American Shaolin

by Matthew Polly

  Each team had a sign girl, an attractive teenager in a short dress who carried a sign bearing the name of the team in Chinese and misspelled English. The largest team was, of course, the Chinese National team, but it was not as large as it could have been. If this had been an international competition they would have flooded each category in order to sweep the medals, but this was a festival, an event to promote “friendship and tourism” as the posters said, so the Chinese were entering just one martial artist for each wushu (forms) competition and each sanda (kickboxing) weight division. The catch was that every member of the Chinese team was the national champion in his form or weight class and almost all were world champions as well. The Chinese wanted to be gracious hosts and were happy for the foreigners to leave with silver and bronze medals, but gold was out of the question.

  At the last minute, I was told by Coach Yan, who was acting as intermediary between the leaders and me, that I could not, as a foreigner, represent either the Shaolin Temple or the Wushu Center. I was rather angry about this, arguing that if I was good enough to fight a challenge match for Shaolin I should be good enough to represent my school in this tournament. Coach Yan hemmed and hawed and came up with enough reasonable excuses that I could not determine which was the real one and so could not undermine it. At the tournament’s registration I invented my team: Princeton University Wushu Team. At the parade, I walked behind my sign girl, who was wearing a pink dress and carrying the sign PUWT, U.S.A. Coach Cheng and Deqing had ducked out to meet old friends.

  I was a little annoyed that Deqing had left me to walk the parade alone, but all was forgiven when I returned to my room to discover that Deqing had spent that time looking up two very attractive Zheng Zhou women. The one who was sitting proprietarily near him was clearly one of his many fans and the other, looking at me somewhat nervously, her friend. They wanted to make us dumplings after my weigh-in to celebrate the breaking of my fast. I’d dropped six pounds in the last two weeks to arrive at an anorexic 149 pounds on my six-foot-three frame. Surveying the scene, this could have been a double date if it weren’t for the fact that one of us was a celibate Buddhist monk and the other a potentially AIDS-infected scarecrow who was condemned by law to turn nice young Chinese women into prostitutes at the stroke of midnight. Still, all in all, it beat fasting in a mountainous monastery where my friends pounded on me six hours a day to prepare me for a fight against a national champion. We made arrangements to meet at the fan’s house at five P.M.

  Because all the foreigners were staying in the Zheng Zhou International Hotel, my weigh-in took place there. I stepped off the elevator to a hallway full of men from various parts of the world standing around in their underwear. It was like a Benetton ad come to life.

  We were arranged by weight class. There were only five 70 kg. (154 lb.) fighters, fewer than the other classes. There was a short, pudgy Korean in his mid-thirties, a wiry Japanese fighter in his late teens, a tough-looking Russian in his mid-twenties, the Chinese Champ, and scrawny, lanky me.

  There are not many sports where opponents stand around with each other half naked before the competition begins. It makes for a rather awkward social situation. I could see why pro boxers always come to weigh-ins with their posses. The weigh-in really is the first round of the fight where the psychological warfare begins. I urgently wished I had asked Deqing or Coach Cheng to come with me. Alone, I wasn’t sure how to act.

  Neither did the Champ, who clearly felt out of place—he was used to fighting real rivals, not a bunch of overpaying foreigners. But then the coach of the Chinese team came over and gave me something to react to, my strong suit as a fighter and a person. He introduced himself and said that he was a coach at Taguo and that he had heard that I was very good, worked hard, and was able to eat bitter.

  “Oh no, no, no, no need to be polite,” I said, offering the usual Chinese response.

  “So, do you think you are going to win?” he asked with an ingratiating smile. “Are you going to beat my fighter?”

  But his cynical eyes didn’t match his grin and I immediately took a dislike to him. He was too jiaohua, a slick-talker, and he was trying to psych me out. The coach either wanted to get me to say something arrogant, which would anger and motivate his fighter, or he wanted me to be excessively humble, which would help the confidence of the Champ.

  “How could I ever hope to beat your fighter?” I said, smiling back.

