For Shaolin Trips: The Abbot’s 2023 Trip to America (Part 1 of this trilogy) click here.
For Shaolin Trips: The Abbot's 2023 Trip to the SF Bay Area (part 2 of this trilogy) click here.
First off, I apologize for the title. It should “Shaolin Trips: The Abbot’s 2023 Trip to San Gabriel.” Los Angeles was later. But I committed to ‘the City of Angels’ when I proposed this Shaolin Trips reboot trilogy so I’ll stick to it. I like that it puts out a beatific vibe over a Hollywood hustle underpinning.
I took a quick break from the Shaolin Zone between the Shi Yanran’s new Shaolin Temple USA San Francisco Culture Center blessing on 5211 Geary Boulevard, I zipped down the street to 1827-1801 Geary…to the Fillmore, one of my favorite music venues on the circuit. I’ve done some work there in the past, but I had not been back since the pandemic began. Playing that night was Phil and Friends. Phil was the bass player for the Grateful Dead, who I also did some work for, so it was an opportune time to return to the Fillmore and reunite with old friends and fellow deadheads.
But it cost me. The morning after, I pulled my left hamstring reciting THE MARVELS: Women Warriors and Wuxia Vibes). It was great to reunite with him too.
I packed a lot in between Shaolin Zones and got injured – I’m not as young as I used to be. But by the time I was to return, my hamstring had improved. I was getting ready to go back in when I was pulled in early.
It was a tight work week. I had several tasks to complete on many fronts. What I didn’t expect (and should have) was instead of reentering the Shaolin Zone on Friday like I had planned, I would get sucked in on Wednesday. That’s when my iPhone started blowing up. Texts, messages, calls, emails, they all bombarded me with Shaolin business. On Thursday, my iPhone started pinging at 4 AM and literally did not stop until I exited the Shaolin Zone that following Sunday. I would’ve turned off the sound on that first night, but my alarm was set for an early morning telemeet.
Strangely it worked out. Since I was awake, I confirmed my Southwest airlines boarding pass right on time. I got A2. I’ve never even scored an A before (a peril of being a lone traveler). I had arranged Thursday to finalize a lot of work, but I was so inundated with texts and messages that I couldn’t get it all done by end of workday. It forced me to bail on my Iaido class because I had just couldn’t get all my work done.
On top of all that, I was tasked to record a promo spot for KPFK for the Immortal Shaolin Activation where I was positioned as a narrator for some of the segments. I heard that the spot did air. Did anyone hear it?
I didn’t start packing until late that night, and only got a few hours of sleep before my flight.
Shaolin in San Gabriel
It was an early flight. I had to get up at 4AM to get to the airport on time. For a moment, as my wife was driving me over, I had a groggy flashback to waking before dawn at Shaolin to those scratchy speakers blaring the PRC national anthem and the days orders. Ah the Shaolin Zone…
The First North American Shaolin Kung Fu Games and the Second North American Shaolin Duanpin were happening at the Sheraton San Gabriel. Consequently, a lot more people were showing up from all over the country for this. We didn’t have any participatory events like that when the Abbot visited the San Francisco Bay Area on the week prior. It was good to reunite with the local Shaolin sangha the weekend before. This weekend, the sangha was expanded, and it was even better reconnecting to so many old friends.
Of all the reunions, my favorite was reuniting with my Shaolin disciple brother, Dieter ‘Xingda’ Wagner, who I introduced – you know where – in my Shi Decheng. He picked me up from the airport, and we had breakfast in Burbank. He lived there some years ago, so we poked our heads in some of his favorite collector’s shops while digesting breakfast. We had some time to kill because check in at the Sheraton San Gabriel was later in the afternoon, and I was sharing my room with him.
The hotel was in an Asian neighborhood, surrounded by Chinese and Vietnamese restaurants and markets. It was so Chinese that the elevator did not have a 4th floor. The instant we hit the lobby, we could feel that Shaolin excitement. There were posters all over and the place was filling up with so many colorful robe-like school uniforms. It amuses me that the Shaolin robes was intended to be a symbol of humility and asceticism, has evolved into a show of school pride. There were so many kids, in so many different brightly colored robes.
Both Dieter and I reconnected with old Shaolin friends, some who we had only met online, others who we trained with in past years. It was joyful. However, I had a nagging bad feeling about this. As a new tournament, it felt as if Shaolin might be taking on too much, and not attending to that necessary infrastructure to make any tournament run smoothly. We met up with Jonny Oh and Gigi Oh, and joined them at the Tiger Claw table at the San Gabriel Welcoming Banquet.
