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Thread: Shi Yan Ming & Shaolin Temple USA

  1. #46
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    Shi Yan Ming still comes across as a likable guy.
    Despite the foibles of American life, he's doing alright.
    Kung Fu is good for you.

  2. #47
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    Sophia Chang

    Sophia Chang Ain’t Nothing to **** Wit’
    Anne Branigin
    Today 9:00am


    Illustration: Sam Wooley (GMG/Getty Images)

    In The Art of Exchange, The Root explores the intersections where different identities and communities of color meet. Each story covers a different place or personality that expands or challenges our idea of what cultural exchange, allyship and cross-cultural support look like.

    Sophia Chang wears her heart on her neck.

    On a sliver of red thread running across her collarbone hangs the iconic Wu-Tang “W,” a symbol so ubiquitous and recognizable, variations of it appear all over the planet. But Chang isn’t just signaling her fandom. As the former manager for members of the Wu-Tang Clan, it’s as much a sign of devotion as it is one of appreciation.

    On her website, Chang includes the tagline, “Raised by Wu-Tang.” Not only is it a clear subversion of the manipulative Svengali trope that dominates our view of artist-manager relationships—think N.W.A’s Jerry Heller—but for Chang, it’s simply the truth.

    “So many things have come to me because of Wu-Tang,” she says. “There’s no way I would be who I am or where I am without those friendships. There’s no way. And it’s really important to me to acknowledge this. How their love of, and respect for, and embrace of me has impacted me.”

    Along the way, Chang—who, as a Korean-Canadian woman, was an anomaly within an anomaly in the male-dominated world of ’90s hip-hop—advocated fiercely for Wu-Tang and other artists behind the scenes, helping to shape the very foundation upon which hip-hop’s golden era is built.

    “I always say that ‘The Message’ is the song that changed my life,” Chang tells me over a long weekday lunch at a Japanese teahouse in New York’s East Village (full disclosure: Chang and Danielle Belton, The Root’s editor-in-chief, are longtime friends).

    Chang had biked over, having just finished a workout. She has practiced kung fu for years, and Chang’s dedication to the martial art shows in her small, taut physique.

    On first glance, the most noticeable thing about Chang might be her haircut: shaved down at the sides, her long black hair wrapped in a loose bun balanced atop her head. But what permeates through her conversation—the thing that seizes you, that is as present in her contemplative moments as when she’s gushing over Hasan Minhaj or Chow Yun Fat—is a welcoming, hard-won confidence.

    As she speaks with both care and passion—Chang is not the type to hide either—it’s easy to imagine Chang as the sort of friend you’d call to help you figure things out. The kind of woman capable of both seeing you and gathering you up.

    Chang encountered Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five’s “The Message” as a high school student in Vancouver, British Columbia—it was one of her first tastes of hip-hop, and she was instantly hooked. She says “the urgency, the anger, all of that, the defiance, the owning of all of it” spoke to her.

    “Watching these artists long for connection to their Motherland, to Africa. You know that’s a lot of what it was about. It was the medallions and the colors, you know, the green, black and red color scheme. I found that really moving. Watching them want that connection was deeply impactful.” —Sophia Chang
    Chang understood the anger. For her as a Korean Canadian, the Vancouver she grew up in didn’t bear much resemblance to the diverse, cosmopolitan city people encounter today. Back then, she says, it was majority white, and her experience of going to mostly white schools instilled in her from a very early age that she didn’t belong. As early as age 5, Chang dealt with racial taunts, being called “*****,” “Jap” and “gook” and all the other words blanketed on Asian immigrants to impart that they don’t belong.

    Even in the instances where her Asianness wasn’t called out directly, “looking different was a constant reminder,” she says. “You’re other, and to a large degree, you are less than.”

    The bullying eventually faded away as she grew older, says Chang, but the feeling of otherness didn’t. It’s a strange tick of the minority experience—particularly the Asian immigrant experience, with its emphasis on assimilation and performance as a way to endear yourself to a white mainstream—to feel both hyper-visible and invisible.

    Fueling her anger, too, was the way she saw her parents treated, particularly because of their foreign accents. So Chang lived her teenage years actively pushing away her Korean heritage, shunning Korean food, even while at home.

    “It was a broad rejection of the culture,” Chang says, acknowledging that her family probably took it as a rejection of them as well. Even as the taunts receded into her memory, that sense of rejection remained. Of course, pushing her culture away didn’t bring her the sense of belonging she sought.

    “That’s how white supremacy works, right? You still always know you are outside,” she says.

    And it remained that way, even as Chang first discovered hip-hop, which gave her a vehicle for the rage and defiance she’d long felt. It wasn’t until Chang moved to New York City to work in the music industry that it changed.

    “When I first came to New York, I hung out a lot with the guys in Native Tongues, Tribe [Called Quest], Jungle [Brothers], De La [Soul], Monie [Love]. And they were a huge part of the Afrocentric movement, which impacted me really deeply,” she says.

    “Watching these artists long for connection to their Motherland, to Africa. You know that’s a lot of what it was about. It was the medallions and the colors, you know, the green, black and red color scheme. I found that really moving,” she says. “Watching them want that connection was deeply impactful.”

    But it was her relationship with the Wu-Tang Clan in particular that sparked what she refers to as a personal renaissance.

    “Their wholehearted, unabashed, extremely expressive embrace of Asian culture—it piqued a curiosity in me about my own culture because they celebrated it so deeply, and in a way that was so organic and so reverential,” Chang says, adding that she never once felt fetishized or tokenized by the group because of her heritage. The connection between Chang and the group, particularly with Wu’s mastermind, RZA, was visceral and immediate.

    “It’s kind of like a futuristic or sci-fi movie where you get to compress time, so that months and months and years and years of getting to know each other was compressed into moments,” she says of the intellectual and spiritual connection she felt with the group. “It doesn’t mean they knew about my life, but they knew who I was.”
    continued next post
    Gene Ching
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  3. #48
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    Continued from previous post


    RZA and Sophia Chang. Chang describes their connection as immediate. “I just remember thinking that RZA was one of the smartest people I had ever met,” she says. “Just going, ‘Holy ****, is this guy smart.’”
    Photo: Courtesy of Sophia Chang

    It’s difficult to think of a group like the Wu-Tang Clan stepping onto the pop-cultural scene today and not running headlong into a discourse about cultural appropriation, a conversation that has become increasingly messy on the social media sphere, in part because people impart their own definitions on the term.

    Chang herself approaches the topic with refreshing humility.

