Inside Vancouver
Shaolin Monk
By Jonathan Graham published May 1, 2010
In a Richmond strip mall, a Buddhist warrior monk works to reconcile
ancient Eastern practices with the modern Western world
Master Yuan Zhen Wu is short-five feet six-with a stocky build. He has a shaved head and a broad, expressive face. This morning, wearing a loose white tunic and blue pants, he's teaching a beginners' kung fu class at his training studio-the Shaolin Martial Arts Academy-around the corner from Lansdowne Park Mall in Richmond. He started teaching kung fu out of a school gym soon after arriving in Vancouver, in 2002, but he still speaks little English. He addresses his students in Mandarin, putting them in proper position, then stands back to offer encouragement.
Yuan, 35, is a Buddhist warrior monk from the famed 1,500-year-old Shaolin Temple near Zhengzhou City, China. A master of 72 skills and 18 weapons, he has honed his body and his mind to the point that he feels no pain when stabbed. (Practitioners learn to protect their body through special stances, herbs, and qi gong; many lie on a stump or rest stone tablets of granite on their chest to toughen up.) The story of how Yuan went from a tiny mountain village in China's Henan province to a strip mall in Richmond parallels Shaolin's transformation from an ancient, esoteric Buddhist discipline to a sort of global spiritual franchise.
In 1982, Yuan-one of 12 children-turned eight. His parents, who could not afford to feed him, took him to the Shaolin Temple, where the monks take in the area's orphans. The Shaolin order was founded in the late fifth century. In 527, the Indian prince Bodhidharma arrived at the temple to find the order's monks in poor physical shape. Bodhidharma added an exercise component to the monks' regime of studies and prayer. They eventually developed these exercises into the martial art now known as kung fu.
Yuan lived among the monks for 20 years. Each morning at 4, he woke to study and memorize Buddhist texts, to pray, and to meditate. He ran up and down the steep mountainside before starting kung fu training. To rest, he and the others cleaned the temple from top to bottom, a task that involved polishing 2,000 small statues. Then came more prayer. A vegetarian lunch, often cabbage, was the last meal of the day. The afternoon brought six more hours of kung fu training.
"It was not complicated," Yuan recalls over tea in his small office. "It was a simple, direct life."
