In his spare time, the author teaches English to Di Di, one of China’s future kung fu champions.
	In addition to martial monks, Shaolin Temple boasts a wealth of kung fu art guaranteed to fascinate visitors.
	Standing atop a pile of rocks, the author poses with his broadsword.
	Antonio Graceffo works out with a Shaolin monk and 6-year-old Shao Fe, the youngest student then training at the temple.
	The author stands with two monks on the ancient steps that lead into Shaolin Temple.
	Miao Ping practices his headstand while Di Di strikes a pose with his straight sword.
	During the author’s stay, food was prepared at this outdoor kitchen.
	Two of Shaolin’s kung fu monks practice in front of a master’s house.

My sifu’s younger sister blew the wake-up whistle at 5:30, and I rolled out of my warm bed, immediately feeling the chill in my bare concrete room.

Because I was a foreigner and paying 10 times the normal tuition fee, I was given the luxury of my own room. I would have preferred the luxury of heating. It was early April, but in the Song mountains in China’s Henan province, it still felt like winter.

I had slept in my training uniform, a tracksuit like the one Bruce Lee wore in Game of Death, except it was red.

Under my uniform, I wore thermal underwear, a T-shirt, sweat pants and a hooded sweat shirt. When I went to bed, I wrapped a T-shirt around my head and face, turban-style, to preserve body heat. When I got out of bed, I put on my Navy watch cap. Of course, all this stuff would have to come off when I started training—then put on again the second I finished.

I could see my breath as I laced up my running shoes. The power hadn’t come on yet, so I carefully made my way down the four flights of stone stairs, avoiding the edges, where there were no banisters.

By 5:45 I had to be outside, in uniform, standing in formation. I bumped into my training brother, Miao Ping, on the stairs.

“An Dong Ni! An Dong Ni!” he shouted, using my Chinese name.

“Wake up! Wake up!”

“Do I look like I’m sleeping?” I asked.

“I thought you had overslept,” he said, concerned.

No one at Shaolin spoke more than three or four words of English. Luckily, I’d spent 18 months in Taiwan studying Chinese and kung fu before coming here. If I hadn’t, it would have been a lonely three months.

“I didn’t oversleep,” I protested, as I did every day. “I just waited until the whistle blew to get out of bed.”

“But everyone else got up at 5 o’clock,” exclaimed Miao Ping, predictably.

He was an odd mix of conformist and worrier. He was 24 years old but had a childlike obedience when it came to the temple rules. He would often wake up in the middle of the night, screaming because he had a dream that he was late for formation.

“Yes, and they have all been standing around, out in the cold, waiting for the 5:30 wake-up call,” I replied. “Isn’t that right?”

“Well ... yes,” he stammered.

“They can wait without me today, just like they did yesterday,” I said.

“But if Sifu came and we weren’t outside in time, there would be trouble.”

“Sifu sleeps till 10. And besides, it is 5:43. We still have two minutes.”

Although I had never been late to formation, Miao Ping and I went through this theater every morning. The next thing on our list of daily scenes was his counseling me on my shoes.

“An Dong Ni,” he said as if the world were coming to an end, “you are wearing the wrong shoes.”

“No, I’m wearing my running shoes,” I corrected.

“But you’re supposed to be wearing your kung fu shoes.”

“No, we’re going running. So I’ll wear my running shoes.” Our kung fu shoes were lightweight canvas trainers —perfect for the martial arts but without the arch support needed for running. “When we finish running, I’ll change into my kung fu shoes. It’s the same thing I do every day.”

He didn’t look any more convinced today than he’d been the previous 50 days.

Our lives at the temple were so small, so simple. We ran from 5:45 to 7:45, then ate breakfast. We practiced kung fu from 8 a.m. to 11:30, then ate lunch. At 12 o’clock we took a two-hour nap. At 2 p.m. we resumed training and didn’t finish till 6. After dinner, there was another session until 8:30, but I usually played hooky from that one. Lights out was at 9 o’clock.