    “I’m not smart enough and I’m not erudite enough” to define appropriation, she tells me, adding that she can’t articulate specifically why Kendrick Lamar employing his “Kung Fu Kenny” persona doesn’t bother her, but seeing a white person do it would.

    “Somewhere there, in the back of my mind, are the terms ‘colonialism,’ ‘imperialism’ and ‘white supremacy,’” she says. “I couldn’t write a thesis on this; I just know how it makes me feel.”

    As we continue talking, though, she makes clear that power dynamics and acknowledgment—whether one attributes the source of their inspiration or influence—matter deeply to her.

    “Like the bone-broth thing,” she says, referring to a burst of stories in mainstream media outlets about bone broth, long a staple of Asian cuisines that has become trendy among white Americans.

    “Mother****ers, you ****ing think you invented bone broth? Right now in the 21st century? I don’t think so,” Chang asserts.

    Through Wu-Tang’s influence, Chang herself became a student of kung fu films, watching them with girlfriends and falling in love with the John Wu films and Chow Yun Fat in particular. The movies weren’t specific to her Korean heritage, of course, but they gave her a foothold to embracing her Asian identity—particularly the parts that didn’t jibe with being a “model minority.”

    “It’s one thing to be angry and just kind of keep it all to yourself and, you know, punch pillows in the quietude of your home. It’s another thing to be able to get out and claim that anger and express it,” Chang says.. “As the ‘model minority,’ especially as a petite Asian woman, I’m expected to be quiet and docile and not upset the apple cart. So being around people [like the Wu-Tang Clan] who helped me own that was incredibly empowering.”

    What Chang doesn’t mention, but comes up continually in conversations with her friends and the people she’s worked with, was how she could take that confidence and empower others.

    “Hip-hop taught me everything about loyalty.” —Sophia Chang
    Joan Morgan, an author and original staff member at Vibe magazine, has counted Chang as a close friend since they crossed paths in the ’90s.

    “I don’t think there’s anyone in my life that’s female ... that’s such a strong advocate for themselves and for other people,” Morgan says. “She’s very clear on what she deserves, but never compromising someone else’s humanity to get to where she wants,” adding that her example has helped Morgan advocate for herself.

    Chaz Hayes, who manages E-40 and Spice 1 and worked with Chang when she was at Jive Records, says she impacted his management philosophy and that of others in the business, teaching him to stay loyal to his artists’ vision and advocate for them.

    “[Of the other label executives], she would be the one I would say to understand from the artist’s perspective. What we were trying to accomplish,” says Hayes, adding that without her at the table at Jive, hip-hop artists, he believes, would have felt more compelled to bow to whatever the label wanted.

    “I don’t think the artists would have longevity because they wouldn’t be themselves,” he says of her influence.

    Tajai, a rapper from the West Coast group Hieroglyphics, whom Chang helped sign and develop, says it was her lack of pretentious that appealed to him.

    “She wasn’t trying to front like, ‘I’m this super b-girl,’” he says, adding that she knew when a thing was dope and wasn’t afraid to say it, and when she didn’t know something, she would ask questions.

    He says Chang also trusted and advocated for what her artists wanted to do—even when they were teenagers. “Her treating you like an equal, like a human being, went a long way,” Tajai says.

    It’s striking—but also makes complete sense—that the traits others highlight in Chang, she credits to hip-hop.

    “Hip-hop taught me everything about loyalty,” Chang says. To her, both in work and in her personal life, loyalty is paramount.

    So, too, is giving back. As the Wu-Tang Clan’s manager, she tracked down a 34th-generation Shaolin monk (Shi Yan Ming, with whom she would later have two kids) and introduced him to RZA. Through her efforts, RZA also became the first performer to ever perform at Shaolin temple, later taking him to Wu-Tang Mountain, “where the abbot of the original Wu-Tang gave the reimagined abbot of Wu-Tang a gift of his temple’s music,” Chang wrote in a 2012 article for the Asian American Writers Workshop.

    That allegiance and fidelity to hip-hop’s most well-known artists, and to the art itself, is what makes Chang an integral part of hip-hop’s story, Morgan says. Hip-hop’s golden age helped spark a personal rebirth for Chang, but so much of what continues to shine from that era was made possible through Chang’s hard work and deep, sincere appreciation for the culture.

    “She literally is responsible for helping to develop segments of the culture. And not in a way that’s tangential or harder to read,” Morgan says. “She was responsible for finding talent. She’s managed some of the most influential acts in the business. And, like all of us, she was coming of age with the culture simultaneously, and ushering in from some subculture to mainstream.”

    Tajai is even more direct.

    “Some of the iconic things we love about the ’90s, she had her hand in,” he says, noting that Redman’s classic debut song, “Blow Your Mind,” with its unforgettable Korean-language verse, was penned with Chang’s help.

    He adds, “If you want to talk about ’90s hip-hop and you don’t include her in the conversation, you got to question either your historical knowledge or what is your motivation for not including her.”

    You can learn more about Sophia Chang and her work on her website, or follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

    ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    Anne Branigin
    News fellow, The Root. Sometimes I blog slow, sometimes I blog quick. Do you have this in coconut?
    Nice to see Sophia get some props. If it wasn't for her, I would've never met RZA, Rosie Perez or Michelle Forbes.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
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  4. #49
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    Well at least Finn bothered to train a little Kung Fu this season...about time.

    I started watching the first episode of Season 2 of Iron Fist but only got through the first fight. It was better than Season 1 but nothing extraordinary. I've read some positive reactions on social media so I might give it another go.

    Meanwhile, Finn is now training Shaolin under Shi Yan Ming.

    Inside Finn Jones’ Intense Martial Arts Training For ‘Iron Fist’ Season 2


    Marvel's 'Iron Fist' New York Screening
    Gilbert Carrasquillo / Contributor / Getty Images
    by Charles Thorp

    Screams ring out from inside a warehouse building in industrial Brooklyn Opens a New Window. . Nobody is actually getting their ass kicked inside, but it sure sounds like it. That is because inside is the makeshift dojo built by Marvel Opens a New Window. to create and rehearse the fight sequences for the upcoming sop****re season of superhero series Iron Fist.

    But before stepping through these doors Finn Jones, who stars as Danny Rand Opens a New Window. aka Iron Fist, prepared for his return to the character by committing himself to a pious training regime five months earlier. “I was excited that we had this chance with stunt coordinator Clayton Barber to really dial in the fights,” says Jones. The actor started working with personal trainer Bev Ratcliff who set him up with a gymnastic-based routine Opens a New Window. . “This role requires me to be long and lean so that I can move fluidly, rather than just putting on tons of muscle.”

