American Shaolin

by Matthew Polly

  Vice Deputy Leader Me was the number three, and he was widely considered to be the most honest, straightforward, and reliable one of the bunch, which is why he was rarely seen and never allowed in on any big decisions. I only once had any dealings with him in the time I was in Shaolin.

  As Doc and I discussed the leaders, he let slip, “They wanted me to teach students for them and demonstrate my iron hand kungfu for the tourists. But I refused. I’d rather pick up trash than work for them.”

  I felt a wave of admiration wash over me. In a country that often seemed like all the independence had been clubbed out of it, here was a man who chose to live in a broom closet rather than kowtow to the Wushu Center emperors. He was the first person I’d ever met with more stiff-necked pride than my mother.

  “How did you learn kungfu?” I asked him.

  “My father taught me. His father taught him. We have our own family style of kungfu. It is not Shaolin.”

  “Then why did you come to Shaolin?”

  “Because the best martial artists in the world are here. I wanted Lipeng to have the best training. I taught him when he was a boy, then I hired other masters to teach him their styles.”

  “Does he study Chinese medicine?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Will you teach it to me?”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

  “I can pay for lessons.”

  “Money doesn’t matter. I will only train my son…” Doc paused, “when he wants to learn. It is our family tradition. My father taught me. You understand?”

  “Okay,” I said. “But can you tell me what’s in the bowl?”

  “It’s also a secret. But I will tell you one of the ingredients.” He held up what looked like a piece of hard beef jerky. “This is rat’s skin.”

  It was some pretty magical rat’s skin. My knees healed in ten days and never bothered me again.

  While Doc was treating me for my knees, he urged me to keep practicing despite my injury.

  “But I can’t kick.”

  “Your arms still work.”

  “What should I do with my arms?”

  “I can teach you an iron kungfu,” he said.

  “Would you?”

  “You are a hardworking student. You should learn as much as possible while you are here.”

  Lipeng had mastered the greatest number of iron kungfus of any monk in Shaolin, which was why I was excited to have his father teach me. Lipeng’s most popular trick was iron stomach kungfu. His stomach muscles were so strong he could vacuum seal a large serving bowl to his stomach that was impossible for anyone to pull off. This was a big crowd pleaser during the monk’s performances. Lipeng would distend his stomach with air, place the bowl over his belly, then contract his muscles, sealing it to his torso. Members of the audience were invited down to try and pull the bowl off his belly. They never could.

  I told Doc I didn’t want to study any iron kungfu that caused permanent or visible damage. I didn’t want deformed hands or a stutter.

  “I can teach you iron forearm kungfu,” he said. “You won’t notice any difference.”

  I hadn’t heard of that particular kungfu.

  “What usefulness does iron forearm kungfu have?” I asked.

  “Your arms become so hard that when you block your opponent’s punch or kick, his arm or leg is hurt instead of you.”

  The practice started with thirty minutes of qigong exercises. Doc had me standing outdoors breathing heavily in and out of my nose while rubbing my forearms over and over again. It took a long time before I stopped feeling like a weirdo.

  After the qigong warm-up, Doc would pick out a thick tree trunk, and I would spend the next thirty minutes banging away at it full force with my forearms. Actually, I’d spend five minutes banging away at it full force and the next twenty-five minutes asking Doc if it had been thirty minutes yet. The pain was extraordinary and cumulative, like taking a hammer to a bruise and trying to make it bigger.

  After banging the tree, Doc would cook up a special iron kungfu herbal stew, and I’d soak my arm in the concoction. The stew did seem to relieve some of the pain, but it had the side effect of staining my arms a sickly yellow. For months I walked around with forearms that were black and blue and yellow.

  After six weeks of practice, I started to get a little cocky. During their iron kungfu demonstrations, the monks used these special wooden staffs, which are hard but brittle so when they break they snap cleanly and loudly. One night I was in the performance hall with some of the monks, bragging about my iron forearm training.

  “Sure it was bitter at first,” I said. “But I am getting used to it.”

  “Do you think you could break a staff?” Cheng Hao asked me.

  “Of course.”

  Cheng Hao grabbed a staff. I stuck out my arm. He brought it down sharply, cracking my right forearm. The staff snapped in two. My arm was sore but, goddamn, that staff was no match for Iron Forearm Boy.

  “Let’s try the left one,” I said, puffed out with pride.

  I didn’t notice that Doc was watching me through the window.

  The next day he called me into his apartment under the staircase. I was surprised to find Lipeng inside waiting for me. He rarely talked to me, or anyone else for that matter.

  “Bao Mosi, I saw you demonstrating your iron forearm kungfu last night,” Doc said. “You have improved quickly.”

  I expected him to be pleased, but Doc didn’t look happy with me, and he was not the kind of man you wanted to upset. He could crack a skull with that iron palm.

  I pulled out my most ingratiating smile, “It is only because your teaching is so excellent, master.”

  “Right, right, right. Here, let’s you and I hit our forearms together.”

  I suspected a trap but could see no way out of it. Doc and I gently started banging our forearms against each other. I was surprised to discover that his were less hard than mine. We picked up speed and strength: right inside, right outside, left inside, left outside. Over and over again. Finally, Doc stopped. He rubbed his forearms. “Good, very good. Your forearms are much tougher than before.”