And that was our life. We trained, ate and slept. We lived with the same 60 people day in and day out, doing the same things all the time. We never watched television, never went to the movies and rarely had visitors. It reminded me of when I was a merchant seaman and would go to sea for weeks at a time. Living under such monotonous and claustrophobic conditions, people tend to become creatures of habit. You have the same conversations with the same people at the same time of day, every day. In lieu of the morning coffee I’d been accustomed to—there was none at Shaolin—my day here would begin with Miao Ping coming to wake me up, although I was already awake, followed by his complaining about my shoes.

While he pondered what he could say to make me act like everyone else, he began coughing violently. He turned his head, coughed up a huge glob of lung jelly and let it fall on the floor.

Everyone at the temple, myself included, had a cold all the time; it was part of being a kung fu student. It was no wonder we were always sick: The house was always cold and damp, and in it were crammed 60 students in three crowded dorm rooms. If one person got sick, everyone caught it. Add the fact that we had no running water, ate from a communal kitchen which lacked running water, wore the same clothes all day every day and went into town for showers only once a week, and you have a recipe for germ warfare.

Miao Ping’s body was wracked with another coughing fit. “Where are your kung fu shoes?” I asked as my eyes followed his trail of spit down to the ground. He was giving me a hard time about not wearing the right shoes when his shoes were also wrong.

“I am not training today,” he said.

“Why not?”

Miao Ping was normally a training demon. He would set his alarm and go up to the roof around 4 o’clock every morning so he could work out alone.

He would sometimes hold a horse stance for a full hour, then change to a bow stance and a white-crane stance.

Sometimes he would wake his 12-yearold brother, Di Di, and drag him onto the roof as well. Miao Ping would hold a stance, and the sleepy little Di Di would beat him with a board.

During the course of our day, if there was any down time at all, Miao Ping would use it for training. If we were waiting in line, he would practice throwing punches. During breaks, he would have someone pound on his belly while he practiced using chi (internal energy) to ward off the blows.

At night, he would lie in his bed and do breathing exercises and meditation.

Miao Ping didn’t drink, smoke or talk about sex. He prayed and meditated constantly. In short, he was a model student, a real-life Lancelot, the perfect knight. Except that he, like all tragic heroes, had one flaw: He was a hypochondriac.

“I can’t train today,” he self-diagnosed.

“I think my liver is inflamed.”

He was always dreaming up crazy diseases for himself.

“Your liver can’t be inflamed,” I said.

“You don’t drink.”

“Then maybe it’s my pancreas. Either way, I’d better go straight to the hospital.”

Miao Ping was young, trained 10 hours a day, ate a controlled diet and had no body fat. Yet he was in the hospital so often they could have billed him by the month.

“Yeah, you’d better get that checked out,” I agreed, trying to be supportive.

“I’m tired,” he announced out of nowhere.

“Because of your life-threatening illness?” I asked.

“No, Di Di was sick, so I stayed up all night, making medicine for him.”

It wasn’t enough that Miao Ping believed he was dying; he had to drag his little brother into it, too.

And this whole thing with traditional Chinese medicine irked me.

Miao Ping had bags full of herbs and dried animal parts, which he would boil in a kettle to produce the most foul odors in the world. Once, I actually saw him throw an 8-inch-long venomous centipede into the pot. If I complained about the smell, which I always did because I’m an angry New Yorker and complain about everything, Miao Ping would answer, “But An Dong Ni, it’s for my health.”

“This isn’t medicine,” I would say.

“It’s witchcraft.” But the medicine argument, just like any other discussion with him, was a recurring event and would follow predictable lines, ending at the same point—namely, “Chinese medicine is far superior to Western medicine.”

Substitute the word “medicine” with “education”—or “government,” “law enforcement,” “space program” or “economy”—and you’ll begin to understand Miao Ping. He believed everything that was Chinese was the best in the world. Although he was living in a monastery on a mountain in China and admittedly hadn’t seen much of the world, he was steadfast in his conviction.

