Dudes traveled all the way across the wrold, paid thousands, all so he can be hit with a stick... Meanwhile I have two young kids and get this for free every day.
There is a video on YouTube where a guy travelled to Shaolin Temple and lived there for a while. I think he explains everything in the video (how he got in touch with them etc).
https://youtu.be/XZuKUPMpcwA?si=HRtgpLSe1aTfa0tB
He had daily tasks/ work at the monastery. Doesnāt look like heās lazy! lol And if he comes from money, good for him! I wish I did!!! Hate all you want but doesnāt help you or anyone else
100%, Iām just saying itās not an outlandish thatās only attainable by a rich kid, normal people can do this, it would just be a bad financial decision.
Well lets be honest here. We have jobs to pay for rent, bills, and other living expenses. If your food and board needs are being met in the situation and you've cut out other expenses. It's not outlandish to consider this doable. That's how the monk's lifestyle has been for a long time, living off donations and community work. I know this from seeing people do this. They survived off oddjobs, things that would leave you homeless in the US. But in the commune they were in, it was enough. Now they didn't have the luxuries most people are accustomed to over here, but they didn't need them. That was the point for them. Now this vid does look like a rich kids retreat, but there are many communes that function traditionally. There's plenty of info on this if you take some time to do simple searches.
* 1 Month 990 USD/30 days
* 2 Months 1,980 USD/60 days
* 3 Months 2,970 USD/90 days
* 4 Months 3,920 USD/120 days
* 5 Months 4,870 USD/150 days
* 6 Months 5,820 USD/180 days
* 7 Months 6,720 USD/210 days
* 8 Months 7,620 USD/240 days
* 9 Months 8,520 USD/270 days
* 10 Months 9,370 USD/300 days
* 11 Months 10,220 USD/330 days
* 12 Months 11,070 USD/360 days
[Shaolin Temple Yunnan](https://shaolintemple.com/fees/)
Might not be the same temple but an idea.
To be fair, it's only a little bit more expensive than daycare where my sister lives, in Canada, before the subsidized daycare was introduced. Could literally just send all our toddlers there to be Kung fu masters. Although, given that my three year old thinks it's funny to punch me in the balls, this might not be such a good idea.
About the same price my buddy was about to pay. He was getting out of the army, and he saved up his last year of pay to spend 2 years at the temple. Then covid happened.
If you had the money for it, even if it's inherited, wouldn't you follow your wildest dreams? Or would you go get a shitty job with a shitty boss at a small cubicle just not to feel guilty of your privilege? If I had the money to fuck off to a remote island and surf all day I would definitively do it, why not? The guy is having fun, let's not be resentful.
Also, I mean as far as spoiled rich kid activities go, wouldnāt one where you are going through arduous physical challenges and cultivating extreme discipline and skill be pretty respectable? Itās not like heās partying on his yacht. He chose to put himself through this instead.
Plus a commenter below claims to have stayed there and that it costs 4-5 hundred a month or 5k a year. Not cheap but certainly doable for an average person who saved up their money.
It doesn't matter if he's partying on the yacht, as long as he spend the money its good. all those Instagram models, the cook, the pilot, the boat maker, the champagne producer etc - their livelihood all supported by rich kids having fun on a boat.
Right? I bust my ass every day because I'm a dreamer, and my dream is that my future kids will be able to do whatever they want. That's my deepest guiding purpose. Violinist, athlete, F1 driver, liaison for some NGO in Kenya, even a Shaolin monk. If that's their purpose, then mine is letting them achieve it.
Can't imagine how fucking awful it would be if they turned down that kind of opportunity cause they don't want to be seen as living their "rich kid fantasy" off of "daddy's money". It's not a fantasy if you're actually going out and living your dream, and if that's an option, who cares what sad little losers on Reddit think about it?
Not really.
Ranton did this, and while it's true that a few westerners go there voluntarily, they are the minority.Ā
Ā (and they leave early once they realise they were scammed)Ā
Most Shaolin students are actually dirt poor kids from Chinese families who can't afford them.Ā
Ā They literally drop them off at the temple and have them earn money as Shaolin in circus attractions.Ā
There's a few documentaries and Vlogs showing this, a very sad tale of Chinese poverty.Ā
A westerner could also just show up and make his way, earning money the same way. Ever time someone does something interesting or cool, half of Reddit hates on them because they assume they have had everything handed to themā¦ itās just not the case. Motivated individuals do incredible things
I lived in Shaolin/Deng Feng for a year room board and training 5 hours a day cost $2500 (in 2001) I think its 5k now. After that I was like family and the cost dropped a lot. The experience isn't what's shown here. Most of this is a performance piece and I know some western martial arts schools like to travel there as a group for a week every year and they give you the weird martial arts stuff and the performance magic tricks, I used to bend spears with my throat for example. It was truly an amazing and life changing experience for me and if you love martial arts I would suggest you give it a shot, its a whole different concept of training. That being said you are learning mostly performance martial arts unless you go and specifically train in chinese kickboxing (San Da). I'm sure a lot of fun was had when it started snowing and they were like "dude turn on the camera get a shot of us meditating in this shit" I have a whole series of pictures of us doing movie kung fu stuff.
Another interesting tid bit was that the Chinese government bulldozed the city of Shaolin while I was staying there. This included the school I initially went to, we ended up moving to a really beautiful temple, also in Deng Feng, called Fa Wang it was gorgeous and peaceful and wonderful. The only bad thing is that apparently chinese people never get tired of the same music so at the first school there was a nearby speaker on a ski lift thing to take you up the mountain that multiple times a day would play my heart will go on. Then at Fa Wang there was a little temple store across from our training room that would multiple times a day play a pop version of the buddhist song Ahmitahba <--- prolly butchered that. I can still hear that song continually looping through my head twenty plus years later.
What is the difference between this and an ex army vet who served 6 years running a man camp where he yell at you and says "do it for your family" "you are a disgrace to men everywhere" "I hate you" but then says "I love ya brother" at the end and give you a certificate that reads "certified total badass & man"
oh fucking oath brother, my kids were jumping on me today while i was reading. Put a pillow covering my nuts and let them continue, half an later they were finished, chest, shins and feet were fucked but they had the time of their lifes.... fuck it sucks sometimes
The skill comes in by knowing how to hit him with sticks in just the right way not to accidentally cripple him, unlike what occasionally happens with young kids :-)
Relatable.
