The Shaolin Martial Arts School

The Shaolin Martial Arts School

The morning began with a walk I the neighbourhood around the hotel. We had noticed on our first walk that some hutong style housing exists just a few streets away and a street market of a very limited sort seemed to exist in the roadway that front the hutong. A glimpse down the narrow alleyways beyond the sidewalk feels almost like peering into someone’s private space. The alleys are too narrow for cars and you don’t see any bicycles or wagons in them either. They are either roughly paved with bricks or are left as dirt surface. The dull grey red brick is the only colour. Piles of spare bricks and roof tiles are neatly stacked to the side for use when a roof leaks or a some construction needs to be repaired. There is no running water here and public lavoratories are located on each block where the modern roadway surrounds the hutong. The smell of urine and waste is pungent.

Nina, who is twenty-five or six, tells stories of being a little girl and going out to the public lav in the morning to wash and brush teeth and meet her cousins still in pyjamas and everyone is excited to hear the news of everyone else’s family from the night before. Now it is not so gay and light hearted it seems. It is more crowded and more dirty but people still meet there and come and go because that is what they have.

After breakfast in the hotel we board the busses for the Shaolin Martial Arts School. The school is just beyond the 5th Ring Road on the Badaling Expressway and the busride is slow in the Friday morning traffic. On arrival we see classes of yellow clad youngsters on the playfields and track assembled in squadrons. Approaching the auditorium we can see costumed youth jostling at an open window watching us. The auditorium has a VIP table set up facing the stage and rows of chairs. I decide to position myself close to the front and side of the stage in order to video the spectacle. A loudspeaker announces the call for the VIP’s to get seated. To my surprise I hear the Organizing Committee called and as a member I move to the table and sit next to John, the Superintendent of Nanaimo School District. The founding headmaster of the school sits next to John. He is called to speak to us and gives a warm welcome to the Canadian visitors. Lulu does a running translation of his address without any notes. I am impressed by her skill.

The Shaolin Kung Fu presentation is the story of the Monkey King. It was developed in five acts and endears the audience to the mischievous but talented lead performer who can mimic the gesticulating moves of a monkey so well that Jennifer has fallen into doing them as well. After the show the group departs fo a restaurant for another great meal and returns for the afternoon sessions of calligraphy and Kung Fu. They are enjoyable but in the heat of the midday and we are tired and have limited energy.

The evening meal is next and it is a restaurant that specializes in dumplings and we have to make one dumpling each from a board that the waitress brings to each table with all the wrappers and stuffing ready to go. The restaurant is on the 2nd Ring Road and the journey to the restaurant takes us past an incredible landscape of the new Beijing architectural style of whimsy. The dumplings are excellent.

The day concludes with a long evening walk about the entire perimeter of the hutong that lies adjacent to the hotel.