Reddit reviews American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China
We found 8 Reddit comments about American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Read American Shaolin before you join the temple. It's a quick read about the quirks and realities of training at the current Shaolin temple in modern China.
Yeah, let's keep these guys on a pedestal pretending they're so spiritual they don't care about money. Read American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China. The author, Matthew Polly, trained at a Shaolin Temple in China in the early 1990s - and was charged a pretty hefty fee. Tourism and exhibitions were a huge part of what the temple did on a daily basis. The young guys who Polly was training with all wanted to become kung fu movie stars or immigrate to the US and start their own schools to escape the poverty and deprivation they were living in.
There is also an irrefutable proof of why their arts are unsuited to MMA. Even if you accept the idea that Shaolin monks are too spiritual to fight, if their arts were effective in that context someone would undertake to study them to get an advantage in MMA, one of the fastest growing sports in the world. Just to put this into context, UFC light-heavyweight champ Jon Jones began training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu at Gracie Barra maybe 1.5 years ago - as a white belt. Here's a guy who has submitted Rampage Jackson, Lyoto Machida, and Vitor Belfort, but still feels like he can improve his game taking BJJ classes. Who out there is training Shaolin Kung Fu?
Have you ever read American Shaolin, and if so, what were your thoughts on it? Did it influence your decision to make the trip?
One of the bits I liked was when a rival school challenged the kids school to a contest between their best students. The master sent the American to fight, not because he was the best (he wasn't). He just wanted to make the point that his style/school was so good that even a foreigner would win.
If it's at all like American Shaolin it will involve a hefty tuition.
Yep, you sure can. Read this book to learn all about it. American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China by Matthew Polly.
/u/Toptomcat nailed it. Wholeheartedly agree in reference to Bubishi, not very practical but interesting nonetheless. I loved Draeger's CAFA and Unante is comprehensive thesis on the historical origins and lineages of the Okinawan fighting arts. These titles might not be for everyone but I am a history buff in addition to a martial artist so I enjoyed them.
Couple of others:
A few off-topic but related titles:
I read a memoir called American Shaolin of exactly that; worthwhile read.
Oh man, I could recommend so many.
Kung Fu and Taoism:
The Making of a Butterfly is one of my favorite books. It is about a white kid who starts learning Kung Fu out of a Chinese master's basement back in the 70s, well before Kung Fu was popularized in the West.
Chronicles of Tao by Deng Ming Dao is excellent, a narrative perspective of how Taoism intertwines with the life of a Kung Fu practitioner.
American Shaolin by Matthew Polly is an entertaining and illuminating story that disseminates a lot of the mysticism surrounding the Shaolin Temple.
The Crocodile and the Crane is a fun fictional book that is basically about Tai Chi saving the world from a zombie apocalypse.
My next goal is to tackle The Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
Of course, I highly recommend the Tao Te Ching and the Art of War as well.
Buddhism: I highly recommend anything Thich Nhat Hanh. Anger and Peace is Every Step are two of my favorites.
Karate and Japanese Arts:
Moving Toward Stillness by Dave Lowry is one of my favorite books, taken from his columns in Black Belt Magazine over the years. A really excellent study on Japanese arts and philosophy.
Miyamoto Musashi: His Life and Writings by Kenji Tokitsu is wonderful. It includes the Book of Five Rings as well as some of Musashi's other works, including many of his paintings.
The 47 Ronin, by John Allyn, a dramatization of the Genroku Ako Incident, is still quite poignant in 2016.