Dengfeng

I’m back in Beijing after spending a day and change in Dengfeng, in central China’s Henan province.  As I mentioned in my first post, Dengfeng is the epicenter of Shaolin martial arts, and I visited Urbana martial arts instructor Demitri Daniels as he went to China for more training.  Nearby is Shaolin Temple, which has its own school.  This one and several back in the city of Dengfeng are like giant military academies—while Daniels’ school has only about a half-dozen foreigners and a couple hundred Chinese students, the many of the largest schools number well past a thousand.  It was a fascinating trip to see the schools and get a taste of China outside the most-heavily visited tourist sites—even though Shaolin Temple has been developed by the government into a tourist attraction (some purists would call it a full-blown tourist trap), we never saw a Westerner there, and many Dengfeng residents seemed tickled to see non-Asian faces in their town.

Today it’s the Great Wall, and then I sit down to write my story.  You should hear it on Morning Edition in the next few days. 

Kung fu students! Thousands of 'em!:
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