  Without thinking about it, I had apparently decided to do my best imitation of extreme Chinese humility. I lowered my head, lifted my arms as if in supplication, and raised my voice an octave.

  “I am but a small man,” I said. “A lowly laowai. We are terrible at kungfu. How could I ever even think I could beat a Chinese fighter, let alone a national champion?”

  This was not the reaction the coach had expected. His smile vanished and he took a step back. The Champ looked extremely uncomfortable. So I continued to lay it on thick.

  “Besides, you are both Taguo-trained fighters, while I studied at the Wushu Center. We are soft; you are hard. We train indoors on carpet. You train outdoors on the dirt. Look at how dark your fighter’s skin is from the sun. Look out how white I am. He will certainly be the victor. I am simply honored to have the chance to be defeated by him.”

  I finished with a deep bow and rose smiling like an idiot. Rattled, the coach walked away. I knew I stood little to no chance against the Champ, but I had clearly won the first round.

  Over dumplings with the girls that night, I recounted this story to Deqing. Toward the end, my nominal date’s expression changed from indifference to intense interest. A young warrior was about to go off into battle, and it was her biological duty to the species to pass his DNA information on to the next generation before it was too late.

  It is no wonder that young men have always been willing to risk themselves in stupid, potentially fatal adventures. It’s such an aphrodisiac.

  I don’t remember the rest of the meal. Her look had fired my libido straight into the stratosphere. I pretended to pay attention, but my mind was racing through the logistical difficulties and my various tactical options. I had to get the women to walk back with us to the hotel. But Deqing was rooming with me. Somehow I had to drop Deqing and his fan off in Coach Cheng’s room and then find a reason to excuse myself and my date—whose name I’m embarrassed to say I never actually caught—to my room without anyone else following. And then somehow execute a quick seduction (not so easy, despite that look of hers) with a quick conclusion (very easy, unfortunately) before Coach Cheng or Deqing became suspicious and came knocking at the door. And all this had to be done before midnight, because the key girl on our hallway would be taking note and probably calling the police if the young woman was not out of my room by then.

  The first part of the campaign went off without a hitch. I said I wanted to drop in on Coach Cheng. We all sat down and chatted for a bit. After a few minutes I turned to my date and asked if she wanted to see “the thing” she had asked me about. She looked confused but nodded. We went off to my room. I pulled out some photos I had of the monks and myself at Shaolin in various kungfu poses. While she was still slightly confused, I leaned in closer to point out aspects of the photos, while slipping an arm around her back. Our heads tilted toward each other.

  But right before contact, there was a knock at the door. I held my date to me. Since neither Coach Cheng nor Deqing had a key to the room, I decided to pretend we weren’t there and hope they went away.

  As the lock turned we scrambled apart. Deqing, Deqing’s fan, Coach Cheng, and his girlfriend, Shou Ting, stood behind the key girl, who opened the door. I cursed myself for forgetting about the key girl.

  After a few awkward moments, I tried to hint that Coach Cheng would be doing me a big favor if he made himself scarce with some head nods and eye rolls in the direction of the door. At a certain point a sheepish smile flittered across Coach Cheng’s face. The rotten turtle’s egg had staged an intervention. He held out
until the prostitution hour neared and Deqing’s fan and my date had to go. We walked them to the elevator. When I returned to the room, Coach Cheng was waiting outside his door for me.

  “Why did you do that?” I asked in a tone of voice kungfu students do not use with their masters.

  “After the tournament do what you want but not before.”

  “Why?”

  “It makes your legs weak.”

  And then I suddenly realized who I was talking to and how I was talking to him and what he could and ought to do to me for acting that way. I immediately apologized. He waved me off.

  The Zheng Zhou sports arena was the biggest indoor stadium I had ever been inside. It seemed like there were 50,000 Chinese packed in there. Actually, it couldn’t have been more than 10,000, but that was still ten times bigger than anything in Topeka. It was an intimidating space. The floor was covered with multiple mats for wushu forms competitions and three leitais for the sanda fights.