    Ratcliff, who is a nutritionist as well, also created a strict diet plan for Jones to follow. “I dedicated myself to it,” says Jones. “I cut out alcohol and was eating as clean as possible every meal.”

    Most importantly though, is the time that Jones spent with a Shi Yan Ming, a 34th generation Shaolin warrior monk and head of USA Shaolin Temple in New York. During their days at the temple Jones was put through a wide range of traditional kung fu Opens a New Window. movements while Ming gave strict instruction.


    Finn Jones training for Iron First 2
    Courtesy Image

    “He yelled at me for ‘more chi’ and for ‘more power’,” says Jones. “I was able to find a reserve of energy that I never knew I had through our work together. You never really know what you have until you truly test yourself.”

    Jones also incorporated study in tai chi, wishu, jeet kune do, as well more modern martial arts Opens a New Window. . “I see Danny as a brawler who has this foundation of traditional kung fu but also knows he has to get the job done quickly,” he says. “I love throwing elbows. It is so vicious and effective.”

    The effort that Jones put in paid off when it came time to shoot the stunts. “I wanted to take what they did with the first season and crank it up a notch,” says Barber, who the producers brought in to do just that. Not only was Barber coming off working as fight coordinator on Black Panther Opens a New Window. , but his career as a taekwondo competitor gave him the background needed for the martial arts-anchored show.

    “The first thing that excited me about this project is that there aren’t really any shows dedicated to Kung Fu like this has the chance to be,” says Barber. He also set the goal to have the lead actors perform as many of the sequences as possible, which was made possible through those months of intense martial arts schooling.

    The experience has been so beneficial for Jones that he is already looking towards what could be done with more episodes. “There is some weaponry combat towards the end of this season and I really enjoyed working with the swords,” he says. “If we get a third season, I’ll be bringing my swords with me.”
    Caption 2 'Iron First'
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
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  5. #50
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    RZA's teacher 'living proof of the American dream'



    Associated Press
    Published on Oct 3, 2018
    (3 Oct 2018) RZA directed Wesley Snipes for the first time in the upcoming movie "Cut Throat City." But the two have a longtime shared teacher in New York Shaolin kung fu grandmaster Shi Yan Ming. (Oct. 3)
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  6. #51
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    Baddest ***** in the Room

    More on Sophia here.

    Former RZA, ODB, and D'Angelo Manager Sophia Chang to Tell Her Story in New Audiobook Memoir
    BY SHAWN SETARO
    Shawn is a Senior Staff Writer at Complex and the host of The Cipher, a critically acclaimed hip-hop podcast that conducts in-depth interviews with the genre’s most interesting and important figures.
    Shawn is also the former editor-in-chief of Rap Genius, and has written about music and culture for Forbes, The Atlantic, Vibe, The Source, GQ, Esquire, The Sondheim Review, and more.
    JUL 25, 2019


    Image via Publicist

    If you watched the recent Wu-Tang Clan documentary Of Mics and Men or listened to the powerful 2017 podcast Mogul about the late Chris Lighty, you no doubt recall Sophia Chang. Chang, a memorable interview subject in both projects, calls herself "the first Asian woman in hip-hop," and she has the resumé to back up the title.

    She has worked at record labels, including stints as General Manager of both RZA's Razor Sharp Records and Joey Badass' Pro Era Records. But Chang is best known for her time as a manager, with an all-star roster of clients: Wu-Tang members RZA, GZA, and Ol' Dirty *******; neo-soul heroes D'Angelo and Raphael Saadiq; Q-Tip; and more. ("I'm really hardwired to manage people," she explained to Complex.)


    Now, after a career of helping great artists tell their stories, Chang is getting ready to tell her own. Her audio memoir The Baddest ***** in the Room (put out by Audible and Reese Witherspoon's company Hello Sunshine) comes out on Sept. 26, and is available for pre-order starting today (July 25).


    Image via Publicist

    Chang will be narrating the memoir herself, which she told Complex was absolutely crucial. To make the point, she quoted an old friend.

    "I voiced the book myself because I think it's really important that people are exposed to my voice both figuratively as well as literally. RZA says, 'My tongue is my sword.' That's very much how I look at myself. I'm a petite Asian woman who did not come into this industry having wealth, power, fame. So what I had to do was work really, really hard, and part of crafting my persona and my identity was sharpening my blade. In kung fu, we say, 'Sharpen your blade every day.' So, not only do I train in kung fu every day, but I also hone the way that I speak, and my voice is my most powerful weapon and tool for myself and to speak on behalf of others."

    Chang, who in recent years has started a new career in public speaking, says that the memoir provides her with an additional way to get her message out, and to honor the people who have been alongside her for her journey.

    "I'm really grateful that Reese Witherspoon and Hello Sunshine and Audible gave me this opportunity and believed that my story was also worthy of telling," she elaborates. "And now that I have the opportunity to tell my story, I'm really grateful that I can share a lot of how other people have been so influential and loving and gracious and generous. That's a range of people from somebody like a Joey Ramone [who Chang met on her very first trip to New York City] that tipped it off, to my mentor Michael Ostin, to Wu-Tang, to the friends that sit around my dinner table, to the extraordinary women in my life. I always talk about the mother****ing village that raised me, and that village comprises all of those people. I get to honor those relationships, and I'm grateful for that."

    Baddest ***** in the Room can be pre-ordered here. Chang is coy about details, but says her audio memoir "will be like no other. This audiobook will be a game changer." You can hear an excerpt, in which she talks about her relationship with Wu-Tang, below.

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  7. #52
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    More on Sophia

    Behind every great man...

    I'm splitting this off from the SYM&STUSA thread into a separate thread just for Sophia. She's an old friend and did a lot for Shaolin in America.


    Hip-Hop Memoirist Sophia Chang on Her Audible Original 'The Baddest ***** in the Room' and Managing Wu-Tang

    9/27/2019 by Eric Diep


    Dana Scruggs
    Sophia Chang

    On Tuesday, the first official day of fall, Sophia Chang made her way through the crowd at The Top of the Standard towards the wooden grand piano. She sits on top of it and smiles, but not for long.

    “Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for the baddest ***** in the room, Sophia Chang!” says D-Nice, one of the DJs for Chang’s celebration of her Audible Original memoir, The Baddest ***** in the Room.

    As everyone shouts and applauds, Chang stands on the piano, flexes and poses. Cameras flash to get the shot of our host, who is wearing her signature Gucci leather fedora and a comfortable outfit to dance in. Tonight’s party in Manhattan brought together her friends and closest confidants, some of them appearing as guest speakers in her audiobook.

