the REAL shaolin temple

justin guariglia, a fab photographer from new york, who actually shot  shanghai tang's kung fu collection campaign with philip ng a couple of years ago, is coming out with a beautiful book about the true shaolin monks. to me, it's a big event, because there's never been a beautifully produced book on the subject with excellent production values, that you'd be proud to give anyone. up until now, the books, the corpus of which i know very well, have blurry photos, crappy paper and definitely no decent layout. you wouldn't put them on your coffee table for sure! besides that, justin, a kung fu practitioner, personally studied and lived at the temple for many months to take these pictures. far from swanning into zheng zhou and demanding access to the monks, he immersed himself completely in the process.

http://www.aperture.org/store/books-preview-bio.aspx?ID=590

btw, i have met the grand master (Fang Zhang) of the shaolin temple on two occasions, one on one. just to disabuse everyone of what the entire set-up is: in fact, less than 80 monks actually live at the original temple in zheng zhou, with only 50 actually continuing to train and practice martial arts. the kung fu practice is actually passed down in secrecy (unfortunately), virtually guaranteeing that the practice and knowledge will dwindle to zero with time. surrounding the monastery are many schools purporting to teach "shaolin kung fu", but, in fact, these are neither seeded nor endorsed by the actual temple. the fang zhang is trying to bring the monastery and practice into the modern world. actually, shanghai tang created their logo (3 years ago), based on a symbol of bodhidharma (the original monk who came from india to establish chan or zen buddhism in china at shaolin), carved on an ancient stone stele at the temple. this is the only legally, recognized logo of the temple, internationally protected under trademark law. to be instrumental in its creation and registration was an enormous honor. i hope to be involved with Fang Zhang and the temple again, in the near future, in projects to conserve the history and tradition of the temple.

i recently gave up the practice of kung fu myself, after two years, unfortunately, because of serious ACL sprains in my left knee (from skiing). until november of last year, i was practicing monkey-style (hou quan) with master chow keung (who is one of only 2 exponents left in the world of this school). i can't explain how i feel about kung fu, but the practice is intensely personal and you make of it what you want. i will be hard to replace it in my life, although i have recently begun looking for new, if different, experiences.