  “You do not practice iron forearm kungfu, master?”

  “No, never. See, after only six weeks your forearms are harder than mine,” he said, setting me up. “Why don’t you try with Lipeng?”

  Lipeng rolled up his sleeve. Full of myself, I swung my right forearm at Lipeng’s right forearm as hard as I could. It was like hitting a steel post. A jolt of pain ran straight up into my skull, popping my eardrums. My hand went into spasms. For several moments, I tried but was unable to close my fist.

  “His arms are harder than stone!” I said.

  “I started training him when he was six.” Doc said.

  “I didn’t know he trained iron forearm kungfu.”

  “No, you didn’t,” he said with a stern look. “No one does, because he doesn’t go around showing off all of his skills. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, I understand, master.”

  “Good,” Doc said. “I will see you tomorrow.”

  And with that, my lesson was over.

  4

  ROOMMATES

  It took two months before any of the monks visited my room. Cheng Hao and Deqing were the first. When I opened the door one Sunday evening, they were dressed in the team’s finest Western clothes: dress shirts, jeans, and black boots. The monks only owned a few outfits between them, so their wardrobe was a socialist collective. Any item bought while on foreign tours was freely borrowed based on need.

  After entering my room, Deqing pulled out two samurai daggers.

  “These are gifts for you,” he said.

  I invited them to sit down and poured tea for all of us.

  “We are very sorry we haven’t come to visit you earlier,” Cheng Hao said. “We know how lonely you must be.”

  “No problem, no problem, no problem,” I said, not meaning it.

  Deqing continued, “It is embarrass
ing, but the leaders told us all it would be a bad idea to be seen spending too much time around you.”

  “Why?”

  “You remember we told you that after Shaolin’s last trip to America two monks defected?”

  “Right.”

  “The leaders are afraid that some of us may want to defect also, and you might help us.”

  “Do some of you want to defect?”

  “Possibly,” Deqing said with a smile.

  “Then I guess I will have to help you. What do you need?”

  “The trip to America is planned for the spring,” Cheng Hao said. “But we are touring Japan first.”

  Deqing said, “I need you to tell me how much you think a Japanese would pay for various martial arts equipment. For example, I can buy a Shaolin sword for $10. Do you think they’d pay $100?”

  The idea of a Shaolin monk hawking kungfu equipment to the Japanese disturbed me.

  “Why would you do something like that?” I asked.

  “For the money,” Deqing said, confused by my confusion.

  “But you’re a Buddhist monk,” I said with an unmistakable tone of disapproval in my voice. “You’re not supposed to make lots of money.”

  His emotions always on vivid display, Deqing’s eyes narrowed, his mouth tightened, and his face turned bright red. I’d shamed and insulted him and for a moment he looked like he might hit me. Cheng Hao intervened.

  “Bao Mosi, it is true that Buddhist monks are not supposed to concern themselves with money. But the leaders have seized all our passports to prevent us from leaving China. To get a second passport, we have to zhao homen,” Cheng Hao said. “Find a back door.”

  It was slang for finding the right government official and bribing him.

  “Oh, I see. I’m sorry, sorry, sorry,” I apologized, desperately backtracking. “Yes, I believe the Japanese will pay $100 for a Shaolin sword. What else do you have to sell?”

  Cheng Hao went through the list—nine-section whips, Shaolin T-shirts, Shaolin daggers. Deqing stayed quiet the rest of the time. He was still chewing over what I had said to him.

  As I chewed over what I had said as well, it took me several days to realize I was suffering from a minor case of Orientalism. I felt like I had grown up in a shallow, materialistic society and wanted the Chinese to be wise and profound—in short, bracingly poor—so I could get my deepness fix before returning home. It had bothered me that while I was trying to become more like my romantic fantasy of the Chinese, they were trying to become more like their avaricious fantasy of Americans. We were two ships passing in the night.

  It took Deqing, who quite rightly wondered where I got off criticizing his desire for a better life, much longer to forgive me.

  Weeks later at the end of a practice session with Cheng Hao and Deqing, a scrum of younger Shaolin monks came bursting through the door to the training room. They were shouting, laughing, stomping, and smacking the ground with wooden staffs. A rat the size of two fists was zigzagging between their feet. The monks were trying to kill it before it reached the back door of the training hall that led into the mountains.

  The rat was too quick for them to strike it with their staffs, but with the help of Cheng Hao, Deqing, and myself, we were able to encircle it. Realizing it was trapped, the rat stopped in the center, out of staff reach, and coolly surveyed its situation. Deqing stepped toward the rat and stomped his foot to frighten it. The rat didn’t move. Deqing stomped his foot again. This time the rat leaped at Deqing and landed on his right thigh, a distance of at least five feet.

  Surprised, Deqing kicked his leg, but the rat had its claws dug into his cotton pants. Deqing hopped on his left and kicked with full force with his right. It took five or six kicks before the rat was thrown off (or perhaps it decided to let go). The rat landed outside the circle next to the back door. Before anyone could react, it darted under the door and out to safety.