    “Would you guys like to hear a little bit of my audiobook?” she asks while holding a few sheets of paper. The response is a resounding yes.

    “So, get your phones out because I promise, you’re going to want to have this,” she teases.

    Chang recites a live rendition of an excerpt in her epilogue (which you can hear in full below), describing her unpredictable path of chasing creative passions while establishing her sense of self. Along the way, she explains, she has countless people to thank, who have built her up and supported her through thick and thin. “They are my pillars, my shields, and my mirrors, who challenge me everyday to be a better person,” she says. “I couldn’t do what I do without them.”

    “Then, there’s the Clan. Peace Rakeem.”

    “Peace Soph!” says RZA, watching his friend from afar.

    “Method Man was the first to call me family,” she continues. “ODB was the first to hire me as his manager. And the RZA was the first to empower me as a general manager of a label. They weren’t a constant physical presence over the last quarter century, but they didn’t need to be. They are with me everywhere I go.”

    “Wu-Tang helped me find my voice, and led me to Yan Ming. Method Man gently tended to my confidence as a middle-aged woman. What am I categorically certain of, right now, is it is my turn.”

    Sophia Chang's Audible Original Memoir The Baddest ***** In The Room

    On Sept. 26, Chang -- a music industry veteran, who once managed RZA, Ol' Dirty *******, and GZA, as well as other hip-hop/R&B icons like Q-Tip, Raphael Saadiq, and D’Angelo, is entering a new chamber as a memoirist. Her Audible Original memoir, The Baddest ***** in the Room, is out this week.

    The story chronicles her life as a Korean Canadian, born and raised in Vancouver, who had to face unshakeable racism in her childhood. It follows her through her move to New York, where she lived through the golden era of ‘90s hip-hop, and her breaking into the music industry with stints at Jive and Atlantic, bonding with the Wu-Tang Clan, finding love with a Shaolin monk, dating with bravery as an older woman, and much more. It’s an untold perspective from one of the Wu’s closest associates, who famously bridged cultures by helping to orchestrate RZA’s first trip to the Shaolin Temple in China with Sifu Shi Yan Ming.

    Just days before Chang’s audiobook release, Billboard spoke to her about writing The Baddest ***** in the Room, her relationships with ODB and Chris Lighty, mental health, women in hip-hop, and Asian representation in the entertainment industry.
    continued next post
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
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  8. #53
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    Continued from previous post

    [IMG]https://www.billboard.com/files/media/sophia-chang-baddest-*****-2019-billboard-embed.jpg[/IMG]

    You’ve titled your audiobook The Baddest ***** in the Room and you are narrating it yourself because you wanted listeners to be exposed to your voice—both figuratively and literally. From a creative standpoint, how much time did you spent writing your memoir and when did you start recording it?

    So I started writing my memoir last April. I turned in my first draft in August. I turned in a close-to-final draft again in January. I guess it took me eight months to write, and the production behind it has been incredibly ambitious, as you hear. That took a long time. It’s a seven-and-a-half-hour-long audiobook. Recording myself took 20 hours, which is extraordinarily fast. But I have 24 guest voices. No one has ever done this before in an audiobook.

    When you were sitting down and writing your memoir and putting your thoughts down, did you have any goals? What did you want to accomplish with your story?

    I think what I wanted to accomplish was to inspire people. People have been telling me for years, "Oh, you know, Sophia you gotta write a book. You have such a crazy life. You have all these amazing stories." And I resisted it for a long time because, frankly, it felt like an exercise in narcissism, right? A banal tale of hanging out with famous people. I knew that I didn’t want to do that.

    So when I discovered in telling my story I can actually be helpful and be of service of other people, then it gelled for me. But not before that, right? Because self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment and fame, I don’t care about any of that ****. I do not care. So when I finally decided that I was going to write my memoir, and put my story down for history, I did it because I knew that I would be able to inspire -- and hopefully -- empower people.

    Before your audiobook’s release, you’ve been tweeting the guests in your memoir, sharing a bit about why they all mean something to you. With your experience in the music industry, can you share some advice on maintaining meaningful relationships in the music industry? Some of these people have stuck with you as you evolved in your career, and genuinely have become your friends.

    I love that question. I talk about it in my memoir in talking about [Ol' Dirty *******], God rest his soul. ODB was my first management client. And what I understood immediately and profoundly was my artists had to trust me. I think they would all say this, that Sophia Chang did everything in the best interest of her client. Whereas I think there are plenty of people in entourages that do things that are self-servicing. However that plays out. I wasn’t that interested in getting things for myself, what was satisfying for me was helping artists realize their creative vision and getting their stories out there.

    So number one, trust is key. And I think we can say that about any relationship, any given human interaction. And second, I say in my memoir that hip-hop taught me my greatest lesson about loyalty. All of those artists you have seen on my Twitter and you will continue to hear on my memoir have been incredibly loyal to me and me to them in return.

    Raekwon was the first member of Wu-Tang that I got, and he was like, "Soph, I know you didn’t think I wasn’t going to come through for you." I was like, "No." And he said, "You know it was just a matter of time and that I am not never, never going to come through for you." I said, "Absolutely." And we had this incredible conversation, and he in turn -- and I love Rae for this; you know, he and [Ghostface] are obviously close -- he said to Ghost [to do the audiobook].

    When I saw both of them later, I saw Ghost and he said, "So, we’re going to do the audiobook thing, right?" I said, "Yeah, we’re going to do it." And he said, "Yeah, Rae told me, Rae told me." When we saw Rae, he was like, "Yo, did you do it yet? Did you do it for Soph yet?" [Laughs.] And you know, Rae was the first Wu-Tang domino, and he’s the one that really kicked it off. He cajoled Ghost. I was going to get Ghost anyway, but not easily as I would have if Rae have not been my advocate. That’s a ride or die. That’s why I say, "My name is Sophia Chang and I was raised by Wu-Tang."

    In your memoir, you say you became closest with Ol' Dirty *******. He was able to enter your chamber where he could be his “goofy, brilliant, sometimes vulnerable self,” as you described. Why did you and ODB click so well?

    I think ODB, God rest his soul, and I clicked so well is the same reason why I clicked so well with all my artists. Dirty used to say to me, "Sophie, I love the **** out of you. And you know why? When I’m around you, I don’t have to be Ol' Dirty *******, I can be Ason Unique." Ason Unique is his righteous Five Percenter name. He also has an amazing sense of humor, I think we used to make each other laugh. I think what all of them would tell you is I treated them like people. I didn’t treat them like stars, nor did I treat them like the anomaly. I think one of the things that I hope comes through in my memoir is the profound humanity of the guys in the Clan.