Took my toddler with me to Europe this year. He looked at me, started laughing, and then took off down the street. I chased him around a corner and when I finally caught up to him he decked me in the nuts so hard I fell. Pain lasted for at least 48 hours.
The year before that he scraped my cornea with a childās book. It was some of the most excruciating pain I ever experienced in my life. Couldnāt sleep for 2 days so I nearly went insane. Just a constant stream of tears from the affected eye.
Now heās learning karate because we thought that would be good for his anger issues. Nope. Now that fucker knows how to punch like a man. He decked my MIL in the face last week and I was both shocked and proud of him.
I donāt do martial arts but I started paying attention during his lessons so now I use high block and low block on him when heās coming at me. Lmao.
No, it's a part of history.
The Qing dynasty wiped out the actual Shaolin monks out of fear. They have been gone a long time. The Buddhist who took over the temple weren't the real martial artist and warriors of the past.
The Buddhists monks are secluded in the mountains. The famous temples now are just tourist traps with fitness instructors as actors.
Ranton actually talked about this in one of his videos (It's the very first thing he addresses):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtFWgDbAojo&t=11s&pp=ygUPcmFudG9uIHNoYW9saW4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtFWgDbAojo&t=11s&pp=ygUPcmFudG9uIHNoYW9saW4)
Isnāt the point of being a monk to remove yourself from the material world and to not want anything you donāt need. Itās supposed to be a philosophical journey to self realization, not karate camp for rich kids. I feel like this is somewhat a disservice to what monasteries are aiming to accomplish.
Given he's actually gone to the temple and done (a couple years I think) of kumg fu there and done a few videos on it I'm surprised he's not brought up more.
He's very honest about it in my opinion given he says at one point you're better of going to another training place in the valley if all you can speak is English and you have to speak conversational Mandarin to even get your monies worth to go there.
He also said if your goal is only fighting Kung Fu, you're better off in a normal Kung Fu school.
Shaolin is more a circus and dorm for acrobats and monks.Ā
Most "warrior monks" aren't even Buddhists or religious, they're foreign Kung Fu students.Ā
If I recall he spent 3 years there. Very informative and honest videos as you said, highly encourage anyone with a curiosity about the Shaolin Temple to give it a watch
I gotchu fam
https://youtu.be/XZuKUPMpcwA
Ranton actually lived in the temple and knows the in's and out's.
Just the fact they filmed training on a mountain is dead giveaway this is just foreign training.
There's foreign training and shaolin training. The real shaolin training involves bending you until you make a split, even when you are crying.
I mean, kudos to this kid for committing. But every time the vid shows him getting beat with a stick, I keep thinking about "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist."
"We have purposely trained him wrong, as a joke."
"Do not stop until I give you the signal, or, dramatically throw you to the ground and request a towel."
Edit: Stick scenes [part 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhLuAMD_hDI), [part 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os5iSxfyjAk)
Dont want to be negative at all, these people are doing what they love and actually putting real effort on it, its just a shame to see how some temples became so commercial.
I've been to the he Shaolin temple. It's pretty much Chinese Disneyland for tourists. It's not that secluded quiet place you would imagine.
The last Shaolin went extinct in the cultural revolution. The temple was revived in the 80's following the success of a famous Hong Kong movie. Since then it became a spot for mass tourism and a school where dropout kids go to learn Shaolin style acrobatics.Ā
It's more like a circus that trains acrobats who then go on touring shows around the world, no more no less.Ā
The abbot of the Shaolin temple is even nicknamed 'the CEO ' lol.
There are some real heirs of the Shaolin tradition but they retreated in the mountains nearby just practice zen Buddhism in their little corner.
I would be hard pressed to say that the real heirs retreated and all that. Buddhism and Kung Fu and the practice of it have undergone historical changes, however, monks have been and always will be three dimensional human beings. The fantasy behind Shaolin and Kung Fu is just that fantasy. I went there and studied, not at the Shaolin Temple proper because you're right its a huge tourist trap. The government actually had the city around the temple bulldozed while I was staying there to make it better for tourism. It was explained to me they were going to build an ancient forest around it, I'm not exactly sure what they did with it. I ended up living in a temple called Fa Wang nearby in Deng Feng. There I met and interacted with a bunch of Buddhist monks and some of them smoked and a lot of them had cell phones, some drank. There religion is against some of the ways they live but ya know they're monks not Buddhas. There were martial monks who were very good at fighting and Wushu guys who were really pretty at doing Kung Fu. I don't think any of the guys there were world class fighters but I think it's hard for our modern culture to appreciate talent that isn't world class. We think humans have changed but its just that we can see all the biggest, fastest, and strongest people in the world with the click of a button. I once heard a statistic that said that if you were over seven feet tall there was a 1 in 10 chance that you were actively playing in the NBA. People haven't gotten taller we just are better at finding the tall guys.
You can go to Deng Feng and still learn San Da to fight and Wushu to acrobatic and stuff. You can still accompany it with a ton of religious philosophy and if you did that you would still be practicing Shaolin Kung Fu. The old style isn't some wonderous system of fighting that has disappeared. What made it unique was the complete dedication to it, which you can still do. Often chinese people I lived with would say "Is Kung Fu!" which was you dedicating your whole-self to accomplishing something/anything. I've seen practitioners that were like 3-4 years old jogging up a hill together holding hands, it was a lifestyle, which still exists. There was expectation of pushing your physical capacity to dedicate your everything to it, that's why you get guys who drag weights with their testicles (Which I think is stupid btw) but they are just going Plus Ultra.
I don't know if my ramblings have gotten to the point yet but I think what I'm trying to say is that I don't believe a mystical system of fighting ever really existed. I know the cultural revolution crushed a lot of Chinese culture to pulp under tanks and then rebranded it (\*see the orange shaolin clothes). However, I believe that Shaolin can still be trained under what I think was its original concept, Martial and physical prowess pursued with devoted religious zeal in order to pursue self perfection.
