The Independent, Monday, 12 September 2011
For the 60,000 young would-be kung fu stars kicking and punching away at the schools around the temple, Shaolin kung fu offers a way out of poverty. Wu Zhiqiang, 17, comes from near the Henan capital of Zhengzhou. He has been in Shaolin for four years and is one of 4,000 students at his school. “I’ve been practising since 5am,” he says, still brandishing a spear at lunchtime. “We practise outside in the morning, then study in the classroom. My aim is to go to physical education college in Zhengzhou. But some of my friends want to be coaches. And of course some of us want to be in the movies.”
The abbot of the monastery, Shi Yongxin, a farmer’s son from nearby Anhui, .. is known for his business-minded approach to transforming the temple and promoting Buddhism throughout the world over the past two decades. Qian Daliang, general manager of the Henan Shaolin Temple Development Company, … says, “At one point there were over 2,000 monks here, but after the Cultural Revolution, there were only 15 monks left. The temples’ 228 brick pagodas survived the Cultural Revolution, when Red Guards marauded across China destroying religious sites….The monks in Shaolin were forced to drink alcohol and eat meat by the Red Guards. They remember this still, and they have a saying: “Alcohol and meat only pass through your digestive system, but Buddha is within.”
Mr. Qian famously demanded an official apology from an online commentator who dared to say its monks had once been beaten in unarmed combat by Japanese ninja warriors. He has also been criticised for accepting the gift of a luxury sports car from the authorities, and many monks did not like the decision to host its own martial arts reality TV show.