    Nobody has the perspective that I do on Wu-Tang, because nobody has the relationship that I do with Wu-Tang. RZA said, "Who is Sophia Chang? In the Wu-Tang Clan, she is the yin to our yang." At once, she’s kind of like our auntie, she’s kind of like our sister. And I don’t know, frankly, if anyone else occupied that space. And he knew that.

    When you talk about getting into the music industry in 1991, it sounds like we come from two different worlds when I compare it to my experience. Do you think it was more open and collaborative back then? Were more people about experiencing the growth of hip-hop from a subculture to mainstream?

    Yeah, I moved to New York in ’87. So my first job at Jive was in ’91. But I immersed myself in the scene in ’87. And at that time, hip-hop was still No. 1, very New York-centric. You certainly had artists in the West Coast and the South and stuff like that but not like the proliferation that you see now. New York was still very much the nexus of hip-hop. And it was also a small scene, like you said, it wasn’t mainstream yet. It was still an underground scene and it was still a subculture. And there’s no Internet, right? The dissemination of music only came through the gatekeepers, meaning record companies and radio. There was no listening to SoundCloud. There were no places that you could put up your mixtape. There were these very specific gatekeepers, and I’m grateful for the iterations of those.

    But where we all gathered was in the clubs. So in a club you would have MCs, DJs, rap artists, B-Boys. They are the creatives, right? But you would also have managers, A&Rs, publicists, attorneys, touring agents. You had everybody in it. It was a very small, insular scene. And to that end, I would say it was collaborative -- but it was also felt so distinctly like a community, because we were all so excited.

    You know, for me, the green, Canadian French lit major, it was a deep privilege to be welcomed into this world that was not of my making. I’m welcomed into somebody else's world and somebody else’s culture. And we were all very, very close. We were also excited because we were making discoveries together, because another way we heard of the music was at the clubs.

    So I’ll give you an example: DJ Clark Kent. One of the greatest DJs of all time. I was at the club when he broke a Color Me Badd song called “I Wanna Sex You Up.” And It was a huge ****ing hit. The first time any of us heard it was that he had a white label, which is a 12” that didn’t have the art or anything yet. It was an advanced copy, and he played it at the club and none of us had heard it. He broke the record, single-handedly, at that club. It was incredible.

    If you still keep an eye on the industry now, what do you think about it? There’s definitely an emphasis on things like influencers, brands, data, and streaming numbers.

    I think the industry is exactly where it is supposed to be, with the advent of technology and social media. I am not really attached to it anymore. I don’t have my finger on the pulse anymore. I don’t know who the latest, greatest artists are. I don’t know who the biggest influencers are. It’s very foreign to me, because that’s not how I interacted in the industry. But I also think that’s just where the state of the business is now, because technology is a behemoth.

    The music industry lost for years and years, because we were in denial of technology. We didn’t understand what Napster was, and what it could do for the business. I mean imagine being in the music business, here comes Napster, and all of a sudden the stuff that you produce and make and sell for $24.99 a CD is suddenly free? And the whole world believes they should get this thing that you made for free. Here comes the collapse, right? And the music business is, as the French would say, bouleversée -- it’s turned upside down and it doesn’t know what to do. So I think it is exactly where it should be. But I think the evolution of it is really fascinating.
    continued next post
    Gene Ching
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    Continued from previous post

    There’s a story where you’re at the New Music Seminar in 1991 as a speaker. You're side-by-side with Joan Morgan, who called herself a “hip-hop feminist,” and it took you decades of learning and living to claim that term. What’s your take on seeing the rise of Cardi B, the support of Rapsody, and just an overall change in how we embrace women in rap?

    I think it is amazing and late. It’s really late. I mean, we live in a patriarchy, and I was part of that. Although I did sign a female rapper, a woman named Mz. Kilo from L.A. I think that it is so testosterone-driven that I am so delighted by these female artists that are coming out today. There’s actually a lot of female MCs: [Queen] Latifah, and [MC] Lyte, and Monie [Love], and Isis [now known as Lin Que]. There were lots of them. Yo-Yo and Da Brat and stuff. It didn’t seem surprising.

    I think somewhere along the way, there weren’t as many. So this proliferation -- and also seeing how powerful they are -- is really exciting. Seeing Cardi come up, and really claim her **** and stake her claim and become this really outspoken woman -- and doing it on her terms -- is a phenomenal message.

    You grew up shunning the model minority myth. There was a time when you felt like an outsider, rejecting your Korean heritage. For example, when you were younger, you felt ashamed that Korean food looked and smelled differently. But you later decided to embrace your heritage, your traditions, and your culture. Why was that so important for you to do?

    I have to give context for that. I am a child of Korean immigrants who was born and raised in Vancouver. And though there was a lot of Asians there, we were still very much the minority. I was born in 1965 so I was in 5th grade in 1975. I grew up being called a ch--k, a J-p, and a g--k, and it was regular. I say this in my memoir, a big part of my rejection of my culture was watching my culture be rejected by my adopted country and being made to feel other. And other is lesser, isn’t it? Nobody is put on the margin so they can be elevated, they’re put on the margin so they can be diminished.

    Korean was my first language. I lost it on my mission to assimilate. I was ashamed of my parents’ names being different. I was ashamed that my parents spoke with accents. I was ashamed and embarrassed about our food. Kids saying, "Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, look at these" to my ****ing face, because there was never a time that I wasn’t being reminded of it.

    As a result of that, I wanted, as a child, to be white. Plain and ****ing simple -- I wanted to be white. From what I can gather from anecdotal evidence, that is a very common experience for first-gen immigrants. And then I hear “The Message” by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five in my senior year of high school. I move to New York. I hear A Tribe Called Quest, Leaders [of the New School], Jungle Brothers, Monie Love, and Latifah, and they’re all a part of the Native Tongues movement, which is steeped in Afrocentrism and this is about yearning for a connection to Africa, to their motherland. That made me go, "Oh, OK, that’s interesting." And it made me re-examine myself. And then I met Wu-Tang Clan. [Laughs.]

    Everybody knows this, [but] Wu-Tang is named after Wudang, which is a mountain in the providence of Hebei, China. They called their home borough of Staten Island Shaolin, which is the mecca of martial arts. Not only did they introduce me to kung-fu movies, they also introduce me to John Woo, who is the greatest director of all-time, and his muse Chow Yun-Fat, the greatest actor of all time. It’s the first time I find Asian men attractive because again, I’ve internalized all the bull**** messages, the terrible racist messages, that Asian men aren’t attractive. And then I see The Killer and I’m like, "Oh my God, I wanna marry this man!" He’s married, but otherwise I would be married to that man. So it is this very interesting, circuitous route that I take back to myself.

