Enter the Wu Tang, Part Two

The story of our epic day trip continues where it left off, with Duli and me in our new raincoats, so thin that despite their gaudy colors they acted something like invisibility cloaks and we found ourselves inside the Shaolin complex without paying. We uncomfortably squeezed the wrong way through the turnstiles to find a place to buy tickets. Most uncomfortable of all was Carlos, who had held a mildly terrified look on his face for the last thirty minutes.

“I don’t know if I can make it,” he had said as we were winding our way into the mountains in our small bus.

“You gotta hold it. This is your first Shaolin test.”

From there his wide eyed gaze had fixed on the horizon and he focused all of his energy on not wetting himself. But now we were on the move, and he was getting desperate. “Where is bathroom in this place?” His first word was reaching ever higher notes. After running across a courtyard we were at the bathroom.

We were hacking and coughing when we could finally breathe again after leaving this gas chamber. “Oh man, that was a Shaolin test!”

Legitimately through the turnstiles again, we headed directly for the Kung Fu show that the monks put on at 2, 3, and 4 pm each day. This was such a beast of a day trip that we only arrived in time for the 3 pm show, despite having been at the Shijiazhuang train station on 4 hours sleep that morning. We chose balcony seats, settled in, and waited for the show.

Before it began, however, a tour group of middle aged Korean women swarmed the balcony. They were all around us, moving in every direction. A cacophony of “anyangs” accompanied a hectic search for seats. The women were like a swarm of bees on flowering shrubbery. They came from every direction at once, sitting, hopping up, moving to the next seat, trying to sit on our laps. Carlos and I leaned forward and used all of our size to block, but Duli wasn’t as lucky and two or three Korean women sat or stepped on him in their search. It was chaos until the emcee stepped onto stage.

When Korean women attack

He gets ice cream after this

Duli is from Boston – South Boston, to be more precise – and his accent got confused during a life spent in Sri Lanka, Dubai, Washington state, and South Boston. He is one of these guys who is already laughing when he walks up to tell you a joke, as he was the time he showed me his iPhone saying, “I think I found the place where William Hung gets his glasses.” The iPhone showed a photo of the façade of Shibang Optical in Shijiazhuang. Once, in conversation that I guess must have been about the predicted rapture, he said, “I once tried to resurrect a raccoon. Seriously.” He went on to describe the process but I’ve since completely forgotten it.

Duli is the only single guy in our group, so that makes him the most motivated to learn some Mandarin while here. In an early dinner with two of Phil’s former language teachers, Vicky and Sophie, Duli tried out one of the pickup lines he’d been practicing in hopes of getting some phone numbers. Quite a bit of laughter ensued until they were able to tell us that he’d just said, “Your telephone is beautiful.” Duli is also at least something of a Buddhist, so once the Kung Fu show was over I went with him to see some monks and offer a prayer or two.

“Duli, I forgot to bring money today.”

“Don’t worry, you’re not obligated to pay. They’re Buddhist monks.”

One of the monks was asking me to sign a book while he put beads on my wrist and a jade Buddha around my neck. Not a single signature was in anything but Chinese characters. I considered pulling out my Hao wen si business card to copy the characters before deciding what the hell and signing my name as I do on my checks. “I’m not sure what I’m committing to here.”

Duli began to drop a good amount of money into the offering bin – significantly more than we usually spend in Shijiazhuang for dinner – but it looked to me like his monk was not satisfied with this. The other monk was suggesting that I do the same. As they became more adamant it was apparent to me that we were indeed under some obligation. Duli doubled his offering and said in English, “I’ll pay for both,” which struck me as a phrase he really should have learned in Mandarin. This seemed to agitate the monks even more.

“What do we do?”

“I don’t really know. Buddhist monks aren’t supposed to make you give them money.”

“These guys know Kung Fu.”

I considered removing the jewelry and scribbling out my name, but I guessed this would infuriate them even more and might unleash fists of fury on my fragile western body. I had the Carlos look on my face when Emily walked up asking what sort of fix we’d gotten ourselves into. “I don’t have any money, and Duli paid for both of us.” Despite my lack of Chinese language skills it was clear to me that Emily didn’t make any more progress before saying, “It’s ok. Let’s go.” I was sure I had just stolen jewelry from Shaolin monks. This couldn’t be good.