This day, I just asked him point blank, “If Chinese medicine is so good, why are you sick all the time?”

Miao Ping looked confused, as if he couldn’t make a connection between those two facts. “Don’t be late,” he warned before bounding down the steps, taking them three at a time.

For a guy so worried about his health, he certainly took some chances on the stairs.

Outside the house, the scene was exactly as I’d expected. The whole school was standing in formation, bored, shifting their weight back and forth and stomping their feet to stay warm. They had just started to count off when I edged past the instructors and took my position next to my other training brother, Miao Hai.

Most foreigners who came to Henan to study kung fu were turned away from Shaolin. Typically, they would wind up studying at one of the 60 or so kung fu schools that populated Deng Feng Village, the area around the temple. No one knows for certain, but at that time it was estimated that more than 40,000 students were there. The largest school, Tago, had 15,000. That information is already dated, however: During my first month at Shaolin, the government ordered all the non- Shaolin schools evacuated and the whole village demolished.

Most foreigners wind up in one of those commercial schools in an English-language program. They pay through the nose and either live with other foreigners or in a hotel. Chinese students generally pay about $21 a month for their training. With a discount for paying annually, their tuition, room and board come to about $200 a year. I’ve heard of foreign students paying as much as $1,000 a week. Tago charged about $25 a day but required foreigners to live in an expensive hotel, which cost more.

Not only were most foreigners being overcharged, but they weren’t even getting what they thought they were buying. They came to China to study at Shaolin Temple—who’s ever heard of Tago? Even though all the commercial schools capitalized on the Shaolin name and incorporated the word “temple” in their titles, none was authorized or endorsed by Shaolin.

What’s more, they weren’t even run by monks.

I was lucky. Although I didn’t live on temple grounds—only monks can do that—Miao Hai, Miao Ping and I trained at the temple with our sifu, a real monk. At night, we slept at one of the only two schools that were actually part of the temple. I lived, ate and slept with my Chinese brothers. I was the only foreigner at my school, and only the eighth one ever to stay there.

My room, board and tuition cost me $200 a month.

What’s the secret to getting such a lucky break? First, because I spoke Chinese, I was able to negotiate. And because I come from Brooklyn, the first thing I did when I arrived was pay $200 to the first monk I met. Originally, I thought he was going to train me—he even let me sleep in his room for several days—but then he passed me off to Shi Hung Fu, who would become my sifu. My sifu didn’t require a “donation,” just my tuition fees.

During my first several weeks at the temple, although my Chinese was good, I still screwed up the count in formation. The others would be going down the line, “Fourteen ... fifteen,” and when they got to me, I just couldn’t remember what number came next. So Miao Hai would whisper it to me, and we would all get a good laugh at my expense. But as my Chinese improved, I started messing up as a joke. Sometimes, if I was supposed to shout, “Fifteen,” I would yell, “Sixty-three.” It always made the guys laugh, and it got to be part of our morning ritual. On the days I was too tired to feel playful, everyone commented that something was missing.

There were three instructors in our house. They handled our morning run and did all the training for everyone except Miao Hai, Miao Ping and me.

Mine was the best one; the other two were lazy. They would take their teams on a run, just far enough away so no one could see them. Then they would divert into the woods, where they would sit and play cards until it was time for breakfast.

My instructor would generally run us for 20 minutes, then stop for a half hour of stretching before running for another hour. Of all the physical training at Shaolin, the stretching impressed me most. Those guys were so flexible, they could do splits in all three directions. Most of them could, without kicking, slowly lift one foot off the ground and up over their head. At age 36, I could never hope to beat them in flexibility, although I had advantages in experience, fighting, running and strength. I often beat even the fastest students during the morning run because they didn’t know how to pace themselves. They would take off like a rocket, laughing at the “old man” going at his slow, steady pace behind them. Unperturbed, I would just maintain my long, even stride and relax my breathing. Then, one by one, I would catch and pass them.

