Content warning: this review discusses white privilege and sex.

I’ve read a few travel books so far, but there’s one subgenre that I haven’t looked into until now: the rich white person travelogue. This type usually involves a rich white person (a lot of the time it’s an American or British man), and they go to exotic locations (usually to places in Europe, Africa, and Asia) to discover themselves on the backs of the locals. Normally, I would have issues with this, yet I’ve found a book from 2007 that follows this to a tee and was surprisingly entertaining. That book is called American Shaolin – Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China by Matthew Polly.

American Shaolin is a coming-of-age story of one American’s quest to become a kung fu master at China’s legendary Shaolin Temple in the early 1990s. When he was young, Matthew was scrawny and tormented by bullies at school. He dreamed of one day journeying to China to become the toughest fighter like Caine in his favorite TV series Kung Fu. While in college, he decided that the time had come to pursue his dream. Despite the objections from his parents, he dropped out of Princeton to spend two years training with the legendary sect of monks who invented kung fu and Zen Buddhism. When he landed in China, he expected an isolated citadel populated by supernatural ascetics that he’d seen in countless chop-socky films. Instead, he discovered a tacky tourist trap run by Communist party hacks. Nonetheless, the monks still trained in the rigorous age-old fighting forms. As Matthew became more knowledgeable about China and kung fu, he would come to represent Shaolin Temple in challenge matches and international competitions, and ultimately the monks accepted their new American initiative as close to one of their own as any Westerner had ever become.

I was a little worried at first for two reasons. The first reason was that I rarely read nonfiction in bed. The last time I did that with So Anyway by John Cleese, I stayed up for hours. Luckily, I haven’t had that issue for a while. This isn’t a bad thing. I read roughly a chapter a night and sleep afterwards. I can still enjoy it and get plenty of shut-eye. 

The second and final reason was that it’s a rich white guy story of self discovery in an exotic location. Even though he had prior knowledge of China before his trip since he studied its language while at Princeton, he learned more about the country beyond the classroom and kung fu media. One scene that stood out to me was when he was at the rundown hotel, and the clerk was trying to get with him. He handles the situation like any naive foreigner would. 

This brings to mind a strength that American Shaolin has: its humor. Polly as a laowai (foreigner in Chinese) is willing to poke fun at himself as he’s (and not the monks and trainers at the Shaolin Temple) the butt of the joke many times. For example, in the beginning of the book, he asks for directions to the temple, and a police officer and several onlookers give him conflicting answers (p. 26-27). He eventually gets the directions. Later, it took him a while to find out who was elected president of the United States in late 1992. When Polly wanted to know who won the election, a painter at the Wushu Center – the place where Matthew stayed at – kept saying “Bushi Bushi.”

He thought the painter meant “is not, is not” because in Chinese, Bushi translates to “is not.”

However, he didn’t catch the tonal differences until he realized that the painter was actually talking about George H.W. Bush. It wasn’t until later than Polly found out that Bill Clinton was elected (p. 90-91).

Another hilarious part of the book was Polly’s interactions with other laowai training at the Shaolin Temple. One person that he encountered was Mikael – a French guy who had a piano in his room at the Shaolin Kungfu Academy and believed in the sixth race – the next evolution of the human consciousness. He even supposedly recruited Odin, Thor, and Jesus to the project (p. 239-243). It’s sufficient to say that Mikael was a little crazy.

Another aspect that I enjoyed about the book was learning about the culture surrounding the Shaolin Temple, kung fu, and the Chinese state of affairs in the 1990s and 2000s. Polly has a clear respect for the culture and the monks who helped train him. As I mentioned before, the monks are never the butt of the jokes, and he remained close to them. He’s also very informative about kung fu and Sanda (Chinese kickboxing). He writes in accessible terms about how the students train, repeat certain movements several times to get it right, and fight in various competitions. In addition, it was fascinating to learn about China in general and in the wake of Tiananmen Square. Through this book, I learned about certain Chinese insults, how native women had to be careful when with a foreign man before midnight, and how the seeds of the country’s slow embrace of capitalism were sown.

Despite the respect and intrigue about Chinese culture, this book still is about a Westerner, who happens to have lots of resources, finding himself. As I mentioned in another travelogue review by an author who shares the same initials as Matthew Polly – Sir Michael Palin of Monty Python, this isn’t an insult. It’s something that various readers and I have noticed. In fact, Polly’s father was initially reluctant to let his son go to Shaolin Temple, but he relented without speaking to him for a while. However, he calls something Oriental, and he doesn’t treat Chinese women with the respect they deserve. Throughout the book, the things that Polly wants to accomplish are learning to fight back, strengthening his spirituality, and becoming a man. With the last goal, he goes on dates with various Chinese women, but not much is known about them besides his goal to get laid and that they have to be out of the hotel by midnight, or else they being with a foreigner will be seen as prostitution. As a woman, I’m disappointed that he knowingly put them in danger just so he could get screwed. Around the World in 80 Days with Michael Palin has its issues too, but Palin takes the time to get to know the people around him without any ulterior motive. It also helps that Palin was at a different stage of his life than Polly was when traveling; he was married and had three kids. At the same time, it has been decades since that initial trip, so I like to believe that Polly has matured and been more respectful to the opposite gender since.

 American Shaolin – Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China by Matthew Polly was an entertaining and informative book despite being one more title in the rich-white-person-going-on-a-self-discovery-journey travel subgenre. Polly treats the culture, the kung fu and Sanda training, and almost everyone with respect, and it was fascinating what China was like at the turn of the millennium. In addition, the humor, especially coming from a naive traveler, was well placed. I would recommend this to those who love reading about martial arts, Chinese history and culture, and journeys that involve self discovery. We all discover various things about ourselves when we least realize it. Some have the means to do that more extravagantly.

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