  There was a large room off the arena floor where the fighters congregated and changed. The brackets for each weight class were posted. Because there were five fighters in 70 kg., two had to fight a wild-card round. The play-in was between the Korean and the Japanese fighter. The winner would fight me in the semifinals. The Champ and the Russian would fight in the other bracket. The winner of those two fights would face each other for the championship. The wild-card match was to be held in the morning, the semifinals in the afternoon, and the finals the next day.

  No matter when each one of us was scheduled to fight, we all got suited up that morning. Everyone stripped down to loose kickboxing shorts and a T-shirt. As for pads, we all had two sets—black and red—of the same equipment. I was red for my first match. My date from the night before was there, having apparently promoted herself to my corner after enduring the previous night, and was helping me put on the pads. There was a padded cup that went over the outside of the shorts; two thin shin guards to limit bruising, which could balloon a man’s leg; two thin foot guards to protect the tops of the feet from the same; a thin chest guard; light eight-ounce boxing gloves; a mouthpiece; and amateur boxing headgear.

  As my date laced up the chest gear in the back, I felt this boyish grin spreading across my face. I’d been dreaming of this tournament every night for nine months. I couldn’t wait to get started.

  From the fighter’s room, a large hallway between the stands opened up onto the main hall. I found myself at the end of the hallway standing next to the Champ when the fight between the Korean and the Japanese fighters started. We were both looking for weaknesses.

  The Japanese fighter slid forward on his left foot and raised his right foot, bringing it around in a right roundhouse. At that exact instant, the Korean fighter dropped into a crouch and executed a right front sweep. His right instep hooked the Japanese fighter’s left standing leg, his only point of contact with the earth, causing him to tip precariously for a second before finally falling over.

  The Champ and I looked at each other with disbelief. The right front sweep was almost never used. To perform it you drop into a crouch over a bent left leg, placing both hands on the ground for balance. The right leg is kept straight and swept counterclockwise along the ground like a broom. The point is to topple your opponent, but since the kick is weak it will work only if you catch him with one of his legs up in the air. Obviously, timing is crucial. But that’s not why the kick is avoided. The problem is, while crouched over your knee with both hands on the ground, you leave your face completely exposed at waist height, teed up like a pumpkin on a short fence post. If your opponent is aiming at where your head was while standing he will miss high. But if he is aiming at where your waist was, he will smash your unprotected face.

  Fortunately for the Korean, the Japanese fighter had been aiming at his head, so he missed. The Korean’s sweep connected with the Japanese fighter’s standing leg, causing him to topple to the ground. It was a very risky opening gambit, only justifiable because it was such a surprise, like running a flea-flicker on the first play of a football game.

  But then on the very next exchange, the Korean tried it again. This time the Japanese fighter managed to keep his balance.

  The Champ asked me, “Are you seeing this?”

  “Yes.”

  “What a stupid egg!” he said, patting me on the shoulder. “Your luck is good.”

  The front forward sweep was the Korean fighter’s lone decent attack. His only other technique was to charge forward with his head ducked as he punched wildly with both hands. From a distance, he looked like a snot-nosed ten-year-old forced to fight on the playground.

  The one thing more amazing than watching this Korean fight with only two techniques, one of which was extremely risky and the other juvenile, was that they were working. Three or four times he knocked over the Japanese fighter with his front sweep. And his wild charge kept his opponent back on his heels. I kept waiting for the Japanese fighter to adjust and level the Korean, but it never happened. The Korean won the first two rounds and the fight.

  That afternoon I was ready. Despite it being my first time on a leitai (there had never been one at Shaolin), I stepped onto it completely focused. The Korean fighter and I stood at opposite ends and started to stretch. From the corner of my eye I studied the Korean’s flexibility. His splits left a couple inches of space at the crotch, while mine was flush to the platform. I tried not to smile at the advantage. He would have difficulty kicking high enough to reach my face.