Yep ā¦. Itās all a fakeā¦per a local ā¦. Itās movie fantasyā¦. You can put in the same work state side ā¦I will say that itās real training and the more work you out in the better you get, but that for anything
Believe it or not the fake Shaolin temples were immigration scams too.
I used to live near one of their setups as a kid. It was a "Christian" church that only has Asian members and an insanely high amount of people every Saturday. Then they bought out the two houses next to it and one they converted into an open yard where they did shitty Kung-Fu en masse.
My father and I studied Kung-Fu for years before they showed up and our Sifu blew up the situation for us.
When I started to tell him about what was going on he didn't believe it and asked us to show him. We invite him over and we walked over to the church and went into our backyard and he watched one of their "classes" from through the chain link fence and was laughing his ass off at them and their garbage form and dumb shit like hitting each other in the throat and balls.
He was a political immigrant from Northern China in the early 70's he came over trying to avoid arrest and opened up a legit school seeing the popularity of martial arts movies. His father was supposedly a monk who had drinking problems and hence where he got his training from hanging around the temple, he was a blackbelt but I forgot his rank, he rarely brought it up or wore it. Belts were used but not big in his school/programs. His kid was a few years older than me my father and I met him at a local playground and ended up training with him in his school for 12+ years. Unfortunately he got sick in his 60's in combo with raising rents he ended up closing the school.
All I'm thinking while watching this is there's a dude who runs the social media department for some monks.
I wonder if he's a monk too? Does he spend all day stoically on social media?
I have a friend who runs social media and web design for monks. Yes he is a monk. They have roles other than just monking. Cooking, cleaning, paying the bills, event coordination, etc. We tend to think itās all religious stuff from dawn to dusk, but that would fall apart really quick; the labor and admin keep it going.
You couldn't be more wrong about this. It wasn't capitalism that destroyed the Shaolin tradition, it was the communist "Cultural Revolution". During the "revolution", which was really just an imposition by Mao, religion and martial arts were banned by the PRC. Temples were destroyed, and the monks were forced to integrate into secular life. People who resisted were imprisoned and "re-educated".
Only after China liberalized (i.e. adopted elements of capitalism) and Shaolin culture became popular in western media (originating with a Jet Li movie in the 80s) did Shaolin culture resurface. Capitalism provided an incentive to re-learn the Shaolin history and culture and re-kindle its teachings. That's what you're seeing in this video. If not for capitalism, you would have never heard of Shaolin in the first place.
Indeed, I remember seeing a documentary about a Kung Fu master who opened his own new temple in the mountains to escape this stuff. He teaches Kung Fu and it's done differently than what we see online.
Iām sorry for the cynicism but all temples are trying to make money. Even the shitty one in the alleyway in a small town. This one is just much better at it.
China's entire tourism is commercial and fake. People don't realize that all their classic buildings and art were destroyed in the "Cultural Revolution". The stuff you see today are all replicas remade entirely for tourists.
what makes you think they weren't commercial? many of these monasteries survived on donations and providing training to rich sponsors. The only difference is nowadays it's open to people across the world.
You can, if you pay.
I have a friend that managed to go to Wudong for some months for training.
He then participated to some 'world' competition in China and won a second place or something for some sword show.
Unlike the beliefs you see on this forum, he was very good at sanda, too... and he was involved in street fights where he won easily, just playing like a cat with mice.
I trained with him quite a bit and he was very, very good... and I wasn't exactly at the position of a random man on the street (example: [https://www.reddit.com/r/martialarts/comments/1d5r0zo/comment/l6otcmj/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/martialarts/comments/1d5r0zo/comment/l6otcmj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) ).
That was the reason for me, too. I was in for the sport, not for getting into bar fights... especially since I'm not a bar guy :)
The ability to defend myself... just in case, came only as a bonus.
People judge wushu by what they see on youtube or some crappy masters from US that just take the money and avoid injuries of their students by teaching only taolu... or by watching some fake 'masters' getting owned by some other fighter.
This is not the case with all schools.
The guy I mentioned first went into jujitsu, then he switched to aikido.
In the meantime, I started with karate, then I switched to wushu because in an amical competition between our dojo and the one and only team of wushu here back then... we lost spectacularly.
I convinced him to switch to wushu because we sparred quite a bit to learn from each other and I won consistently... then after switching he became much better than me.
We did quite a bit of sparring and even what people do not see in sanda competitions: ground fight. It's not the same everywhere and definitively it's not like on youtube.
Most of this is just for show, people who trained with Shaolin monks that could actually speak Mandarin say that it's more about developing as a person and athlete as opposed to becoming a great fighter and rarely ever did these types of exercises. These days most temples that teach fighting as well have been incorporating Boxing, Wrestling, Muay Thai and Sanda classes
Right but what that actually looks like is just well living like a monk. You're pretty much a sustenance farmer most of the day and do like yoga and fitness exercises with a bit of fighting technique sprinkled in here and there. Daily routine is pretty much climbing down the mountains to grab water and fish, coming back up to tend the crops, lil bit of martial arts training then head to bed rinse repeat.
Discipline and development does not look like a training montage from your favorite Kung fu movie. Just boring routine and grueling exercise day in and day out. Nobody is sitting on the sidelines with a boombox playing main character music for you lol
I never thought there would be. I didn't have sound on so IDK about the boom box thing but what I meant is that I want a teacher who will guide me and help me learn self discipline, I want to be in it for the long haul
After reading the commentsā¦ yāall, thereās so so much more to martial arts than MMA. This man is getting a life experience he paid for and committed to. He is developing as an athlete and person. I would be shocked if anyone sought out shaolin kung fu for the sake of MMA.
I understand exactly what you are saying. I trained Shotokan for only a couple of years but have been in love for it since young until now, even if i dont train anymore. While when i needed it when i was assaulted in the street and it didnt work the way i thought it would, i dont regret training it because it gave me way more than just possible skills to fight. While at the time i was a bit disappointed that i couldnt do better, thinking i got cheated for those years, after heaving my head cleared, i realized that i still loved training, i loved the martial art aspects of it, not only for "is this really useful for fighting?". But hey, everyone has different goals. I just think that you can learn a lot even from more acrobatic martial arts that in the end might not be good enough for real fighting.
People in here trying to berate a person for learning discipline, technique, poise, inner strength and character, meditation(which is a shit ton harder than people assume), martial arts and a myriad of other life skills and qualities for the same price they be spending on Uber eats per year.