The Welcoming Banquet
I know it’s not fair, but I cannot resist comparing the two banquets. Perhaps that’s a central Cali versus southern Cali thing. Fellow Californians understand. And I’ll confess that I’m biased to my own ‘hood. Anyone else who was at both banquets can debate this with me but I say Central beat the South, hands down.
The Milpitas banquet was over the top at that ostentatious HL Peninsula Restaurant. It had twice the attendance, and ten times the sheer audaciousness of a grand Chinese banquet worthy of our esteemed guests. That doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy the San Gabriel banquet, but the tables were more expensive, service was slow, and worst of all for me, the vegetarian fare was bland.
Vegetarianism has a longstanding history in China that dates as far back as the Spring and Autumn period (770-476 BCE). There are records of vegetarian practices within Confucianism and Daoism from that time. Vegetarianism expanded during the Tang Dynasty (618 to 907). The first records of vegetarian cookbooks, restaurants, and fake ‘meats’ date back to this period. Chinese vegetarian food has centuries of development and can be astonishing in so many ways.
The HL Peninsula Restaurant understands this and delivered a diverse feast of delicious and nutritious dishes. The caterer for the Sheraton San Gabriel hadn’t read the memo. The food was flat – way too many mushroom dishes. And I love mushrooms, but a man’s got to know his limitations. We all hit the mushroom wall. I’m pescatarian, not vegetarian, but we share similar abstinences. It puts me in a defensive mode when many complained about still being hungry. There was talk of an In-and-Out run afterwards.
However, the Shaolin warrior monk demonstration was better. It was bigger. The Abbot had requested the participation of the local Shaolin monks, including the headmaster of LA’s Shaolin Temple USA, Shi Yanxu. The stage was much wider, making room for more weapons and flamboyant flying feats, which was all spectacular.
Jonny brought me his camera, but I couldn’t quite figure it out. He had set it so there was no flash which increased the exposure time. Consequently, my trigger finger to shutter speed was off and I kept missing my shots. I shot a lot – burning down that battery – hoping that some shots might come out. A few were okay, but I probably shot 20 or 30 for each decent photo.
Dieter was competing the next day, so we made an early evening of it. I still had my trepidations. I had been in some of the meetings, and it just didn’t feel solid yet.
The First Shaolin Kung Fu Games
Saturday was game day. The tournament was in the same room as the banquet was the night before. The stage became the fifth ring for adults, some other significant divisions, and the finals. There were four rings on the floor. It began with a lot of speeches and presentations that dragged on longer than scheduled. Both USA and PRC anthems were played. Gigi, Jonny and I were watching our watches. I can’t even begin to count how many tournaments the three of us have been to collectively. Jonny alone has been to hundreds because as the President of Tiger Claw, he goes to tournaments of all styles. Gigi and I have been to tournaments all across the country and even some in Asia. We all know that a tournament that starts late usually ends late. Any tournament needs to tear out of the gates like racehorses and ride that furious momentum for the whole day. And the Games had adopted the scoring system used by our Tiger Claw Elite Championships, so Jonny and Gigi were overseeing it. The math didn’t quite work in any of our heads: start late + 500 competitors x 5 rings did not equal 6PM. It looked like it was going to be a long day, heading into a long night.
When it began, Jonny grabbed two volunteers and got them to run the scorekeeping with him. I immersed myself in the crowd, trying to capture what was happening in the photos. It was a big crowd, and the aisles were tight, but not oppressively so. Everyone was extremely polite, which was important as there were stacks of weapons everywhere – lying on the floor, being held up by competitors, all going in different directions. It was one of the friendliest tournaments that I’ve ever been at. The Shaolin spirit was strong and the sense that we were all family was profound.
Overall things were going smoothly, but I needed a little bump. The rugged week and lack of sleep was catching up to me. I needed some caffeine.
The nearest coffee place was a Starbucks at the corner of the hotel. I confess that I’m a coffee snob but in my defense, I live within walking distance of artisanal roastery in a city with several artisanal roasteries. I disdain Starbucks, but desperate times call for desperate measures. It turned out to be wonderful.
I ran into Shi Yanxing, who I was training under back when I was writing Shaolin Trips (the book). He was reconnecting with some of the monks from China and invited me to join them.
