There is nothing Chinese folk like more than to flex their mind playing a game over some good tea in a peaceful park or on the street next to a motorway. There is no shortage of cool games (or tea for that matter) to pick from either. Chinese Chess is probably the most common way to pass the time and it seems to be critical that when you take an opponent’s piece that you do so with gusto. Next most popular are card games, we don’t recognise many of them but they all seem to involve slamming cards down on the table so hard that they fly off it regularly. Chinese Checkers is also popular and again, taking pieces requires considerable theatric effect to be acceptable.
Probably the coolest game however is Mahjong. In the west this is usually played as a really basic memory based game with all the tiles in a stack, but the proper rules are something entirely different. I have to say it’s one of the most interesting and tactical games I have played that combines observation, strategy and interestingly, reflexes. The “simple” version merely has enough rules of battle to make Sun Zu proud, it can get more and more complex based on your desired level of self-masochism.
One of the nicest places to generally chill out and play games are the gorgeous temples dedicated to Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism across China. Most of these were unfortunately trashed pretty heavily in the cultural revolution, but a handful have survived and they are perfectly tranquil and relaxing places in the ever bustling cities of this land. Inside they have cute little gardens and intricately carved stone channels through which water streams flow into big ponds filled with fish. Interestingly they use the same flowing water channel concept in the toilet too, which means as you squat you might also see some number two’s from the cubicle next to you flow past underneath you. God help you if you drop something ... in fact Confucious once said "Man who drop watch in toilet now have shitty time."
These temples also usually have big cool bells and big drums to play on, probably much to the ire of the monks when I bang out another rendition of “the Shredder Suite”.
The monks in these temples, as you probably picture them, are sedate and peaceful men cruising around gorgeous temples in funky coloured robes. Apparently now though the monastic life also involves blessing foreigners and then demanding ridiculous sums of money for doing so. If you don’t pay then some horrible misfortune will befall your family / your business will fail / hell will swallow the Earth whole. So basically monks are best avoided, lest your wallet experience true “enlightenment” well before you ever will.
An important part of Buddhism is to burn incense sticks when you pray to Buddha, the size of the incense stick must have some correlation to the size of the demand or wish in the prayer. Consequently there are ridiculously big incense sticks available at all temples, some almost two metres high. They can only be lit using a raging inferno and once lit, produce so much smoke that the prayer-maker usually asphyxiates slightly mid prayer, only barely stumbling to the incense cauldron in time to desperately throw it in the sand. If that’s not enough, you can grab a bundle of serviettes/napkins and burn those too, or some paper, or a small flag, or some rubbish … whatever. Buddha likes you to burn stuff.
I call the incense holders cauldrons but I am sure they each have some ultra-fancy name, temples always have imposing names for every various site of importance within. Some of my favourites include the “Supreme Earthly Tranquillity Palace”, the “Gate of Military Prowess”, the “Hall of Mental Cultivation”, the “Pavilion of Joyful Longevity”, the “Great Pillar of Heavenly Purity” and the “Cloud Dispelling Pagoda”. Mountains also benefit from most excellent names like “Floating Mound Peak”, “Fairy Capital Peak”, “The Flower Grown Out of a Writing Brush Rock”, “Beginning to Believe Peak”, “The Eighteen Arhats Worshipping at South Sea”, “Double Cock Peak” and my favourites “Immortal Walking on Stilts”, “Immortal Overturns the Desk” and “Immortal Solarise Boots”.
Quite a few temples have been visited now, and at the risk of temple overload, but there is one temple that I’ve been looking forward to for a looong time and many of you will know why based on my personal yearning for dodgy 1970’s Kung Fu films … the Shaolin Temple.
Now, I’m no stranger to Kung Fu; I’ve been watching these flicks for years and I had already formed a vision in my mind of what to expect. Just like a throwback to feudal China I was expecting we would have to be constantly on guard; everyone would know Kung Fu and your status in society is measured by your skill. A simple greeting should therefore involve testing someone’s Kung Fu out, in fact even greeting a long lost friend is best done by launching into a rapid succession of kicks and punches. Perhaps next time you meet an old acquaintance for coffee, try to do a flying kick to their head rather than a handshake or a hug and show them how cultured this blog has made you.