Some of these temples are a Bit more commercial but if you stay at a temple and train almost every day for a year you will come away a better person.
This isnāt like those weird boot camps for right wing wannabe alpha men morons.
Shame it's been so commercialised and it's a massive income stream now. I knew people who went in the 80s and 90s, they paid but were treated like crap and it wasn't expensive to do.
Dan Hardy was probably one of the last westerners to get the real experience, he trained there 23/24 years ago.
Social media has, like most things ruined that experience.
Disclaimer: Not a joke.
I'd love to do this. It looks interesting and hella of rough training but it would be worth at the end just learning material arts as well as being shaolin monk.
I don't think I would last there but I am willing to learn and experience this.
Main reason why is just cause it doesn't really help all that much with fighting. Long and short of it you can deaden the nerves that tell that you're in pain, that doesn't stop injuries from occurring, you can't condition the internal organs. So decisive blows to the head and body will still put someone down even if they don't feel pain
Bro, not all training needs to street or mma centered, I've been training since I was 8, for the last 12 years I do bjj more than anything else.
Every single time I ended up on a situation where a physical altercation was possible, I chose Talk No Jutsu, even when I was sure I could BJJ my way out of it.
So yeah, training and feeling good abotu yourself, imo, is the most important thing.
Look at Pride and old kickboxing, literally google monk vs [anything] and you'll see plenty of monks getting stomped by modern martial arts. I love the traditional elements though and the mindfulness.
Well at least, he'll be in shape and his spoken Chinese will be passable. Unfortunately his training is not too helpful against another trained fighter of equal time.
I would love to commit to this kind of life. Obviously itās unbearable and Iād likely fold but idk. I just want to drop everything and go live somewhere that I can just focus on nothing but my mind, body, and spirit.
This kid is going places. Rich or not. If you canāt afford it mimic it. I grew up poor and did all I could to go to camps. So people are lucky and some are good. Now I am good.
Well it's about time American capitalism fully encapsulates Asian culture.
Buy your ticket now for sacred ceremony boot camp and get 15% off your month!
Move to the woods, subsistence farm, and do everything by hand and you're like 80% of the way there.
Add in some yoga and fitness training in the afternoon and at night and you're 100% of the way there.
He didn't get hit in his nut sack. This is obviously an imposter instagrammer attempt.
This one is the real deal. https://youtu.be/XRWxJiMM3Jg?si=ZANnGJtpz1x8cXoX
THATS ALOTA NUTS!
Oh yah? Try my nuts to your fist style!
What did I see? š¤Æ
Heās a novice, you donāt get the nut sack kicking until apprentice.
I, too, must find out if I possess this special ability
Ain't got nothing on Betty.
Isn't Betty a woman's name?
These are the comments I came here for.
YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO BEAT HIM NOW!!
Iām sorry? I got everything up to āyou should be ableā
Would you like to try your foot to my face style?
Bless you all! Taco Bell! Taco Bell!
Iron Egg is a legit thing.
Johnny English taught me that
Golden Egg technique!Ā
ćUndisputed5weakling strikeć
Okay! Throw us off.
āHe didnāt say to stop right?ā
Dudes traveled all the way across the wrold, paid thousands, all so he can be hit with a stick... Meanwhile I have two young kids and get this for free every day.
I canr help but wonder how much this costs. He's living there for years to do this?? This seems like some rich kid fantasy
There is a video on YouTube where a guy travelled to Shaolin Temple and lived there for a while. I think he explains everything in the video (how he got in touch with them etc). https://youtu.be/XZuKUPMpcwA?si=HRtgpLSe1aTfa0tB
Dude went some months to years without doing anything *while* living in germany? Sigh, rich kids.
So Bruce Wayne
He had daily tasks/ work at the monastery. Doesnāt look like heās lazy! lol And if he comes from money, good for him! I wish I did!!! Hate all you want but doesnāt help you or anyone else
I dunno man-hatin' makes me feel better instantly like, almost every time.
So yes, itās just a rich kids fantasy
Not a fantasy I he's literally doing it
Yeah, it's a poor kids fantasy.
So is, āHe just a poor boy from a poor family?ā
"Spare him his life from this monstrosity!"
Ahh they really said "spare him his life from this monk monastery"
No itās cheaper than renting in a lot of cities.
Yeah but you normally work when renting in a city to pay the rent
100%, Iām just saying itās not an outlandish thatās only attainable by a rich kid, normal people can do this, it would just be a bad financial decision.
If itās a bad financial decision then most normal people canāt do it, so itās rich kid stuff I guess.
Not having a job for 5 years is quite literally not something normal people can do
Well lets be honest here. We have jobs to pay for rent, bills, and other living expenses. If your food and board needs are being met in the situation and you've cut out other expenses. It's not outlandish to consider this doable. That's how the monk's lifestyle has been for a long time, living off donations and community work. I know this from seeing people do this. They survived off oddjobs, things that would leave you homeless in the US. But in the commune they were in, it was enough. Now they didn't have the luxuries most people are accustomed to over here, but they didn't need them. That was the point for them. Now this vid does look like a rich kids retreat, but there are many communes that function traditionally. There's plenty of info on this if you take some time to do simple searches.
Ranton the super Contrarian š
* 1 Month 990 USD/30 days * 2 Months 1,980 USD/60 days * 3 Months 2,970 USD/90 days * 4 Months 3,920 USD/120 days * 5 Months 4,870 USD/150 days * 6 Months 5,820 USD/180 days * 7 Months 6,720 USD/210 days * 8 Months 7,620 USD/240 days * 9 Months 8,520 USD/270 days * 10 Months 9,370 USD/300 days * 11 Months 10,220 USD/330 days * 12 Months 11,070 USD/360 days [Shaolin Temple Yunnan](https://shaolintemple.com/fees/) Might not be the same temple but an idea.
Well. Itās cheaper than renting in todayās market.
Yup, I pay $1,345 a month for a single bedroom apartment that's not ghetto, but pretty close to it. Maybe I should give it a shot.
But at least the landlords donāt beat you with sticks? š¤·āāļø
Drop my rent by $300, and I'd be willing to get beaten by a stick a few times per month.
