The Shaolin Monks and the Buddha Grottoes
No doubt you have seen them on television or movies and have heard about their regimented training techniques. The Shaolin monks live and train in Henan Province in a huge complex where they practice Zen Buddhism. Even though this is not a tourist site you would normally visit on a trip to China, it is in my mind one of the most important in Chinese as well as martial art history.
This was something that I have always wanted to see, since growing up I watched and heard about many of their mythical feats such as throwing a needle through a pane of glass and popping a balloon on the other side.
Taking a rather nice overnight sleeper train for 9 hours from Shanghai to Luoyang, we were first greeted with a UNESCO site called the Longman Grottoes. Perched along the Yi River, these caves offer some excellent examples of Chinese Buddhist art. Tens of thousands of carved statues of Buddha and his disciples are seen in small caves in this area. The only downside here was cold and rain which limited photography, but it was still an awe inspiring site, never to be missed.
After the grottoes the old town of Luoyang was the stop. I would of liked to stay around there the whole day, but rain and cold limited what we could do. The old town is nestled in a bustling city with a lot of tall buildings and chaos. This old town is what a lot of people probably think of when they think of China and the streets are small filled with shops and different types of street food including fried scorpions and crickets!!! The local meat soup here was one of the best soups I have had in China and the small narrow alleyways made for some great photos!!!! Sometimes you cant control the rain though.
What trip is complete without some Tai Chi in the park with locals. In many Asian movies or shows you see Asian people as well as foreigners in huge groups in the park practicing this slow moving martial arts for defense training and exercise. This is no different than what you see on TV, except we experienced it right in front of our faces.
As many of the Monks start training from a young age, we went to one of the many schools set up in the area to see kids as young as it looked at 10 to put on a performance. It was by no means a fancy place which made it that much more intriguing to watch as the students put on a performance for us and showed us what they could do. Seeing one of the students break a wooden block with his hand is always a bonus as well as people taking self defense lessons…
The last stop on this whirlwind trip was the Shaolin Monestary which is located in Dengfeng is to this day the main and oldest school of Shaolin training to this day, dating back approximately 1500 years. Both the monastery and the Pagoda Forest which houses some of the monks dating back 1300 years are UNESCO sites. The Pagoda Forest were built about 1200 years ago and some of the remains are of the top Shaolin Monks through history. We were able to see a performance of the monks training and were not disappointed. Some of them train for shows or movies while others spend their whole life training just because they want to. The complex was huge as you could easily spend a day walking around there. We were even able to see the needle through the pain of glass popping a balloon which is perhaps their most famous feat!!!
THE PAGODA FOREST
