China Trip, Shaolin 16th-17th Nov

After our visit to Shaolin temple, we went on to the highlight of our trip - Shi Xiao Long Shaolin Temple Martial Arts School. Shi Xiao Long is the young guy acting in Young Justice Bao. His father was an wushu instructor and he started learning wushu at a tender age of 3. By about 10 years old, he was already filming movies and earning money. He used his earnings to build a wushu academy in Deng Feng to teach fellow countrymen wushu, while he went on to Canada for his studies.

The students were divided into 2 groups, with Miss Lee & Mdm Gao in the first group while I am in the second group. Special mention must go to Chong Yan Jing of 2E3 2006, as I noticed she became the "unofficial" student instructor leading her group to practice the moves. She had a good memory and picked up the moves quite fast. Also, she was quite able to motivate her group to practice till they got it. Sadly, I was leading my group and most of them depended on me for the moves.

The instructors are monks from Shaolin temple learning martial arts in the wushu academy. The 2 in the picture are the ones assigned to my group. They seldom talk, and are rather fast in their teaching. Seeing that I can do several moves better than the students and that I am always the one to get the students moving, the monks let me do most of the reinforcing. Once they see me get it, they usually let me do the rest of the refreshing and polishing. Guess I have myself partly to blame for my predicament. As the 2 monks practice wushu daily, they are able to do the horse stance （马步）at a level much lower than I could. As such, they kept asking the students to go lower, stretch their legs wider, forgetting that it took them years of training to attain what they have achieved so far. By mid-day, my legs were already trembling from the sheer exertion. The students took longer to feel the effects as most of them did not push themselves hard enough. By the first day, we had finished learning Shaolin's Xiao Hong Quan（小洪拳）. Without any basics to begin with, learning 30 over moves within a day is way too fast, as the students do not have ample time to reinforce what they have learnt.

Initially, I thought we only had to learn 1 set, so when we returned on the second day, I was horrified to hear that we had 2 sets to learn! As I feared, the students could not really absorb the second set and by mid-day on the second day, we had problems recalling the moves from both sets.

Nontheless, it was quite an experience learning Shaolin martial arts as it is very different from the taiji that I learnt. In fact, taiji originates from Wudang, the second most revered birthing ground of Chinese martial arts, so I am glad I had the chance to "peek" into Shaolin martial arts. Some of the girls had a fun time teasing the 2 younger monks teaching the other group as the 2 younger monks were quite shy. I think at the end of it all, students appreciate the hard work the monks had gone into to achieve what they had, so I do hope the students will learn to put forth their best foot in all that they do!