about chronicling everything that went on, because I think I could literally go on for hours and no one wants to read a timeline anyway. So here are some of the highlights.

Over the course of last week, we visited the Shaolin Temple, Zhongyue Temple, Songyang Private School, White Horse Temple, Tagou Martial Arts Academy, Longmen Caves, and Song Mountain. The picture up above was taken in the monk cemetery that sits next to the Shaolin Temple, and you can check out my Facebook for more pictures of the other destinations. Every morning, we would wake up around 5:30 AM to prepare for our 6 AM morning workout, which was essentially little more than a warmup. Then, after 7:30 breakfast, we would either head off on a trip or begin the real gongfu.

Out of the six full days at Shaolin, we had two full days of gongfu, while the rest were spent visiting the temples, caves, and mountains. The gongfu days were surprisingly difficult. Since I haven't exactly been working out as often as I would like to here in China, my legs were in rough shape after five or six hours of squatting down into the various gongfu "positions". However, I quickly realized that it wasn't brute strength that I lacked, but flexibility. Like many Asian martial arts, gongfu is more about mastering grace, control, and finesse than it is about raw power. To that end, many of the students and teachers at the Martial Arts School were smaller in build than me, but I still wouldn't want to come face-to-face with any of them in a fight. Due to the fact that most of the sports I've played don't place a high price on flexibility, my legs are a little more stiff than I'd like, and at times when practicing gongfu I struggled to imitate the motions and fluidity of our teacher. That being said, I'd like to think I'm always up for a good challenge, and studying gongfu ended up being a truly phenomenal experience.

Right now it's 9:15 PM here in Beijing, and I have yet to start studying tomorrow's new vocabulary. That being the case, I think I'm going to stop here, and save the rest of the Shaolin trip for tomorrow. Hope you enjoyed this little snippet, and I'll get going on Part 2 tomorrow.

Best,

Jamey