Please forgive us

Duli and I decided that the best way to restore our karma would be to act out the fighting scene depicted in a large statue in front of the Kung Fu theater. This was met with rave reviews from Chinese tourists nearby, so we proceeded to take this show on the road for the rest of our trip in China.

Shaolin

Let's not act this one out, guys

Top of the World Financial Center, Shanghai - believed to be the highest Shaolin pose ever performed

Tom gets into the act on the Shanghai waterfront

Our karmic debt paid, we walked on. “What else do we need to see today?” I asked. “Umm, the Shaolin Temple?” Ah yes, a topic for Part Three.

Enter the Wu Tang, Part One

Last weekend, four of us decided to go to Shaolin Temple on a day trip, a pilgrimage of sorts to the inspirational home for so many Kung Fu B-movies and Staten Island rappers. This is not really an advisable thing to do from Shijiazhuang given the travel effort involved, particularly when one is nursing a bit of a hangover from a colleague’s birthday party the night before. But we were brave souls, Emily, Carlos, Duli, and me. We were convinced that the four hours of sleep would not be a problem given the many many hours we would spend on trains and buses where undoubtedly we could sleep like babies.

Emily, our intrepid local ABV volunteer who, as the title implies, has volunteered to help us through this Corporate Service Corps assignment, began negotiations for a departure time at dinner the night before.

“I think we should leave the hotel at 7:30.”

“How about 8:30. The train doesn’t leave until 8:56.”

“7:45.” She was a tough negotiator.

“Uh, can we at least do 7:50?”

Carlos and I made a side pact that we could at least stretch this until 7:55. Carlos is from Brazil, and is a bear of a man. I am doing everything I can to avoid saying, “Teddy Bear,” but he’s a big, nice dude. He has a thick accent and relatively deep voice and has a way of starting his sentences on an impressively high note, at least an octave above his normal speaking tone. “Why we going so early to de train?”

I awoke at 7:01 to Duli’s 7 am wake-up call through the paper thin wall that separates his room from mine. My wake-up call came seconds later. Ugh. Coffee. Shower. Put a bunch of junk in a small bag for the day. Post to Facebook that I am going to try to get to Shaolin Temple before the rapture. At 7:55 we were in the lobby and ready to get in a cab.

At 8:05 we were sitting in the train station staring at each other. “Why we go so early to de train?” Emily had a subtle but sadistic grin on her face. I was considering some food when I noticed a woman holding her child above a nearby trash can. Throughout China we’ve observed a clever money-saving tactic used by parents. Instead of diapers, they simply bust their children’s pants crotches wide open. This practice offers one of the many explanations for the fragrances that one encounters throughout the day in Shijiazhuang. But this baby seemed to have my fear of heights and was not cooperating with the mother’s plan, so she squatted nearer the ground right in front of the trash can, baby held between her legs. This was much better for the baby, who began to pee all over the floor and all over her mother’s open toed shoes. I stared in disbelief, and when the spectacle was complete the mother lifted her foot for her friend to help sop up some of the mess that had soaked into her socks. At that moment I abandoned my idea to seek food and looked appreciatively at my dry shoes and socks, satisfied that losing a half hour’s sleep was not such a bad way to start the day, all things considered.

The Yellow River (yes, I am proud of this segue)

The train ride to Zhengzhou lasted three hours and took us over the Yellow River, birthplace of Chinese civilization. We then took a bus another one-and-a-half hours through Dengfeng and to the Shaolin Temple. It was raining. The last thing I had done so many hours ago when I left my hotel room was stare at my rain coat and say to myself, “Come on, you always overpack.” But now a parking lot vendor was running full speed towards the jacketless pair that was Duli and me, yelling something that either meant, “Buy my rain gear!” or was directed towards poor Emily saying, “Hey tour guide, make them buy my rain gear!” I had a brief flashback to The Wall, but this rain gear was a bargain, with rain ponchos starting at 5 Yuan, or less than $1. We quickly snatched up two and tore into the packages only to find that the material was so thin that we had real doubts as to whether it would actually repel water. Thankfully, it stopped raining about the time we got them snapped around ourselves, but now we were in it for the look. We were ready to enter Shaolin.

Not as good attire for Kung Fu as it would seem