Just Hollywood lore?

By Chen Nan (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-09-25 09:10

A trip to Shaolin Temple inspired Alexander Sebastien Lee to make a documentary about life at the temple today. Photos courtesy of Alexander Sebastien Lee

When he arrived in Shaolin Temple, it was very different from what he had expected. Shaolin is no longer a quiet monastery on the top of a serene mountain filled with monks practicing kungfu. It is now a tourist attraction, and the epicenter of a kungfu city with more than 100 kungfu schools and 40,000 students.

The director sets the documentary in Dengfeng (dubbed "Kungfu City"), Henan province, where the Shaolin Temple is located, and follows two Chinese and two Westerners who journey to the Shaolin Temple. Over months of difficult lessons and life-changing experiences, the four students reveal just how much hard work goes into those dazzling moves.

When asked how he found the four characters, he simply says "yuan fen" (follow destiny). But each of the four characters follows different kungfu dreams at Shaolin Temple: 9-year-old Chinese boy Yuan Peng is abandoned at the Shaolin Temple and is adopted by a Shaolin monk. He dreams of becoming a monk with courage and righteousness, like Jet Li in the film The Shaolin Temple.

Orion, a 19-year-old American, believes that the martial arts are a way of life, a philosophy that - he says - is not understood by most Americans. He journeys to Shaolin inspired by Bruce Lee's incredible enthusiasm for the martial arts.

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