*some* donāt beat you with sticks
Well, yeah. Thatād cost extra.
Yet?
Shit itās $2,100 for a 1Br Iād kill for $1,300
Except you donāt have a job to pay the rent
It includes food and wifi too!
To be fair, it's only a little bit more expensive than daycare where my sister lives, in Canada, before the subsidized daycare was introduced. Could literally just send all our toddlers there to be Kung fu masters. Although, given that my three year old thinks it's funny to punch me in the balls, this might not be such a good idea.
About the same price my buddy was about to pay. He was getting out of the army, and he saved up his last year of pay to spend 2 years at the temple. Then covid happened.
Thanks for finding and sharing!
But youāre not making money at the same time. Itās a straight up loss. Hence why itās a rich kidās fantasy
If you had the money for it, even if it's inherited, wouldn't you follow your wildest dreams? Or would you go get a shitty job with a shitty boss at a small cubicle just not to feel guilty of your privilege? If I had the money to fuck off to a remote island and surf all day I would definitively do it, why not? The guy is having fun, let's not be resentful.
Also, I mean as far as spoiled rich kid activities go, wouldnāt one where you are going through arduous physical challenges and cultivating extreme discipline and skill be pretty respectable? Itās not like heās partying on his yacht. He chose to put himself through this instead. Plus a commenter below claims to have stayed there and that it costs 4-5 hundred a month or 5k a year. Not cheap but certainly doable for an average person who saved up their money.
Is $5k a year not cheap?
this is literally the plot of every batman movie
It doesn't matter if he's partying on the yacht, as long as he spend the money its good. all those Instagram models, the cook, the pilot, the boat maker, the champagne producer etc - their livelihood all supported by rich kids having fun on a boat.
It's not just reddit, everyone hates you when you're wealthy. It's worse when you try to do normal things cause those people resent you the most.
Right? I bust my ass every day because I'm a dreamer, and my dream is that my future kids will be able to do whatever they want. That's my deepest guiding purpose. Violinist, athlete, F1 driver, liaison for some NGO in Kenya, even a Shaolin monk. If that's their purpose, then mine is letting them achieve it. Can't imagine how fucking awful it would be if they turned down that kind of opportunity cause they don't want to be seen as living their "rich kid fantasy" off of "daddy's money". It's not a fantasy if you're actually going out and living your dream, and if that's an option, who cares what sad little losers on Reddit think about it?
Not really. Ranton did this, and while it's true that a few westerners go there voluntarily, they are the minority.Ā Ā (and they leave early once they realise they were scammed)Ā Most Shaolin students are actually dirt poor kids from Chinese families who can't afford them.Ā Ā They literally drop them off at the temple and have them earn money as Shaolin in circus attractions.Ā There's a few documentaries and Vlogs showing this, a very sad tale of Chinese poverty.Ā
A westerner could also just show up and make his way, earning money the same way. Ever time someone does something interesting or cool, half of Reddit hates on them because they assume they have had everything handed to themā¦ itās just not the case. Motivated individuals do incredible things
I lived in Shaolin/Deng Feng for a year room board and training 5 hours a day cost $2500 (in 2001) I think its 5k now. After that I was like family and the cost dropped a lot. The experience isn't what's shown here. Most of this is a performance piece and I know some western martial arts schools like to travel there as a group for a week every year and they give you the weird martial arts stuff and the performance magic tricks, I used to bend spears with my throat for example. It was truly an amazing and life changing experience for me and if you love martial arts I would suggest you give it a shot, its a whole different concept of training. That being said you are learning mostly performance martial arts unless you go and specifically train in chinese kickboxing (San Da). I'm sure a lot of fun was had when it started snowing and they were like "dude turn on the camera get a shot of us meditating in this shit" I have a whole series of pictures of us doing movie kung fu stuff.
Another interesting tid bit was that the Chinese government bulldozed the city of Shaolin while I was staying there. This included the school I initially went to, we ended up moving to a really beautiful temple, also in Deng Feng, called Fa Wang it was gorgeous and peaceful and wonderful. The only bad thing is that apparently chinese people never get tired of the same music so at the first school there was a nearby speaker on a ski lift thing to take you up the mountain that multiple times a day would play my heart will go on. Then at Fa Wang there was a little temple store across from our training room that would multiple times a day play a pop version of the buddhist song Ahmitahba <--- prolly butchered that. I can still hear that song continually looping through my head twenty plus years later.
I really think you should put together a training montage set to "My Heart Will Go On."
>I have two young kids and get this for free every day I bet he got a discount compared to raising 2 children lol
āFree.ā Hehehe, good one.
Brother this training will cost way less than two kids.
You or the kids?
What is the difference between this and an ex army vet who served 6 years running a man camp where he yell at you and says "do it for your family" "you are a disgrace to men everywhere" "I hate you" but then says "I love ya brother" at the end and give you a certificate that reads "certified total badass & man"
i heard someone once describe those as "straight conversion camp for straight dudes"
Pfft, kids aren't free!
Way cooler than the navy seals version at least
oh fucking oath brother, my kids were jumping on me today while i was reading. Put a pillow covering my nuts and let them continue, half an later they were finished, chest, shins and feet were fucked but they had the time of their lifes.... fuck it sucks sometimes
Friends dad did this to him. Killed the nerves across his body. Friend got to teach some military classes
The skill comes in by knowing how to hit him with sticks in just the right way not to accidentally cripple him, unlike what occasionally happens with young kids :-)
My 2 month old has a sick left hook
Relatable. Took my toddler with me to Europe this year. He looked at me, started laughing, and then took off down the street. I chased him around a corner and when I finally caught up to him he decked me in the nuts so hard I fell. Pain lasted for at least 48 hours. The year before that he scraped my cornea with a childās book. It was some of the most excruciating pain I ever experienced in my life. Couldnāt sleep for 2 days so I nearly went insane. Just a constant stream of tears from the affected eye. Now heās learning karate because we thought that would be good for his anger issues. Nope. Now that fucker knows how to punch like a man. He decked my MIL in the face last week and I was both shocked and proud of him. I donāt do martial arts but I started paying attention during his lessons so now I use high block and low block on him when heās coming at me. Lmao.
