Shaolin's kung fu monks make a
killing By Pallavi Aiyar
BEIJING - From high
up in the misty Song Mountains of central China's
Henan province, the
Shaolin monastery and its kung fu monks have held
a peculiar fascination across the centuries.
Shrouded in a swirl of myth and mystery, the
temple's fame has long crossed Chinese borders
thanks to Hollywood and Jet Li.
In the
popular imagination, Shaolin is synonymous with
the rigid discipline and deep spirituality of the
cryptic Zen Buddhism school practiced at the
temple. But in keeping with the spirit of
contemporary China, Shaolin
today has been reborn as a well-oiled corporation,
with holding monks with master of business
administration (MBA) degrees sorting out temple
management
issues on cellular phones, presided
over by an abbot the local media call the "CEO of
Shaolin".
Shi Yongxin, the temple's abbot,
may be clothed in the yellow robes of the monk,
complete with weighty rosary draped around the
neck, but the bulge of his mobile phone is
unmistakable through the folds of his robes as he
hands out business cards sporting the temple's
website address (www.shaolin.com). In Shaolin,
Buddhism is big business, and the abbot is
unapologetic for its blatant commercialism.
"In the past, monks relied on farming to
make a living. Today we have to rely on tourism,"
he says. "Advertising and publicity has always
been integral to Buddhism. How else can we diffuse
Buddhist philosophy into society at large?"
Among Shi's innovations was
the setting up of mainland China's first
temple-based website in 1996, when few in the
country had even heard of the Internet. In 1997 he
hired lawyers to fight
trademark violations, to protect the Shaolin
"brand", which had been much exploited, used to
sell everything from colas to bicycles.
The abbot went on to dispatch
hitherto-cloistered monks to perform martial arts
all over the world and encouraged others to learn
foreign languages and go abroad to study for MBAs
and PhDs.
"In a globalized world we need
our monks to be able to communicate in different
languages," says Shi. He adds that about half of
the temple's 200 monks speak a foreign language.
English, Korean and Japanese are the most popular,
and a few have even learned Farsi. Currently more
than 10 monks are taking degrees abroad.
The abbot's latest commercial venture is
the production of an international, televised
martial-arts contest, the winner of which will
star in a series of movies the temple is investing
in.
"Shaolin has been the subject
of so many films, but none of them portray the
real spirit of our temple," says Shi. He claims
that the reason for the temple's foray into
filmmaking has to do with
revealing the spiritual side of
Buddhism rather than the boom-bang of martial arts
that Hollywood usually focuses on.
But in
the temple itself, this spirituality is tough to
come by. Armies of tourists swarm around Shaolin,
where an entrance ticket costs 100 yuan
(US$12.50). Ticket fees from the more than 1
million visitors last year, combined with the
temple's other business interests, amounted to
"several tens of millions [of] yuan", according to
Shi.
A group of shy but curious novices
confesses in a gasp of giggles that they have
little interest in Buddhism. "I am here to learn
martial arts," says one 17-year-old. "I'm not sure
I will want to stay here all my life."
Apprentice monks in Shaolin have to choose
at 18 whether or not to stay on at the temple as
confirmed monks. Those who stay are divided into
two groups: monks with a yen for performance and
kung fu, and those of a more spiritual bent who
wish to focus on theology and meditation.
Shi Yanjie, 22, who came to Shaolin at age
12, chose the former, more popular option. He says
he enjoys being a monk because it allows him to
travel. He has performed in England, Italy,
Switzerland and the United States over the past
few years. The young monk usually spends five to
six hours a day practicing kung fu. Meditation
time is usually an hour, but it depends on his
performance schedule, he says.
Dengfeng,
the nearest town to the temple, is jam-packed with
more than 80 martial-arts schools, where more than
40,000 students from across China and abroad study
Shaolin-style kung fu.
At Epo Shaolin
Training College, portraits of Josef Stalin and
Karl Marx adorn the rooms. The 6,500 students here
range in age from four to 21 and dream of becoming
movie stars, although it is more common for them
to end up as security guards. The majority are
from humble backgrounds, but their parents pay up
to 10,000 yuan ($1,250) a year to send them here
for a shot at stardom.
"Do you believe in
the Buddha?" a correspondent asks a 10-year-old
from a rural area of northern China's Shandong province. "Who
is that?" he answers.
Back at the temple,
Shi Yongxin himself is as comfortable quoting Mao
Zedong as he is the Buddha. In what is still
officially an atheist country, it is impossible
for a successful religious figure to remain
apolitical. Shi is thus a deputy in China's
parliament, the National People's Congress. He is
also fond of talking about the role of Buddhism in
promoting a "harmonious society", the Chinese
government's current favorite catch phrase, coined
by President Hu Jintao.
As China is riven
by widening gaps between the beneficiaries and
losers of its economic liberalization, the
authorities have made it their priority to try to
balance the interests of different sections of
society. The idea of a harmonious society is thus
an effort to glue together its fraying fabric.
As part of this attempt, the government
has taken to encouraging a revival of religion, in
particular Confucianism and Buddhism. "Buddhism
helps people to be content with what they have
instead of hankering for more," says Shi. "It also
gives them strength to face adversity." A perfect
recipe, it would seem, for China's political and
social woes.
Thus the same temple that was
severely damaged by Red Guards during the Cultural
Revolution, when Buddhism was seen as inextricably
bound up with China's feudal-imperialist past, is
today being renovated by the provincial
government. Millions of yuan are being spent to
restore Shaolin's buildings to their former glory.
Monks that were once dragged through the
streets to receive public flogging are feted, and
kung fu, which had been banned as a decadent
practice, is now being seen as the way to a better
life by thousands, as evidenced by the training
schools in Dengfeng.
In many ways this
latest turn of events is just one more spin of
Shaolin's wheel of fortune. Throughout history,
the temple has been repeatedly razed to the
ground, rocked by civil strife, mauled by invaders
and played with by capricious emperors. It was
originally built in AD 496 in honor of the Indian
monk Bada, called Batuo by the Chinese. A couple
of decades later, in 517, another Indian monk,
Bodhidharma (or Damo in Chinese), founded the Chan
(Zen) school of Buddhism and developed the unique
Shaolin-style kung fu that has made the temple
famous across the world.
"We have Indian
roots," says Shi Yongxin, "but over the centuries
our style of worship mixed with Taoism and
Confucianism and developed its own identity."
Nonetheless, the abbot asks your
correspondent to recommend an Indian sculptor. He
wants to commission a bronze statue of Bodhidharma
for the temple and doesn't think a Chinese artist
will be able to render an Indian face with
accuracy. "Please make some inquiries and e-mail
me," he smiles.
Shaolin today, then, is a
hodgepodge of the religious and commercial -
simultaneously brash and Buddhist. Some may think
this contradictory, but then, paradox has always
been the essence of Zen Buddhism.
Pallavi Aiyar is the China
correspondent for The Hindu.
issues on cellular phones, presided
over by an abbot the local media call the "CEO of
Shaolin". 
trademark violations, to protect the Shaolin
"brand", which had been much exploited, used to
sell everything from colas to bicycles.
revealing the spiritual side of
Buddhism rather than the boom-bang of martial arts
that Hollywood usually focuses on. 