    Do you think we’re in a renaissance for Asians in American pop culture right now? With the success of Crazy Rich Asians and The Farewell, as well as SNL casting its first Asian cast member, Bowen Yang, is there still room for improvement?

    Not a renaissance, right? ‘Cause a renaissance implies a rebirth. It’s not like we come back around to something, we were never ****ing here before. Do I think we are seeing an increase of representation? Of course. We have Crazy Rich Asians, we have The Farewell, we have my friend Justin Chon’s film Ms. Purple, which is excellent, that just came out. We have Fresh Off the Boat. Is there a rising tide? Yes.

    Again, to the other point? It’s late. It’s never too late, but it’s late. Is there room for more representation? Yes. The bottom of this funnel is small. We are all kind of squeezed through the tiny end of the funnel. I don’t want it to be a funnel. I want it to be a big ass hole that we can just all jump through. It’s better and I’m delighted, but it is nowhere near where it should be.

    My brother Heesok Chang, he’s a genius. He’s [one of the] ten smartest people I know. When I started writing, he said to me, "Sophia, what you’re doing with your memoir, is that you are simply asking the world to imagine that you exist." That was profound. And it remains profound and I write it at the end of my memoir. What he is saying is absolutely right. What I promise to the world is if you’ve never ****ing seen anybody like Sophia Chang before and you never will again. And in that way, I am cracking open the imagination to world of: What can an Asian -- in my case Canadian -- Asian woman look like? Because for all the tropes, for all the "model minority" myth, for all the stereotypes, for all of the ways that we have been oppressed -- I am none of that.

    My daily life is an act of defiance. I am essentially a 54-year-old Canadian Korean woman, who has a crazy samurai hairdo, who is a single mother of two grown teenagers, who is out here announcing to the world in no uncertain terms and with no compunction whatsoever and with fire conviction, that I am the baddest ***** in the room. That’s ****ing radical.
    continued next post
    Gene Ching
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    Continued from previous post

    You also talk about Chris Lighty at various points in the memoir. He was someone that became one of your most valuable friends, giving you the gift of sanctuary during tough times. Can you speak on his contributions to hip-hop and what Lighty-isms you kept with you since his passing?

    Chris Lighty, God rest his soul, yes, was one of my closest friends. Chris Lighty was my Rock of Gibraltar, he was my shelter to the storm. He was my Kevlar. Knowing that I walk with Chris Lighty figuratively, meant that I walked with this shield of imperviousness.

    To his contributions to hip-hop, Chris came up carrying crates for the legendary DJ Red Alert. Way back in the day like the mid-’80s. And the thing about Chris is he was so smart, and he was so entrepreneurial. He was just a hustler to the core. And he grew up doing what he does with The Violators, grew up on the streets. He was no stranger to danger. He had really good instincts on people.

    I remember I would go see Chris at his Violator office, and he’s a mogul, and he’s sitting at the top of the world and he’s managing the biggest talents in the world, and he would stop everything to listen to DJ Scratch -- another dear friend of mine -- to DJ Scratch’s radio show on WBLS because it was really important for him to listen to that show.

    Chris was hip-hop in a way that I never will be. And I’m not diminishing myself, it was just him. He was from the South Bronx, he grew up there. I say in my memoir, the rise of Chris Lighty mirrors the rise of hip-hop. From the projects of the South Bronx and the turntables being plugged into a streetlamp to becoming this global cultural figure. And he was there. He was there for every one of those transitions.

    After going through the deaths of ODB and Lighty, you talk about mental health, telling people if you see signs of your friend suffering, go ahead and speak up. A lot of people in the music industry have been open about their mental health issues as a way to destigmatize the shame from having depression or addiction. Personally, do you think this is a good direction we are heading towards?

    My answer to that is yes -- but we need much more conversation around it. I was supposed to do a panel back in March with my friend Danielle Belton, the editor-in-chief of The Root. And it was going to be me, her, a mental health professional, and it was going to be RZA and Joey Bada$$. And the topic was, Mental Health, Substance Abuse, and Suicide in Hip-Hop. Because of my personal losses, I wanted to crack open this conversation because it’s just not discussed. For us, too. Asians, we don’t talk about mental health. It’s stigmatized. It’s seen as a weakness, as opposed to an illness, which it is. It’s an actual illness.

    When I was coming up in hip-hop during what we call the golden era, people may of talked about smoking weed, but they didn’t talk about much else. I never saw anybody doing anything more than smoking weed. Maybe they were, but they sure as hell didn’t do it around me. But now, you have a bunch of really popular artists bragging about drinking lean, taking xans, percs, oxy. Those are prescription opioids. And you don’t have to be very educated to understand that prescription opioids is an issue. There’s an epidemic of overdoses all across the country. Every race. Every sector.

    To me, hip-hop is the biggest genre in this country. For the biggest artists in the biggest genre to essentially brag about a lifestyle where they’re slowly killing themselves... Make no doubt about it. As far as I know, people don’t casually take prescription opioids. Oh, you know, every once in a while, I put the kids to bed and I have a glass of Rosé. You don’t casually take opioids. So it’s one of two things: Either they’re lying about it, which is terrible because it still means they’re setting an example. Or, they’re not lying about it, and those boys are addicted. And we will continue to lose talent if we don’t open up the conversation.

    Lastly, what is the biggest challenge of being an artist manager?

    I think the biggest challenge is that it is largely a thankless job. You have to have the constitution to just keep going at it, and you often don’t get the recognition you deserve because artists are -- and this is partially them, but it is also part of the culture that we created -- they are largely narcissists. And it’s a matter of saying, "I’m going to do this despite the fact I’m not really getting the recognition and the thanks that I wish." So I would say that’s the biggest emotional challenge. And maybe some people don’t care about that. I know that I care about it. The other thing is you’re constantly cajoling. Cajoling, cajoling, cajoling, all the time.

    There’s a part in the memoir where you talk about GZA saying, “We did it,” giving you your props and validation for your work.

    Holy ****! Yeah, but the GZA is one in a million, for real. I would also say I have to shout-out Joey Bada$$. He was recently on the radio with Angie Martinez and the RZA. And she asked, "How did you guys meet?" And he said, "Shout out to Sophia Chang, she introduced us. And she’s been instrumental in my career." That was stunning. Stunning.

    Our interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
    shoot. i forgot our forum censors ***** again.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
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  11. #56
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    I Trained with a Shaolin Warrior Monk for a Week



    Nice to see our cover on that poster on his wall.