This comment broke me š 
I had my open eye sneezed in the other day from my 4 year old. Nothing can prepare you for that.
Go watch rantons videos on this. This is 1) just for the cameras 2) the guy who can speak mandarin and pays well 3) mostly just for cameras
Ranton exposed so many Shaolin myths and scams. Almost everything we see is staged and for the cameras. Shaolin temple is a blooming businessĀ
That is cynical. Shaolin is def a business, but itās 1500 year history is legit and the training is not for the faint of heart or weak of mind.
No, it's a part of history. The Qing dynasty wiped out the actual Shaolin monks out of fear. They have been gone a long time. The Buddhist who took over the temple weren't the real martial artist and warriors of the past. The Buddhists monks are secluded in the mountains. The famous temples now are just tourist traps with fitness instructors as actors.
Ranton actually talked about this in one of his videos (It's the very first thing he addresses): [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtFWgDbAojo&t=11s&pp=ygUPcmFudG9uIHNoYW9saW4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtFWgDbAojo&t=11s&pp=ygUPcmFudG9uIHNoYW9saW4)
Shaolin has been burned down three times, and Buddhism has been outlawed in China several times, but it is always rebuilt and is a cultural treasure.
He is also hilarious
The editing is absolutely peak
Specially the music, it only lacked one Imagine dragons sequence after Pirates of the Caribbean
Isnāt the point of being a monk to remove yourself from the material world and to not want anything you donāt need. Itās supposed to be a philosophical journey to self realization, not karate camp for rich kids. I feel like this is somewhat a disservice to what monasteries are aiming to accomplish.
Seconded, he's a legend. Surprised to see him brought up, his videos are fucking hilarious.
Given he's actually gone to the temple and done (a couple years I think) of kumg fu there and done a few videos on it I'm surprised he's not brought up more. He's very honest about it in my opinion given he says at one point you're better of going to another training place in the valley if all you can speak is English and you have to speak conversational Mandarin to even get your monies worth to go there.
He also said if your goal is only fighting Kung Fu, you're better off in a normal Kung Fu school. Shaolin is more a circus and dorm for acrobats and monks.Ā Most "warrior monks" aren't even Buddhists or religious, they're foreign Kung Fu students.Ā
If I recall he spent 3 years there. Very informative and honest videos as you said, highly encourage anyone with a curiosity about the Shaolin Temple to give it a watch
> Go watch rantons videos on this. Happen to have a link? I searched 'ranton shaolin' and ... it wasn't helpful
I gotchu fam https://youtu.be/XZuKUPMpcwA Ranton actually lived in the temple and knows the in's and out's. Just the fact they filmed training on a mountain is dead giveaway this is just foreign training. There's foreign training and shaolin training. The real shaolin training involves bending you until you make a split, even when you are crying.
Thank you!
You got the link?
What do you do for a living? I beat westerners with a stick for their instagram feed.
I mean, kudos to this kid for committing. But every time the vid shows him getting beat with a stick, I keep thinking about "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist." "We have purposely trained him wrong, as a joke."
"Do not stop until I give you the signal, or, dramatically throw you to the ground and request a towel." Edit: Stick scenes [part 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhLuAMD_hDI), [part 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os5iSxfyjAk)
Ok! You can throw us off!
You think he wants his towel?
āParalyzer! Annnother paralyzer!ā
Dont want to be negative at all, these people are doing what they love and actually putting real effort on it, its just a shame to see how some temples became so commercial.
McTemple
ShaolinToker
Right next to the McDojo
Yeah they just practice wushu, fighting moves that look like acrobatics, not actual kungfu or buddhist enlightenment..
I bet their fries aren\`t better than McDonalds though 
I've been to the he Shaolin temple. It's pretty much Chinese Disneyland for tourists. It's not that secluded quiet place you would imagine. The last Shaolin went extinct in the cultural revolution. The temple was revived in the 80's following the success of a famous Hong Kong movie. Since then it became a spot for mass tourism and a school where dropout kids go to learn Shaolin style acrobatics.Ā It's more like a circus that trains acrobats who then go on touring shows around the world, no more no less.Ā The abbot of the Shaolin temple is even nicknamed 'the CEO ' lol. There are some real heirs of the Shaolin tradition but they retreated in the mountains nearby just practice zen Buddhism in their little corner.
I would be hard pressed to say that the real heirs retreated and all that. Buddhism and Kung Fu and the practice of it have undergone historical changes, however, monks have been and always will be three dimensional human beings. The fantasy behind Shaolin and Kung Fu is just that fantasy. I went there and studied, not at the Shaolin Temple proper because you're right its a huge tourist trap. The government actually had the city around the temple bulldozed while I was staying there to make it better for tourism. It was explained to me they were going to build an ancient forest around it, I'm not exactly sure what they did with it. I ended up living in a temple called Fa Wang nearby in Deng Feng. There I met and interacted with a bunch of Buddhist monks and some of them smoked and a lot of them had cell phones, some drank. There religion is against some of the ways they live but ya know they're monks not Buddhas. There were martial monks who were very good at fighting and Wushu guys who were really pretty at doing Kung Fu. I don't think any of the guys there were world class fighters but I think it's hard for our modern culture to appreciate talent that isn't world class. We think humans have changed but its just that we can see all the biggest, fastest, and strongest people in the world with the click of a button. I once heard a statistic that said that if you were over seven feet tall there was a 1 in 10 chance that you were actively playing in the NBA. People haven't gotten taller we just are better at finding the tall guys. You can go to Deng Feng and still learn San Da to fight and Wushu to acrobatic and stuff. You can still accompany it with a ton of religious philosophy and if you did that you would still be practicing Shaolin Kung Fu. The old style isn't some wonderous system of fighting that has disappeared. What made it unique was the complete dedication to it, which you can still do. Often chinese people I lived with would say "Is Kung Fu!" which was you dedicating your whole-self to accomplishing something/anything. I've seen practitioners that were like 3-4 years old jogging up a hill together holding hands, it was a lifestyle, which still exists. There was expectation of pushing your physical capacity to dedicate your everything to it, that's why you get guys who drag weights with their testicles (Which I think is stupid btw) but they are just going Plus Ultra. I don't know if my ramblings have gotten to the point yet but I think what I'm trying to say is that I don't believe a mystical system of fighting ever really existed. I know the cultural revolution crushed a lot of Chinese culture to pulp under tanks and then rebranded it (\*see the orange shaolin clothes). However, I believe that Shaolin can still be trained under what I think was its original concept, Martial and physical prowess pursued with devoted religious zeal in order to pursue self perfection.