  The referee blew his whistle to call us to the center of the ring. The traditional sanda introduction was to put your gloves together and bow and then come together for a brief hug to show mutual respect. The Korean was at best five-foot-six in shoes. I had eight or nine inches on him. He was chubby. I was skinny as a rail. We looked like a multiethnic Abbott and Costello. When I embraced him I purposively bent my back at an exaggerated angle, stuck my ass out, and threw my elbow out wide, as if I were reaching down to pick up a child. A big roar of laughter emanated from the crowd. I had succeeded in my goal to intimidate and embarrass him. He hung his head as he stepped back. (The next day the wits at Zheng Zhou’s newspaper would write, “It was as if a lamppost had squeezed a stuffed bear.”)

  The whistle blew.

  My initial strategy was based on my experience that fighters almost always rely on their strongest technique first—the kick they had practiced 10,000 times. For the Korean fighter, it was his front sweep.

  I stepped forward to plant my left foot and raised my right knee up high as if aiming at his head. As expected, the Korean dropped to a crouch over his left knee and swept his right foot around at my standing leg. At this moment, I lowered my knee and brought it around at waist height, aiming at his unprotected head. Mentally practicing it before the fight, I knew it was a matter of timing. My foot had to reach his face before his foot struck my left standing leg. But I hadn’t anticipated being nervous. I swung my leg hard but I didn’t turn my hips into it, which is what generates the extra force.

  Just before his foot reached my left leg, my right connected flush against the side of his face. I watched his eyes roll into the back of his head as he was knocked flat onto the platform. But there was no joy. I could here the voice in the back of my head scream, You leg kicked him. You’re supposed to turn your hips.

  I turned around to look at Coach Cheng. He was shouting the same thing as he twisted his body, “Use your hips!”

  Turning back around, I could see the Korean struggling to his knees as the referee counted over him, “…four, five, six…” It had only been a leg kick but it had been hard, especially with his head planted at waist height, unprotected. As he stood up, I felt a grudging respect. He had an iron jaw. That kick would have ended most fights.

  Tournament fighting is different from, say, championship boxing, where a boxer fights for ten or twelve rounds once every six months or so. In those situations, you are supposed to leave everything you have in the ring, because you have many mo
nths to recover. In a tournament, you want to expend as little energy with as little risk as possible in the early rounds. You want to give just enough to win. Other than losing, the biggest danger is that you will be injured or exhaust yourself, making victory in the later stages of the tournament difficult or impossible.

  The perfect result would have been a knockout from that roundhouse in the first five seconds, but it hadn’t worked out. I fell back to reconsider. The Korean was wobbly, and he was scared to try that front sweep again, which eliminated his best technique. I might have been able to finish him, but I didn’t want to chance it. So for the next two rounds I used my superior height and range to score points and keep him at bay. Whenever he tried charging with his head down and swinging wildly, I would dance back, jabbing over his hooks or front thrust kicking him in the chest to knock him back. I kept my kicks at chest level or lower; my punches were all straight jabs to his head. It wasn’t a rousing, crowd-pleasing strategy, but it was effective on the scorecards. I won both rounds and the match.

  Afterward Coach Cheng kept at me about turning my hips on my roundhouse.

  “You would have knocked him out,” he said.

  The Champ’s fight with the Russian was scheduled after mine. I stayed to watch. It was frightening. The Champ beat the Russian like a drum. He knocked him from one side of the leitai to the other, several times blasting him off the platform, which was about a yard off the ground and surrounded by the kind of thick foam padding used in stunt falls. It was a rout.

  In the first thirty seconds of round two, the Champ kicked the Russian with a low left roundhouse. It landed on the side of the Russian’s right knee, which buckled momentarily, causing him to drop down six inches and lower his guard. The Champ followed the left with a high right roundhouse, but the Russian’s collapse had brought them too close. Instead of landing with his left foot as was the Champ’s intention, he blasted the Russian in the face with his knee, which is illegal (knee and elbow attacks are legal in Thai kickboxing, but not in sanda). The referee ruled it an unintentional knee attack, so there was no penalty. But it didn’t matter. The knee had broken the Russian’s nose. He was lying flat on his back, coughing up blood. Medics rushed in and carted him off on a stretcher.