My other advantage was that I’m a nonsmoker.

Not only did they all smoke—with the exception of Miao Ping—but they would also stop during the morning run to buy cigarettes. Then they would smoke while we did our cool-down.

Gambling was another popular vice.

The students didn’t have much money—most kids got about $3 a month as an allowance. Each student had his own bank book and could draw money from the sister of one of the instructors, who acted as our housemother.

No one needed cash to eat because when their parents paid the tuition, they would also buy a stack of meal coupons the kids could use to pay for food.

The instructors were the opposite. They earned about $60 a month, so they had cash; but if they wanted meal coupons, they had to buy them. So the kids and the instructors would gamble cash against meal coupons. You could always tell who won because you would hear some kid in the chow line with a huge story The kitchen, like everything else at Shaolin, was outdoors. It consisted of a homemade stove with two coal burners and was covered by a rotten plastic tarp, which kept the cooks slightly dryer when it rained. We ate outside without chairs or tables.

Because of the Chinese habit of spitting, we chose to squat, rather than sit, on the ground.

We ate like that in all weather, winter or summer, rain or shine.

After breakfast, Miao Hai, Miao Ping and I would normally go to the temple for training. But because Miao Ping was at the hospital, dying of hypochondria, Miao Ping and I went to the temple alone.

The first time I walked through those huge iron doors at the front of the compound, I was overwhelmed. It was a boyhood dream come true. My whole life, I had dreamed of going to Shaolin to study kung fu, and here I was, just like David Carradine, beginning my training. But after 50 days of it, it had become routine.

As we entered, I had to duck the masses of tourists arriving in buses. They always wanted to have their photo taken with me because I was a foreigner with a shaved head, decked out in a Shaolin uniform. On certain days it was funny, but sometimes it was just annoying. I was very territorial about the temple. I wanted to about why he didn’t have any coupons.

Or the matron would catch students eating ice cream and want to know where they got the money to buy it.

After the run, we would go back to our rooms and collect our tin bowl and chopsticks. I didn’t have to wait in the chow line because I was an adult.

I would just walk into the kitchen, and the cook would fill my bowl with a heaping portion of rice, vegetables and steamed Chinese bread. The food wasn’t bad, but we had to eat the same thing three times a day, every day.

shout: “I live here! You are invading my space.” But since most of the tourists were Chinese, I concluded it was more theirs than mine and that I was the guest, not them.

When you’ve lived in Asia for a long time, and especially when you speak the language, you forget that you’re different.

I didn’t think of Miao Hai as Chinese; I thought of him as Miao Hai.

Since Shaolin was part of my everyday life, I would forget there was anything strange about my being there. But when tourists would pester me for pictures, I would remember.

Sifu’s house stood in the back, left-hand corner of the temple, where a number of monks and retired monks lived. It was a small, concrete dwelling with two rooms, and it had neither heating nor plumbing. For some reason, it reminded me of Yoda’s hovel in The Empire Strikes Back. By monk standards, he lived pretty well, however, with his antiquated TV and VCR.

As was often the case, Sifu wasn’t home—although he’d said he would be.

He’d left word that Miao Hai and I were to train in the shrine off the main courtyard. Each sifu had a shrine he had to maintain. I say shrine, but perhaps “small temple” would be more accurate.

It’s easy for Westerners to forget, but Shaolin is a Buddhist temple.

Kung fu is just one of several paths people follow to enlightenment. Many of the monks there possess only a cursory knowledge of kung fu, having decided instead to concentrate on their study of Buddhism. Because tourists and pilgrims would want to come and pray at the shrines, someone had to be there to hand out incense, ring the gong, sell beads and collect donations.

On this day, that job fell to Miao Hai and me.

(Part two of this account will be published in the April 2004 issue of Black Belt.) About the author: Antonio Graceffo is a free-lance writer and martial artist based in New York City.