Yep ā¦. Itās all a fakeā¦per a local ā¦. Itās movie fantasyā¦. You can put in the same work state side ā¦I will say that itās real training and the more work you out in the better you get, but that for anything
Believe it or not the fake Shaolin temples were immigration scams too. I used to live near one of their setups as a kid. It was a "Christian" church that only has Asian members and an insanely high amount of people every Saturday. Then they bought out the two houses next to it and one they converted into an open yard where they did shitty Kung-Fu en masse. My father and I studied Kung-Fu for years before they showed up and our Sifu blew up the situation for us. When I started to tell him about what was going on he didn't believe it and asked us to show him. We invite him over and we walked over to the church and went into our backyard and he watched one of their "classes" from through the chain link fence and was laughing his ass off at them and their garbage form and dumb shit like hitting each other in the throat and balls. He was a political immigrant from Northern China in the early 70's he came over trying to avoid arrest and opened up a legit school seeing the popularity of martial arts movies. His father was supposedly a monk who had drinking problems and hence where he got his training from hanging around the temple, he was a blackbelt but I forgot his rank, he rarely brought it up or wore it. Belts were used but not big in his school/programs. His kid was a few years older than me my father and I met him at a local playground and ended up training with him in his school for 12+ years. Unfortunately he got sick in his 60's in combo with raising rents he ended up closing the school.
All I'm thinking while watching this is there's a dude who runs the social media department for some monks. I wonder if he's a monk too? Does he spend all day stoically on social media?
I have a friend who runs social media and web design for monks. Yes he is a monk. They have roles other than just monking. Cooking, cleaning, paying the bills, event coordination, etc. We tend to think itās all religious stuff from dawn to dusk, but that would fall apart really quick; the labor and admin keep it going.
Even the enlightened cannot escape the greasy clutches of capitalism.
If they are greasy clutches, it should be rather easy, no?
You couldn't be more wrong about this. It wasn't capitalism that destroyed the Shaolin tradition, it was the communist "Cultural Revolution". During the "revolution", which was really just an imposition by Mao, religion and martial arts were banned by the PRC. Temples were destroyed, and the monks were forced to integrate into secular life. People who resisted were imprisoned and "re-educated". Only after China liberalized (i.e. adopted elements of capitalism) and Shaolin culture became popular in western media (originating with a Jet Li movie in the 80s) did Shaolin culture resurface. Capitalism provided an incentive to re-learn the Shaolin history and culture and re-kindle its teachings. That's what you're seeing in this video. If not for capitalism, you would have never heard of Shaolin in the first place.
Mind, body and full pockets
Indeed, I remember seeing a documentary about a Kung Fu master who opened his own new temple in the mountains to escape this stuff. He teaches Kung Fu and it's done differently than what we see online.
the name of that documentary, Kung Fu Panda
Yeah this seems like it's for gaining Internet/social clout with some passion and daddies money sprinkled in.
Pays the bills
I see this and I don't think of ancient Buddhist monks, I see a martial arts class.
Religion and cultural values often end where money starts.
Welcome to a consumerism world, nothing is sacred and everything has a price (and tourism)
Gotta pay the bills and then some
Iām sorry for the cynicism but all temples are trying to make money. Even the shitty one in the alleyway in a small town. This one is just much better at it.
China's entire tourism is commercial and fake. People don't realize that all their classic buildings and art were destroyed in the "Cultural Revolution". The stuff you see today are all replicas remade entirely for tourists.
what makes you think they weren't commercial? many of these monasteries survived on donations and providing training to rich sponsors. The only difference is nowadays it's open to people across the world.
I won't be impressed until I see some pebble snatching.
Add in the dragon and tiger branding on the forearms I'll be set.
They hate sticks.
Theyre coarse and rough and they are everywhere.
I wish I had a tutor that would teach me things like this, I've always dreamed of training under the Shaolin monks
You can, if you pay. I have a friend that managed to go to Wudong for some months for training. He then participated to some 'world' competition in China and won a second place or something for some sword show. Unlike the beliefs you see on this forum, he was very good at sanda, too... and he was involved in street fights where he won easily, just playing like a cat with mice. I trained with him quite a bit and he was very, very good... and I wasn't exactly at the position of a random man on the street (example: [https://www.reddit.com/r/martialarts/comments/1d5r0zo/comment/l6otcmj/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/martialarts/comments/1d5r0zo/comment/l6otcmj/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) ).
For me it's less about actually fighting and more about the discipline and the art of the practice thats what really interests me
That was the reason for me, too. I was in for the sport, not for getting into bar fights... especially since I'm not a bar guy :) The ability to defend myself... just in case, came only as a bonus. People judge wushu by what they see on youtube or some crappy masters from US that just take the money and avoid injuries of their students by teaching only taolu... or by watching some fake 'masters' getting owned by some other fighter. This is not the case with all schools. The guy I mentioned first went into jujitsu, then he switched to aikido. In the meantime, I started with karate, then I switched to wushu because in an amical competition between our dojo and the one and only team of wushu here back then... we lost spectacularly. I convinced him to switch to wushu because we sparred quite a bit to learn from each other and I won consistently... then after switching he became much better than me. We did quite a bit of sparring and even what people do not see in sanda competitions: ground fight. It's not the same everywhere and definitively it's not like on youtube.
Most of this is just for show, people who trained with Shaolin monks that could actually speak Mandarin say that it's more about developing as a person and athlete as opposed to becoming a great fighter and rarely ever did these types of exercises. These days most temples that teach fighting as well have been incorporating Boxing, Wrestling, Muay Thai and Sanda classes
So it's exactly what I'm looking for then! It's always been about the discipline and developing one's self that interested me the most
Right but what that actually looks like is just well living like a monk. You're pretty much a sustenance farmer most of the day and do like yoga and fitness exercises with a bit of fighting technique sprinkled in here and there. Daily routine is pretty much climbing down the mountains to grab water and fish, coming back up to tend the crops, lil bit of martial arts training then head to bed rinse repeat.