Here, I must note that I wore the school shirt of my Shaolin master, Shi Decheng on tournament day. I did that intentionally because I felt my master should be represented here, and in solidarity with Dieter, my disciple brother who was competing under his name (he also listed Xinghao, another monk we both trained under at Shaolin in ’96 who immigrated to Houston). One of the older monks that was travelling with the Shaolin troupe looked at my shirt and nodded with a knowing smile which was gratifying. Later that day I ran into Yanchan (formerly Xingying) who also gave his nod of approval when he saw my shirt.
The awkward thing about my master is that he’s a ‘De’ – a 31st generation monk – as in Decheng. The ‘Yong’ in Yongxin is 33rd generation. Many monks ‘re-discipled’ under the Abbot to become ‘Yan’ (34th generation) but my master was not one of them. I’ll come back to this.
Back to Yanxing, we had a startlingly fun conversation that raced from yoga, meditation, Tibet, Rishikesh, antique weapons, and so much more. It had been a few years since we really chatted. I can’t remember the last time we talked, what with the pandemic. I remember following him for the mass Simplified 24 Taiji Routine on Kung Fu Tai Chi Day 2017. It was so great to catch up with him.
I just started wondering what Gigi was up to when she texted me. She had secured a private interview with the Abbot. I rushed to meet her, and we went over to his suite together. There were about a dozen other monks in the room, including Shi Yanran from SF and Shi Yanxing from Starbucks. Suddenly I wondered if it was disrespectful to have a ‘De’ school shirt before the Abbot, but no one commented.
A lovely tea was served traditionally with Yanxing attentively refilling those tiny cups. I still had a cappuccino grande from Starbucks (I was drinking it slowly for the caffeine, not for the taste) and that totally tainted my tea palette. I struggled to shift caffeination gears and enjoy the tea whilst staying focused on what the Abbot was saying. The interview went well, and the Abbot revealed a few upcoming projects, which you can read about in the interview when I finish transcribing it. Then towards the end, he motioned that he had had enough tea. He went for a Starbucks coffee.
Awkwardly, I found myself judging him for his choice of drinks. Here was this lovely, delicious tea, and he went for the Starbucks? But then I caught myself. I realized he drinks excellent tea all the time, and American Starbucks is probably a refreshing change, of at least an opportunity to sample another culture. A lot of people are judgey about the Abbot, but no one knows what it’s like to walk in his sandals.
We returned to the tournament and Jonny told us that not only did it look like they would finish on time, but that they might finish early. Jonny worked intensely hard that day. He may have even worked harder than he does at our own Tiger Claw Elite Championships. It was another Shaolin miracle. The Shaolin sangha pulled it together and made it work.
I went back to shooting. I never did quite get a handle on Jonny’s camera. It was still fussy on the shutter timing. You’d think after shooting tournaments and events for nearly a quarter of a century I’d have figured out how cameras work by now. RTFM right? But I shot a lot, enough that I caught a few moments.
Miraculously, the tournament ended early as Jonny predicted. Somehow that Shaolin spirit just pulled it together and made it happen. Everyone seemed satisfied with how it went. Dieter captured a bronze for his Yinshougun which was awesome. Go Team Decheng! The finals were genuinely exciting. Knowing the schools and a few of the competitors, the matches were thrilling with the kind of epic drama you want from finals. Ten champions were declared.
These 10 Shaolin practitioners are qualified to represent North America at the World Shaolin Kung Fu Games to be held somewhere in China (Shaolin maybe?) sometime in 2024.
I would love to cover the World Shaolin Kung Fu Games next year – just putting that out there…
I would also like to add my own personal accomplishment regarding the Games. Bodhidharma Cane.
After the tournament, Jonny and Gigi treated Dieter and I to a scrumptious Vietnamese dinner across the street from the Sheraton. Then Dieter picked up a fifth of Toki Whiskey (he was delighted to discover what any Asian shopper knows – some liquors are much cheaper at Asian markets.) We went back to our room and trained our drunken style until I had to call it at 2AM. I had to perform on stage the next day and I had no idea exactly what I would have to do. Somehow, most of that fifth disappeared. It reminded me of that old Chinese saying Jiu feng zhiji qian bei shao (A thousand cups of wine is not to much with best friends meet 酒逢知己千杯少)
I began this with an apology and I’m ending it with an apology. Perhaps that’s just me. I am a Shaolin apologist. I said this installment of Shaolin Trips was going to be a trilogy, but I miscalculated. It’s a much bigger story. It’s a tetralogy.
Stay tuned for Shaolin Trips: Immortal Shaolin: The Past, Present and Future of Kung Fu, as well as the exclusive interview with the Abbot from Gigi and me.
