The Shaolin Monastery

The night was a bit uncomfortable in ZhenZou because Jake and I were accidentally given a room with only one bed, and by the time we arrived to check in all the rooms with two beds had been taken. Rather than leave and try to find a different hotel we decided not to forgo our deposit, and to bear it out (for 2 nights).

The next day (yesterday) we headed out to the Shaolin Monastery. On the nearly 2 hour bus ride out to the middle of the mountains of the Henan Provence, we met a nice man from Australia, and kind of palled around with him for a while. The bus we got on kind of screwed us, and forced us to purchase tickets to two other temples along the way, and stop in a restaurant for lunch. Overall it wasn't the worst thing, because we really didn't have anything to do yesterday anyway.

Once we arrived at the actual monastery the three of us (Jake, me, and this guy peter from Australia) were in awe. The facilities were spectacular. We first went to a very impressive kung-fu show where we were shown some of the amazing things that these men can do. And after words we toured the sanctuary, a building full of 500 different Buddhas, and this pagoda forest. Sadly my camera ran our of batteries, and I was unable to take pictures after the show. Luckily Peter said he would email me all of his, and I hope he does, because the whole thing was really cool.


The sanctuary was similar to others we have seen before, only cleaner, and grander. It was cool, but the best part was when we wondered away from the rest of the tourists and saw all the living quarters and training facilities of the monks. We even met some people who were training, one was a western guy from Ireland who was talking to us for a bit. Apparently people come form all over the world to train in the ancient art of kung-fu at the Shaolin Monastery.


After that we went to the pagoda forest. these stone pagodas were created as memorials to fallen monks. A thousand years ago when China was being invaded the Emperor would call upon the Shaolin Monks to defend the nation. We were told that up until the gun was invented on Shaolin Monk was equal to 20 other solders, and often a group of a few hundred Shaolin Monks would defeat whole armies. These pagodas were memorials to those warrior who died in battle, and amazingly there were only a few hundred of them to represent a thousand years of battles and wars, which is impressive. The other cool thing about this pagoda forest was that the monastery was invaded several times by different intruders trying to defeat China. Many of those invasions and the battles that ensued were located right in this forest, so they would fight in this incredible graveyard of stone pagodas. I don't have pictures now, and hopefully will get some soon but in the mean time find pictures of this on the Internet and imagine a battle of kung-fu warriors taking place there, it's really awesome.


Lastly we went to the hall of 500 Buddhas. This was pretty cool, but nothing out of the ordinary. It was exactly as it sounds a building with 500 different life size statues of different Buddhas symbolizing different things. It was cool, but nothing to to write home about, and certainly not nearly as cool as the Pagoda Forest.

On the bus ride home we met a group of Israelis who were traveling after their army service. I think I surprised them when I listened to their conversation an then answered one of them in Hebrew when they asked another what time it was. They were nice, but fell asleep soon after the bus left, so I wasn't really able to chat with them too much.

After we arrived back in ZhenZou The three of us had dinner and went our separate ways. Hopefully Pete will shoot me those pictures, and if he does I'll try to post them.

I'm currently in the ZhenZou airport waiting to get my flight to Beijing where we will meet up with Mike (my brother), and continue our tour of the country.