    SEP 99
    Gene Ching
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  12. #57
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    Shi Yan Ming & Shaolin Temple USA

    We've been remiss not starting a thread on our dear Senior Graphic Artist's Patrick Lugo (Design Sifu here) and his project continuing A Tiger's Tale since our print mag died of Covid.

    Read my BTS piece for website: Tracking Tiger’s Tale



    threads
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    Shi-Yan-Ming-amp-Shaolin-Temple-USA
    Gene Ching
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    Tricycle

    A Day in the Dharma with Shifu Shi Yan Ming, Founder of the USA Shaolin Temple in New York City
    An inside look at the daily life of a Shaolin monk

    Photographs by Jeenah Moon WINTER 2022
    A Day in the Dharma with Shifu Shi Yan Ming, Founder of the USA Shaolin Temple in New York City


    7:00 a.m. I take a morning stroll through the Lower East Side/Chinatown. The USA Shaolin Temple has been in this area since it opened in 1994, two years after I came to the States with the first ever Shaolin monastery tour approved by Congress. Our first building on the Bowery had no heat or electricity. Now we have branches in eight countries.


    8:00 a.m. I light three incense sticks on the altar to respect Buddha, dharma, and sangha. Chan Buddhism is essential to Shaolin kung fu. One cannot exist without the other.


    11:00 a.m. I sharpen my blade, a straight sword, and practice dong ch’an (action meditation) between private lessons. Dong ch’an can be anything—it’s your unique, beautiful expression of your life. There is no single right way to meditate.


    12:00 p.m. I prepare for my weekly livestream class at noon with Kirby, a staffmember. I teach online classes as well as in-person classes on Chan Buddhism, kung fu, tai chi, and qigong, which are open to the public.


    1:00 p.m. I practice calligraphy in the afternoon. Martial arts take many forms, including how one moves a brush. I learned the art form when my father, a highly skilled calligrapher despite never going to school, was hired by the Chinese government for his talent.


    4:00 p.m. I reflect on our precious lifetime on earth. A human’s greatest responsibility is to use this life to help others and understand their suffering, and to push the limits of their own abilities until they reach the level of what seems like myth.

    See more of Shifu Shi Yan Ming’s day on Instagram @tricyclemag. Watch Tricycle’s 2013 video profile of Shifu Shi Yan Ming here.
    I was subscribed to Tricycle for a few years but have long since let that elapse.
    Gene Ching
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  14. #59
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    Time feature

    WORLD CHINA
    MEET THE LEGENDARY WARRIOR MONK PASSING ON THE SECRETS OF KUNG FU AND BUDDHISM
    Meet the Legendary Warrior Monk Passing on the Secrets of Kung Fu and Buddhism

    Shi Yan Ming Matt Doyle
    BY CHARLIE CAMPBELL
    JUNE 7, 2023 5:01 AM EDT
    Shi Yan Ming didn’t intend to make me feel bad. But when a 40-something journalist asks a 59-year-old interviewee to confirm his age, it’s not really appropriate to lift a straight-kneed leg over your head in response. Frankly, it’s a little upsetting.

    Not that Shi’s age-defying dexterity should be surprising. He is a living legend in the world of martial arts, a 34th generation warrior monk from China’s legendary Shaolin temple who can break bricks with his bare hands, execute upside down flying kicks, and bend razor-sharp spears with his neck. And on the brink of his sixth decade in this earthly realm, Shi still takes pleasure in passing on the secrets of kung fu and Chan (Zen) Buddhism to both movie stars and harassed office workers.

    “I have private students, classes, and train myself every day,” Shi tells TIME via a Zoom call from the USA Shaolin Temple, which he established in New York City in 1994. The relentless quest, he says, is to “sharpen my life.”

    It’s a life that has transported Shi from abject poverty in rural China to performing kung fu on behalf of its communist government, defection to the U.S., and then training some of Hollywood’s biggest names, like Wesley Snipes, Bokeem Woodbine, and WuTang Clan’s RZA—who dubbed Shi a “real life superhero.”


    Shifu practicing gongbu (kung fu stance) in Henan Province, China in the early 1970s Courtesy of USA Shaolin Temple
    After honing his fighting skills since the age of five, Shi is famed for extraordinary feats of physical and mental prowess, including his fabled “one-inch punch,” which is more powerful than a car traveling at 35 mph, according to The History Channel series “Stan Lee’s Super Humans.” He has also taught at the U.S. Naval Academy and spoken at Harvard and the U.N.

    But no challenge Shi had previously faced quite matched up to COVID-19, which shuttered his school in the Lower East Side for two years and seven months, only to reopen late last year. Shi experienced pandemic-inspired anti-Asian hate firsthand and believes, with the WHO recently stating COVID-19 is no longer a global health emergency, that people everywhere can use the hardship as a springboard to find inner peace and satisfaction.

    “In the pandemic, many people got disconnected from reality, and spiritually [suffered] a lot,“ says Shi. “Life is so short, life is precious, we have to cherish every moment— every day, it’s a beautiful gift.“

    Shi was born the seventh of nine children in a desperately poor family in China’s central province of Henan. Per local custom at the time, Shi’s mother had her feet bound, while his father went door-to-door performing odd jobs for food. Three elder siblings starved to death in Mao Zedong’s disastrous “Great Leap Forward” industrial experiment of the late 1950s.

    Shi fell extremely ill as a toddler, forcing his father to sell the family’s few prized possessions to pay for doctors. After Shi grew cold and unresponsive, his parents thought he had died and were preparing to dispose of his body when a passing medicine man noticed their distraught weeping and asked to see the child. He performed acupuncture on Shi, who quickly roused. Partly in thanks for the supposed divine intervention, and partly to ward off future malaise, Shi’s parents, both devout Buddhists, decided to take him to the Shaolin Temple to recuperate. “My parents had no idea what was wrong with me, but they believed Buddha could save my life,“ says Shi.

    The Shaolin temple was founded in A.D. 495 on the forested slopes of China’s sacred Mount Songshan in what is today Henan province’s Dengfeng county. According to legend, the monastery’s fighting tradition evolved from a group of monks who were martial artists before taking orders, and taught their fellow brothers via perfecting household chores like sweeping, collecting firewood, and fetching buckets of river water. Before long, rival warlords would entreat the warrior monks to help in their skirmishes.

    Such a focus on martial prowess may seem at odds with a religion as dedicated to non-violence as Buddhism. However, early Buddhist iconography often flanks the Buddha with heavily-armed, ferocious-looking deities who trample demons underfoot. As scholar Meir Shahar notes in his definitive book, The Shaolin Monastery, “if the world-honored one required the protection of martial gods, then his monastic community certainly needs the defense of martial monks.”

