Word: fu
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...holds still (which isn't often), the 37-year-old Shaolin Temple fighting monk manages to look more mythical than mortal. He's got the face of a Xian terra-cotta warrior?acrobatically piked eyebrows, rampart-like cheekbones?and the kind of body that helps explain why kung fu is called...
...usher 40 of his students into the stadium that's hosting the nation's most important martial arts festival. Behind a bright red banner, they're attired in matching uniforms like other delegations?but they don't blend in. The group is as eclectic a collection of kung fu students as New York City's five boroughs could produce: a freckled Miramax exec, a black Hollywood action star, a bodybuilder with dreadlocks, a hulking ex-Marine, not to mention the extravagantly tattooed road manager of the Beastie Boys' "Licensed to Ill" tour. Satisfied his posse looks sharp, Yan Ming commands...
...Despite this turmoil?or perhaps because of it?Yan Ming thrived at Shaolin. As one of the few youngsters in residence, he enjoyed the often undivided instruction of the older monks, who schooled him in the improbably paired disciplines of Chan (Zen) Buddhism and kung fu, for which the temple was famous. Daily exercises sharpened both his physical and mental control: 30-minute handstands were followed by meditation; bare-handed wood chopping was a prelude to chanting sutras. "Buddhists believe in reincarnation," Yan Ming says, "and I figure I must have been a martial artist or a monk...
...Buddhas and plastic prayer beads at stalls crowding the temple's gates. For martial arts displays, a lucky visitor might spot a young boy in a monk's robe willing to perform a trick or two. "Shaolin," as American martial artist Brian Gray wryly puts it, "has become kung fu's answer to Colonial Williamsburg...
...wants the temple to look pretty for visitors but, left to bivouac on what used to be her living-room floor, she tearfully deems the project "obviously un-Buddhist." Yong Xin is less imposing when it comes to Shaolin's intangibles. If, as he claims, he practices kung fu every day, his pillowy physique has borne its rigors with baffling indifference...