Joshua Naterman Posted May 27, 2011 Share Posted May 27, 2011 The monks you have in XiaoLin (Shaolin) in China now are not from the same knowledge pool that stretches back thousands of years. In the Communist era.. the 'bad years' around the time of Mao, the government got rid of non-governmental organisations which could bind people together or had a spirtual side e.g. martial arts, religion. The 'high level' martial artists fled down south to Hong Kong or Taiwan.Look at "Wushu". The Communists got rid of traditional kung fu then replaced it with something completely engineered, flashy and with no spiritual element.The monks at Shaolin are professional careerists. I kid you not. In China "monk" is a career path like any others. You have different levels of monk, career progression, and yes, salaries and benefits. It's all about the bottom line: the temples actually are run like businesses and make a profit from visitors coming and paying for blessings and donations.What this means is that since the era of Mao they basically recreated the Shaolin monastery and cobbled the whole thing back together from what they thought it should look like and what would be most impressive. Hence you don't get a load of deeply spiritual guys, you get a load of career gymnasts doing parlor tricks for people. Yes, some of them are ex-gymnasts who couldn't make it in the enormous, sausage-stamping machine that is the Chinese Olympic-athelete battery-farm.Those guys will be strong, but discounting the tricks they almost certainly wont be as strong as a professional gymnast. And put one in the Octagon and he is not going to last long.HAHAHA nice! That is good info. There is also supposed to be a genuine Shaolin Temple in New York City, of all places. Apparently a few of the monks made it to the US. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jollyrancher Posted May 28, 2011 Share Posted May 28, 2011 I remember reading somewhere that one defected while on tour in NY.I just realised I got my Chinese wrong and my pompous correction of 'Shaolin' to 'XiaoLin' is actually incorrect... :oops: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pogo69 Posted May 28, 2011 Share Posted May 28, 2011 This is a very interesting documentary about 5 Shaolin monks who moved to the US. They each retain varying degrees of spirituality and/or adherence to the ideals with which they were raised.fkjxbqthakk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChenZhen Posted May 28, 2011 Share Posted May 28, 2011 I remember reading somewhere that one defected while on tour in NY.I just realised I got my Chinese wrong and my pompous correction of 'Shaolin' to 'XiaoLin' is actually incorrect... :oops:Yeah, that was Shi Yan Ming, I did a workshop with him a couple of years ago, fastest guy I've ever seen. Btw, many peolpe confuse it as the characters for "Shao" å°‘ and "Xiao" å° are pretty similar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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