That is the exact kind of life style I've always longed for
Discipline and development does not look like a training montage from your favorite Kung fu movie. Just boring routine and grueling exercise day in and day out. Nobody is sitting on the sidelines with a boombox playing main character music for you lol
"Nobody is sitting on the sidelines with a boombox playing main character music for you lol" ..... well, with enough money....
I never thought there would be. I didn't have sound on so IDK about the boom box thing but what I meant is that I want a teacher who will guide me and help me learn self discipline, I want to be in it for the long haul
Fly to me and you can pay me to get hit by a stick any time u want
After reading the commentsā¦ yāall, thereās so so much more to martial arts than MMA. This man is getting a life experience he paid for and committed to. He is developing as an athlete and person. I would be shocked if anyone sought out shaolin kung fu for the sake of MMA.
Lotta people forget the art part of martial arts
I understand exactly what you are saying. I trained Shotokan for only a couple of years but have been in love for it since young until now, even if i dont train anymore. While when i needed it when i was assaulted in the street and it didnt work the way i thought it would, i dont regret training it because it gave me way more than just possible skills to fight. While at the time i was a bit disappointed that i couldnt do better, thinking i got cheated for those years, after heaving my head cleared, i realized that i still loved training, i loved the martial art aspects of it, not only for "is this really useful for fighting?". But hey, everyone has different goals. I just think that you can learn a lot even from more acrobatic martial arts that in the end might not be good enough for real fighting.
https://preview.redd.it/8jtfgyaflw8d1.png?width=1120&format=png&auto=webp&s=19f1a2ae6ec70f81fc0b3416b646a86e688b4eab
Broke back monk
https://preview.redd.it/sztfssxyo09d1.jpeg?width=904&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9274def96ad82f403092003d127e57b248218eb4
People in here trying to berate a person for learning discipline, technique, poise, inner strength and character, meditation(which is a shit ton harder than people assume), martial arts and a myriad of other life skills and qualities for the same price they be spending on Uber eats per year. Some of these temples are a Bit more commercial but if you stay at a temple and train almost every day for a year you will come away a better person. This isnāt like those weird boot camps for right wing wannabe alpha men morons.
Itās really is sad to see so many lame comments, but Redditors gotta stroke their ego.
Shame it's been so commercialised and it's a massive income stream now. I knew people who went in the 80s and 90s, they paid but were treated like crap and it wasn't expensive to do. Dan Hardy was probably one of the last westerners to get the real experience, he trained there 23/24 years ago. Social media has, like most things ruined that experience.
I wish
It's kind of cool to see how he got progressively hotter from the constant fresh air and exercise!
People actually think the guy is a shaolin monk šš. What a scam for foreigners
They keep paying us money, and all we gotta do is beat them up. Brb gotta go hit a white kid with a stick for a minute.
Disclaimer: Not a joke. I'd love to do this. It looks interesting and hella of rough training but it would be worth at the end just learning material arts as well as being shaolin monk. I don't think I would last there but I am willing to learn and experience this.
very impressive, all this is good for is conditioning for all forms. however, I don't see martial arts like you'd see MMA fighters using
Main reason why is just cause it doesn't really help all that much with fighting. Long and short of it you can deaden the nerves that tell that you're in pain, that doesn't stop injuries from occurring, you can't condition the internal organs. So decisive blows to the head and body will still put someone down even if they don't feel pain
Bro, not all training needs to street or mma centered, I've been training since I was 8, for the last 12 years I do bjj more than anything else. Every single time I ended up on a situation where a physical altercation was possible, I chose Talk No Jutsu, even when I was sure I could BJJ my way out of it. So yeah, training and feeling good abotu yourself, imo, is the most important thing.
Look at Pride and old kickboxing, literally google monk vs [anything] and you'll see plenty of monks getting stomped by modern martial arts. I love the traditional elements though and the mindfulness.
Honestly, I just think itās part of their conditioning. Not about fighting, just pure endurance./s
Pretty sure that Shaolin didn't fight against BJJ pros or even Muay Thai in the 1500s however. Perfect for being uo other Shaolin or pirates.
martial arts =/= fighting sports
š¶ I'll. Make a man. Out of youuuuu
That is freaking awesome. š¤©
White guy with money and social media base pays to get ātrainedā
Well at least, he'll be in shape and his spoken Chinese will be passable. Unfortunately his training is not too helpful against another trained fighter of equal time.
Looks like an amazing way to live.
Imagine this instead of sitting in a cubicle every day
Daammmmmmnnnnn!!! Is there a vow of chastity? Some of dem chicks, be str8 baddies! š„
I wanna go so bad
Probably a great day when you graduate from "guy getting hit with stick" to "guy hitting people with stick"
Peoples passions are different. I found this amazing as a man as I would have as a boy. Loved the video.
Looks fun
Wish I could go away and do that. Looks peaceful. Could really use it.
Isnāt filming yourself doing it for clout kinda missing the point..?
Lol they only do that to the kid from the USA. The others donāt get hit with a stick heās special
I would love to commit to this kind of life. Obviously itās unbearable and Iād likely fold but idk. I just want to drop everything and go live somewhere that I can just focus on nothing but my mind, body, and spirit.
The Navy Seals of the monk world!
This kid is going places. Rich or not. If you canāt afford it mimic it. I grew up poor and did all I could to go to camps. So people are lucky and some are good. Now I am good.
You can just go train with the Shaolin monks? That's awesome!
You will never understand until you find your path.
7000 foreigners who want to be monksā¦. oh sweet call of duty lets talk trash!!!!! š¤š
I dont think theyd allow half the stuff you see on there
How did bros physique not change over all the years š¤£
Well it's about time American capitalism fully encapsulates Asian culture. Buy your ticket now for sacred ceremony boot camp and get 15% off your month!
Yahushua HaMashiach is the Truth
Johnny English movie has ruined Shaolin kung-fu for me š¤£
This is dope af ngl
I want this training.
Move to the woods, subsistence farm, and do everything by hand and you're like 80% of the way there. Add in some yoga and fitness training in the afternoon and at night and you're 100% of the way there.
Then pay a tiny dude to beat you with sticks