China Trip, Deng Feng 15th Nov

After leaving Xingyang San Zhong, we headed towards Deng Feng, the place where the world reknown Shaolin temple is located. Unfortunately for us, Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jia Bao decided to pay Shaolin a visit. As a result, the expressway leading to Deng Feng was blockaded for a full one and a half hour. This is not the first time for me, but I believe most students have never encountered a similar experience before this. The term Deng Feng 登封literally means "ascend and bestow a title". In the town of Deng Feng, we can find scores of shops selling Chinese weapons and costumes, and dozens of martial arts schools. The famous Shaolin temple is situated on Shao Shi Mountain 少室山in Deng Feng.

As the weather in Deng Feng was pretty chilly, our entire group was wrapped up in our jackets as we traverse the expanse of Shaolin temple. Within the temple grounds, we can also find hundreds of young Chinese practising martial arts. Looking at how they practise, I was thinking that should Deng Feng be the only place to send representatives for Asian Games, China would have enough people to get all the medals, so one can think how easy it will be for the whole of China to win medals in Wushu category. Before actually entering the Shaolin temple, we were treated to a martial arts display in a specially built auditorium.

In the auditorium, we were treated to a rehearsed display of martial arts, and we then proceed to the temple grounds proper. Too bad some parts of the temple were destroyed in a major fire and the temple buildings we see today were built after the 1980s. Now if only the scriptures containing the best skills were kept in the scriptorium, I would dress myself in black and enter the temple grounds after nightfall to steal the manuals. As we were touring the various parts of the temple, the sky began to darken and it started drizzling when we were midway through Shaolin. As such, we had to hasten our tour of Shaolin temple and proceed on to the forest of pagodas behind Shaolin temple. Placed in the pagodas are the relics of all the abbots of Shaolin temple. By the time we ended our tour of the pagodas, the sky was already quite dark and we had to leave the temple grounds by taking the local scooter-like vehicles to transfer to our coach.