Anyway, that’s what I expected from Shaolin, what we got was a bunch of monks who walked very slowly and greeted each other and tourists with a little bow. No instant all out attacks to be seen at all. I was perturbed, how could you get to know someone without testing their Kung Fu?
The next thing I expected was to see monks fighting each other everywhere using a whole host of perplexing and highly inefficient Kung Fu forms with cool names like “Eagle Claw”, “Hooked Hand”, “Drunken Buddha”, “Furious Buddha”, “Crazy Buddha”, “Iron Monkey Style”, “Cicada Style”, “Crab Style”, “Antelope”, “Dragons Tail”, “Holy Ghost Fist” and the literally impossible “Walking on Air”. Furthermore, true masters of Kung Fu should be able to combine two or more of these styles at the same time, such as “Right hand, five fingers of pain!” and “Left hand, Buddha palm descending from heaven!”, announcing which techniques will be used before the fight lest they suffer the shame of the opponent identifying them mid-fight and stealing their thunder.
I didn’t see any of these styles BUT I was selected to train with a monk and learn some Kung Fu. I think they were just excited to have a foreigner volunteer to them for it, but as Confucious says "A turtle can only make progress when it sticks it's neck out."
Now do note that my only previous training up to this point was hours of endless frustration at being unable to defeat Bison in Streetfighter 2 on the hardest difficulty setting with Chun Li. I was thus nervous and a little tense I have seen how training occurs in Kung Fu films; I expected an old Kung Fu master sporting a long wispy beard and a bald head to begin by beating the living shit out of me while berating me verbally until I felt worthless. I was expecting that he would continually eat chicken in front of me while all I had was cold rice. I expected to be deprived of sleep and make to walk up and down countless steps. Only once my soul was mercilessly crushed would I be ready to absorb his , or failing that he might expedite teaching if he got his ass handed to him in a fight and wanted me to go on a murderous revenge rampage for him.
What I actually got was an eight year old monk who came up to my waist. He was lithe and fast, he rolled around a lot and jumped through the air way too easily for my liking. He spoke no English so I learnt the basics of what I can only determine to be “Hungry Toad Style” via awkward mimicry. Apparently the most important part of this style is to suck your cheeks in and make funny faces each time you stop for a breath – which for me was quite often. It was all very entertaining to watch I am told and I have a video of it that I am sure will haunt me until I die.
The next thing I expected to see was priceless artefacts that would confer all sorts of wonderful martial arts to people who steal them. I looked forward to seeing the nine jade Buddha’s of Shaolin that would bestow incredible resilience to pain, the twenty four robot horses that “teach” undefeatable Kung Fu, the eighteen bronze bells of Shaolin that once mastered (somehow) allow a warrior to develop new styles of Kung Fu at will. Each of these should be guarded by an old Kung Fu expert, tethered to them as a type of crappy security system.
Instead the actual temple just had lots of stairs, houses, incense pots, prayer halls and a shop. It appeared all so woefully practical. The ceramic shop even looked like it had not been trashed in years – highly unlikely in any Kung Fu heavy temple I know!
Lastly, when Kung Fu happened, I expected to hear sound effects and see gore. When you punch or kick and connect with your target it should sound like a broom hitting a wall, when you fail to connect it should sound like a broom hitting a curtain. If you connect, especially using an index finger to the neck or chest, humans should be revealed to be nothing more than fragile, walking balloons of blood. If death is not instantaneous, I expected some old dude on the side to yell out “FINISH HIM” Mortal Kombat style.
In practice there was no of time sound and when sparring partners connected, the target usually stayed down and needed time to recover. It all just seemed so firmly planted in reality ... Shaolin was awesome though I can’t help but feel my dodgy Kung Fu movie virginity has been taken from. If only someone had warned me.
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