    At the age of 5, Shi was accepted by Shaolin’s chief monk, but life in the temple was far from tranquil. Mao’s frenzied Cultural Revolution was in full swing, during which all ancient religion and culture was purged. The temple’s walls had already been destroyed during a bout of inter-clan fighting in 1926, though Mao’s fearsome Red Guards picked up where the warlords left off, smashing all buildings, statues, and relics. Monks were forbidden from even wearing their robes. “It was hard to live there,“ Shi says.

    As time went on, Shi began to be trained in the ways of Chan (Zen) Buddhism and Shaolin kung fu. Rising at 4:30 a.m., he spent each day engrossed in meditation, chores, and training. Monks slept on a piece of wood with a blanket and bundled their clothes for a pillow. The temple had no electricity until 1981 and no running water until 1986. By the age of 17, Shi could dangle a 40-pound weight from his testicles and sleep standing on one leg.

    “A master would order me to do a handstand and then just walk away,“ recalls Shi. “I felt like my eyeballs would almost pop out, arms swelling, body sore,“ he says. “Chinese culture is different from Western culture. Physically, they just push you very hard.”
    continued next post
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    continued from previous

    It was a grueling regimen that these days would be considered abuse, and China’s kung fu schools continue to be hit by accusations of mistreatment. However, Shi remains grateful for the opportunities his unconventional upbringing brought. “My generation and today’s generation are totally different,“ he says. “I appreciate they were empowering young men— physically, mentally, spiritually—to stand tall. And now I can share my knowledge, wisdom, spirit, and physical experience with the rest of the world.”

    Despite decades of official repression, the Shaolin Temple enjoyed an unexpected renaissance following the eponymous 1982 film starring a young Jet Li. The movie was a sensation, selling half a billion tickets at the Chinese box office, and propelling Shaolin kung fu into Western popular culture. Shi was living at the temple when Li arrived to film, though was unconvinced by the actor’s true potency. “His performance is of a high level, he is an awesome martial artist,“ says Shi. “But a real fight, in combat, is a totally different story.”

    Still, the buzz surrounding the film meant the Shaolin temple began receiving floods of tourists and wannabe warriors. The Chinese government, meanwhile, mirrored its newfound flexibility embracing capitalism by also leveraging Shaolin kung fu’s cultural caché. The crumbled buildings were resurrected and before long, training academies peppered the surrounding hillside.

    Shi was selected for the temple’s first overseas tour of the U.S. in 1992. But following the final performance in San Francisco, Shi decided to defect. He snuck outside and jumped in a cab but, unable to speak English, could only gesture for the driver to keep moving. After a while, the driver took Shi to a Chinese restaurant in Oakland which was just closing up.

    “But they only spoke Cantonese, not Mandarin!“ recalls Shi with a shake of his head. “So I used the pad to write down ‘I need your help.’ And then they said, ’okay’ and made me a plate of fried noodles.

    Shi called a friend of a friend who lived in San Francisco. He picked him up and let him stay in his basement for a week. Shi’s defection caused huge waves; the Chairman of China’s Martial Arts Association and the Mayor of Dengfeng were leading the tour, which was one of the first bilateral engagements following the diplomatic freeze sparked by the Tiananmen Square massacre three years earlier.

    Shi, however, has no regrets: “My life’s purpose is to help as many people as possible.”

    Shi’s life has changed radically in the three decades since his defection. Fully settled in New York City, and today a proud U.S. citizen, he remains unmarried but has two kids, a boy and a girl. In a departure from Buddhist clerical orthodoxy, he occasionally eats meat and enjoys the occasional drink too.

    The Shaolin Temple, meanwhile, has also transformed. Today, it is more of a martial arts theme park than a pious sanctuary. When TIME last visited the monastery in 2018, novice monks did daily performances for crowds of tourists snacking on sunflower seeds and instant noodles. The gift shop overflowed with instructional DVDs, posters, and calendars.

    Shi chooses his words carefully when asked to comment on the commercialization of his former home, which he has not visited since 2008. “To be a real Shaolin monk, it is not enough to practice martial arts,“ he says. “It’s the philosophy of Chan Buddhism. First, you must shave your head, eat Buddhist food, dress in robes, understand how to challenge yourself, how to discipline yourself.


    Shifu demonstrates forward fold in the NYC temple, May 2023 Matt Doyle
    But in recent years, kung fu has fallen down the martial arts pecking order, with the rise of Mixed Martial Arts, or MMA. The florid acrobatics of kung fu may look spectacular on screen but barely feature in serious competition, perhaps propelling the rise to a growing cadre of kung fu practitioners who claim supernatural skills, such as superhuman strength and telekinesis.

    It’s a trend that Shi has been vocal at combatting, insisting the true essence of Shaolin lies not in cheap conjuring tricks, but the underpinning spirituality. He backs the publicity campaign of Beijing MMA fighter Xu Xiaodong, who grew to global notoriety in 2018 when he defeated a Tai Chi master who claimed supernatural powers in 20 seconds.

    Shi says Xu “did a fantastic job. I respect him, I love him, more people should stop these liars. They disrespect Chinese martial arts, disrespect Chinese culture, disrespect themselves.“ Rather than feel threatened by MMA, Shi says he loves watching UFC bouts, especially those of Jon “Bones“ Jones, Demetrious Johnson, and Urijah Faber. “I like the fast guys a lot,“ he says.

    Regarding the spiraling acrimony between his ancestral and current home, which has been dubbed a “new Cold War,” Shi remains diplomatic when asked about assigning blame, urging both sides to seize on common ground to repair relations. “Every country has a different way to make themselves strong, to deal with situations,“ he says. “This topic I shall leave them to figure out.”

    He’s more forthright regarding the need to combat anti-Asian hate spurred by the pandemic. Twice during lockdown he found himself the subject of snide remarks on the street by people who thought he might be infected with COVID-19, which was fueled by then President Donald Trump’s use of terms like “China Virus“ and “kung flu.“

    “People are not educated, they don’t love themselves, don’t rate themselves,“ says Shi. “It’s easy to blame other people, so we need to stand tall, speak out. Why hate people? Instead, loving people uses the same energy, same time. Why not turn around and love people, encourage people, and help people.“

    And he believes that it’s incumbent on America’s Asian community to stand united and strong. “The Asian community should put our hands together,“ he says, “One chopstick is easy to break; ten chopsticks are much harder.”
    I wonder if this made TIME's print issue
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
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