American Shaolin by Matthew Polly
Saturday, March 3, 2007
Matthew Polly's site
American Shaolin on Amazon.com
As you can probably guess from the fact that I'm writing about it, I really enjoyed this book. Here's the synopsis from Matthew Polly's site:
Growing up a 98-pound weakling tormented by bullies in the schoolyards of Kansas, young Matthew Polly dreamed of one day journeying to the Shaolin Temple in China to become the toughest fighter in the world, like Caine in his favorite 1970’s TV series Kung Fu. While in college, Matthew decided the time had come to pursue this quixotic dream before it was too late. Much to the dismay of his parents, he dropped out of Princeton to train with the legendary sect of monks who invented kung fu and Zen Buddhism.
What follows is the true story of the two years Matthew spent in China living, training, and performing with the Shaolin monks. After an arduous and misdirected journey begun a short time after the Tiananmen Square Massacre, Polly arrives at the Shaolin Temple in Henan Province expecting an austere and isolated monastery. What he discovers, however, is that the Chinese government, in its headlong drive toward capitalism, has transformed the surrounding temple into a tourist trap—“Kung fu World.”
After searching the village, he finally discovers the Shaolin Wushu Center, where Shaolin monks teach kung fu to anyone able to afford the tuition and perform for any tourists willing to pay. Polly enrolls and begins life as the only laowai (“foreigner”) in a five-hundred-mile radius. The Chinese term for tough training is chi ku (“eating bitter”), and Polly quickly learns to appreciate the phrase after his first class with Monk Cheng Hao. He is barely able to walk the next day.
During the months of brutal practice, Polly grows close to several of the monks, and through them he encounters the paradoxes of life as a contemporary Shaolin monk, in which these devout Buddhists must perform daily for tourists and hawk merchandise in order to support their art. Polly also sees their incredible abilities, ranging from their phenomenal physical strength and endurance to their thunderous dunks on their basketball court to their practice of “Iron Kung Fu,” in which the monks make a body part (such as the head, forearm, stomach, neck, or, most frightening of all, the crotch) virtually indestructible through repeated torture.
Polly eventually switches to a rigorous study of Chinese-style kickboxing under Coach Cheng, Shaolin’s best fighter, and represents the Shaolin Temple in one of China’s national tournaments. At the end of his journey, the monks initiate him into the Shaolin Temple, making him the first American to be accepted as a Shaolin disciple. Laced with humor and illuminated by cultural insight, American Shaolin is a funny and poignant portrait of a rapidly changing China.
In many ways, American Shaolin reminded me of Mark Salzman's Iron & Silk. The similarities are obvious - American college students travels to China and studies martial arts. What less obvious (at least until you've read both books) is that neither book focuses on martial arts; instead, their studies are the background for a series of stories about what it was like to live for a time in a totally different culture. Both Polly and Salzman have an easy-to-read, almost conversational writing style - I remember reading Iron & Silk in a day or two, and I finished American Shaolin in about three days. A major difference is in the goals of Salzman's and Polly's training... Salzman studied wu shu, with an emphasis on forms. While Polly started with that, he eventually switched to studying san da (Chinese kickboxing) with a much greater emphasis on fighting.
I particularly enjoyed the way Polly dispelled some of the idealized images most Westerners have of studying kung fu in China. The shaolin that he studied with were not mystical monks who spent their days meditating and perfecting their martial skills. Instead, they were normal people who were trying to do something they loved (kung fu) while finding ways to make ends meet in a China that, at the time, was determined to milk the kung fu dollar for everything it was worth. I also liked the looks he gave the reader into his psyche, in particular into the changes he underwent as he trained and went from being a cowed college student to something of a "badass" and even at times something of a bully.
The wrapup, which briefly describes his return to a very different China ten years later, is both poignant in his descriptions of how much has changed (in some ways, it reminded me of my own sometimes nostalgic memories of my years in college and my occasional urges to revisit both the Poughkeepsie and New Haven areas) and encouraging in showing his increased maturity and understanding of how a love for martial arts can become a part of one's life.
And in the midst of all of this, you get some great descriptions of what it's like to be a kickboxer in China (no thank you!) and a description of the methods of developing 'iron crotch kung fu" that will either make you wince or convince you that some of these guys are truly insane!
A fun book, strongly recommended for anyone interested in a realistic picture of one type of training in China and especially for anyone who enjoyed Iron and Silk.
JMH
