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[May 10, 2005] My pictures from the Songshan Shaolin exhibition turned out better than I expected. In the above photo, a monk is balanced on the points of six spears, and they didn't break his skin. It was insane.

There were 18 monks in this exhibition, ranging in ages from 5 to 22 (yes, they're all younger than me. It was humbling. Like most things in my life), plus their grandmaster, who did some incredibly badass feats. In fact, they all did incredibly badass feats.

Like doing handstands, using only two fingers... and then doing one-handed handstands, using only two fingers.

The coolest part was that the youngest monks... were 5-year-old triplets. The Shaolin Triplets. They were not only badass, they were adorable too -- kind of shy when they first came out on stage, and then way cool when they started doing things. They did headsprings. People did lots of headspings in this show. They also leaned over and planted their heads on the ground... and then walked around them spinning their bodies, keeping their heads planted on the stage.

There were lots of weapons demonstrations, and animal-style demonstrations. There was a guy who demonstrated drunken boxing, and then drunken sword fighting, and then drunken staff fighting. There were kip-ups in every single demonstration. They did lots of flips and tucks and cartwheels and stuff, all right out of my gymnastics class -- except they never landed on their feet, they always landed on their backs, which was a little odd.

The grandmaster did demonstrations where big, burly men in the audience would get a chance to try to hurt him. He took repeated kicks to the crotch from very large men, and chain-punches to the stomach... and then the monks brought in a battering ram, and a bunch of them rammed it into his stomach a lot. The Shaolin Triplets did a 'shell game,' where kids from the audience had to close their eyes while the three kids ran around and rearranged themselves, and then the kids had to guess which of the three was which. And there was a really cheezy computer animated video accompanying it, and a very '80s World music soundtrack. So in addition to being extremely badass, it was also extremely exploitative.

Afterwards, they signed autographs and posed for pictures... and my friend Japalino was totally crushing on her 'dreamboat monk' (which was the coolest thing ever -- my friend had a crush on a monk! A monk who could kick your ass!). And I was thinking...

This is a bunch of monks, from China. And here they are, in the West, encountering women who wear less clothing than they've ever seen, and getting treated like rockstars.

How weird must that be?

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hawaii , blog , china , awesome , kung fu , martial arts , honolulu , stories , shaolin , badass