Shaolin masters commonly go abroad to staff kung fu schools, the temple said. In 2002, a request came in for a teacher in Houston, and the temple handed it to Feng. With his parents' permission, he traveled to Texas to teach at the Houston Shaolin Temple school in Bellaire as the third Shaolin master in Houston.
Word that a real Shaolin warrior monk was coming to Houston spread, reaching San Antonio, where 21-year-old Natasha Castillo practiced a mixture of martial arts with a small group. They made the trip to Feng's welcome party, and saw him perform. He was 15, masquerading as 17 for credibility's sake.
"He was just mesmerizing. You'd sit there and watch him and go into a trance," she said.
Castillo decided she'd keep coming back to Houston to train, once or twice a month, whenever she could. Initially, Feng would "just yell at us in Chinese," she said. But the lessons made sense without talking. Meanwhile, Feng was building vocabulary and learning to speak English from the youngest children he taught.
Castillo lost touch with Feng around 2006 — her boyfriend in San Antonio didn't like her traveling to see the young monk so much. Rumor among her friends was that Feng liked her.
Feng, for his part, found life stifling with no car and basically no friends. He missed running up mountains. He was also having visa problems. When it came time to renew his R1 religious visa, an attorney informed him that the kung fu school wouldn't meet the criteria for religious sponsorship.
He wouldn't be able to legally work there anymore. He had no money, spoke little English, and didn't really understand what was happening.
When Feng left the school, his students bemoaned the loss of their instructor. So Feng continued lessons in Sugar Land's Eldridge Park with about 30 students. That, he said, was more authentic anyway. Real Shaolin kung fu is practiced outdoors because "you must feel the Earth."
He eventually got a position teaching kung fu at a local Vietnamese Buddhist temple, which would sponsor his visa, but his attorney Helene Dang, had another idea.
After interviewing Feng in 2008, she said, "we were like, 'whoa, you're quite unique.' So we proposed the option for him."
The option was a rare EB-1 visa for "aliens with extraordinary abilities."
"In order to qualify for extraordinary ability you have to be acclaimed internationally as top in your field," said Dang, a partner at Foster Global. "It's higher than exceptional. It's higher than outstanding. It's pretty much the hardest (visa) to get."
They compiled letters of reference from martial arts masters inside and outside the U.S., then gathered record of Feng's awards and the acclaim for the performances he'd given. The papers were filed, and Feng became a permanent resident, then several years later a U.S. citizen. Dang said that because EB-1 visas are "given the highest preference" in the immigration system, there is "essentially no wait time."
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In San Antonio, Castillo's accounting job fell to the Great Recession in 2009. Freshly single, unemployed and stressed, she figured it was time to resume training. After a few phone calls to fellow martial arts enthusiasts, she got Feng's number.
She told him she wanted to train again. He asked if she had a boyfriend. She said no. He told her he was going to China later that year, would she like to come for a backstage view of the temple? Castillo had dreamed of China ever since meeting Feng. She said maybe. He invited her to stop by for training, and the next day she drove to Houston.
"But he didn't want to train me," she said. "He just wanted to take me out to dinner."
Within a month, Castillo found an accounting job in Houston and rented an apartment. She went with Feng to China later that year, saw the temple and met his family. By 2010 they were talking about marriage, and Castillo had to explain the American traditions of engagement rings and proposals.
Photo: Natasha Yuan Photo: Natasha Yuan Shi Yan Feng with his wife Natasha Yuan, their daughter Alina and son Henry.
They got married in Dengfeng in 2011. Castillo, who would soon make Chinese her fourth language, became Natasha Yuan, taking Feng's pre-master name, and the local news station came by to cover the warrior monk and his American bride.
Yuan's parents had initially protested, she said. Her father wanted her to "stay within her race," but he gave in once the marriage seemed inevitable. The couple held an American wedding in San Antonio in 2012, and Yuan's parent's warmed to Feng.
"They no longer saw him as the warrior monk, they got to know him as a person," she said.
At the same time, his school, American Shaolin Kung Fu, was growing. It had started in 2008, when Feng, then 21, wanted a place to practice with the students he was training in Eldridge Park. So just down the road he rented a unit in a small strip center, across the parking lot from a Vietnamese noodle house. He never advertised, he said, but word spread and students asked to sign up. One hundred had enrolled by 2009.
By 2011, the school needed another instructor. Feng sent for his younger brother, then an 18-year-old master in the Shaolin temple. He took over a second school in Bellaire in 2014.
By that time, Feng and Yuan had a baby boy, Henry. Then a girl, Alina, came in 2015, and that year Feng's parents made a months-long visit to see the life he'd made with kung fu in America. They were very proud, he said.
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On a recent Tuesday night, Feng led a class in his Sugar Land school. At his command, about 20 students in the advanced children's class lined up and performed fast-paced techniques across the length of the gym, then performed a series of 30-second long sequences of motion.
A few times, Feng used his hands to adjust a student's posture or guide their arms through motion. Otherwise, he barked "stronger," "try harder" and other motivators.
Shi Yan Feng, master at the American Shaolin Kung Fu school, presiding over rank advancement on Saturday December 17, 2016 Photo: Jamaal Ellis J.vince Photography, For The Chronicle / 2016 Photo: Jamaal Ellis J.vince Photography, For The Chronicle Shi Yan Feng, master at the American Shaolin Kung Fu school, presiding over rank advancement on Saturday December 17, 2016
He reminded the students that rank testing was Saturday and they'd be breaking wooden boards, then he called an adult forward to hold out a board.
"Breaking boards is easy," he said, casually tossing a fist through the plank. "But we are testing your skill. How do you control your powers?"
The helper held a board anew, and Feng snapped his knuckles to its surface and split the wood without passing through.
"Show that it is an art," he said.