  Deqing let out an awkward, embarrassed laugh. “Damn, even the rats at Shaolin know kungfu!”

  This comment set off peals of laughter from the younger monks.

  “Looks like he won the first round, Deqing.”

  “You afraid to fight the rat again?”

  “You might want to learn rat kungfu.”

  Deqing let it go on for a couple of minutes, before saying, “Enough, enough, enough, already.”

  As the young monks were leaving the room, one turned to another and said, “What the matter, Little Zhang? Are you sad you won’t be eating rat meat tonight?”

  “I don’t eat rat meat,” Little Zhang replied defensively.

  “Yes, you do. I’ve seen you.”

  “It wasn’t rat meat.”

  “It was rat. You’re a rat-meat-eater, rat-meat-eater, rat-meat-eater.”

  Deqing joined me for dinner that night. I had started inviting the monks to eat with me when I realized the restaurant served me more food than I could finish and the quality of the restaurant food was much better than the kitchen at the back of the Wushu Center where the monks, the Wushu Center students, and coaches ate. Most declined because they didn’t want to be criticized by the leaders for fraternizing with the laowai. Deqing was secure enough in his position at the Wushu Center not to care.

  Halfway through dinner I asked Deqing the question that had been on my mind since the afternoon. “The monks don’t really eat rat meat, do they?”

  “Not anymore. Times are better now.”

  “You’re saying you used to eat rat?” I asked in disbelief.

  “Five, ten years ago, sure. We never had any meat, and sometimes we’d get so hungry for it that if we caught a rat we’d eat it. But it almost wasn’t worth it, because rat meat is so tough, it takes more energy to chew than it provides. And rats taste terrible,” he said, shaking his shoulders in disgust at the memory.

  “How old were you when you came to Shaolin?”

  “I was eleven.”

  Deqing looked out the window with his brow furrowed as if trying to make up his mind about something. Finally, he turned back to me and started to speak.

  “My father killed a man,” Deqing said. “He was a truck driver. One night his brakes failed and he ran over an old peasant crossing the road. He was convicted and sentenced to ten years in jail.”

  “That’s so unfair,” I said.

  Given the dilapidated state of most vehicles, most roads, and all traffic safety regulation in China, it was a wonder every truck driver in the country hadn’t run over somebody.

  “True, it wasn’t his fault, but a man was dead. We lived in one of the nicer houses in my hometown in Zhejiang Province. Have you been to Zhejiang?”

  “I haven’t had the honor yet.”

  “I should take you. It is beautiful. My mother sold the house and all the furniture to help pay down the fine. But she only had enough money to reduce the sentence to seven years.”

  In China, most criminal punishment is either/or. You do the time, or you pay the fine. Or some combination of both.

  “We had to move into a tiny hovel. The neighbors had always been envious of us. We were considered a wealthy family. But the crime and the move made us lose face. The boys at school started picking on my younger brother.”

  In China, the one-child-per-family policy was less strictly enforced in the countryside than in the cities, especially if the children were boys. There was a traditional Chinese proverb that was still repeated: “The more sons, the more happiness.”

  “You never told me you had a younger brother.” I said. “What’s he like?”

  “He’s an intellectual like you. Good in school. Likes to read. Not very good in a fight. So I started getting in fights at school to defend him. The teacher complained to my mother. She was desperate. Without my father’s salary, she didn’t have enough money to feed us both. So one day, she packed my bag and told me we were going on a trip. When we arrived at Shaolin, she dropped me off and said, ‘You like to fight. Maybe the monks can teach you something.’ Then she left m
e here.”

  As I listened to Deqing I was watching for some sign of emotional reaction to this terrible Sophie’s Choice his mother had made. But he told the story like a trauma victim, like it had happened to someone else. And given how expressive Deqing usually was, this was almost as horrifying as the story itself.

  “I knew I had to work hard to impress the monks. I didn’t have any money for classes, so I watched them and practiced by myself. One day, one of the Shaolin monks noticed how hard I trained and took me into the temple to teach me.

  “But I still didn’t have any money for food. When I got too hungry, I’d linger outside a restaurant with my chopsticks. I’d wait until the customers had finished their meal and were walking away, and then I’d run to their table and eat what they had left before the waitress had a chance to clear the table. Imagine this little boy eating strangers’ leftovers.”

  As he said this last sentence, the emotion finally returned to his voice and face. His eyes narrowed with anger and his face flushed red with the shame of the memory.

  This was the boyhood wound that created the man who sat before me, whose kungfu contained such fury.

  Deqing kept staring at me, and I knew he had told me his story only because I had questioned his right to make money. I wanted to crawl under the table to escape his gaze.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I said, my voice trembling.

  “Why? It wasn’t your fault,” Deqing said, but kept his hard stare on me.

  “I’m still sorry.”

  One of the first things I noticed at Shaolin was that Chinese men were much more physically affectionate than laowai. I noticed because after I started to hang out with the monks in their barracks, I found my back slapped, shoulder or thigh squeezed, hand held. And I found myself telling myself, “Don’t pull away. Hold steady. Breathe through your nose.”