Shaolin Monks playing video games and a place called heaven

October 18, 2011. Written in Dengfeng, China

On Saturday morning, my first so called "early morning practice" at the Shaolin school was supposed to start at 5:30. I heard the mobile phone of Michael (an Englishman fluent in Chinese staying in the same room) ringing once, but neither did he wake up, nor the Korean kid Hanwei. I closed my eyes again to get some more sleep. Michael told me that Hanwei's alarm clock would be so loud that you can't miss it, so I decided to just wait for that.

The next time I opened my eyes, it was not dark anymore. I was shocked by this fact, and got out of my bed right away. Michael and Hanwei were still sleeping. When I looked at the clock, I noticed that it was almost 8. I woke up Michael to tell him that we had overslept.
"There was no training this morning," he said.
"What?" I asked.
"I went out to check, but it was way too windy man. It was like a tornado! They told me to go back inside. Nothing's ever happened like this before."
I was not sure whether to believe him, because I remember seeing him close his eyes again after putting off his phone, and besides, I remember having heard some of the kids laughing outside in the early morning. But then again, it was still pretty windy outside even now.
I guess I will never know...

After having done some training, we got off for the rest of the day. Not because of the wind, but because it was Saturday. The kids were running around happily enjoying their playtime.

Together with Michael and Hanwei, I went downtown to have some fastfood. Michael said he has to go and eat outside every weekend, or else he can't survive here. On our way back, we bought ourselves some PS2 games, which are like 10 Yuan (1 euro or 100 yen) each. Back at the school, we put on the PS2, and played games until late in the night. So this is what Shaolin monks do in their free time, huh?

On Sunday, there was no training either, so we could sleep as much as we wanted. After having woken up at about 10, some of the Chinese kids came to our room to play some games on Hanwei's PS2. In return, they brought us some milk. As Michael explained to me, they are kids that come from good families from another province, but many of the local kids here are not so good and tend to steal stuff from others. One of the good kids had received some cookies from his mother, but it was all gone before he knew it.

In the afternoon, we went downtown again. There was this place that Michael and Hanwei liked to call "heaven".
"Trust me, you will have the best pork and lamb meat in your life," they told me.
The food that arrived was pretty barbarian. Huge lumps of pork were served, and Michael and Hanwei chewed them making loud noises, and kept sucking on them until there was no meat left. "Barbarian heaven" it was indeed.

On our way back, we met an Iranian man who has his 2 kids in the Kungfu school. He was together with the kids. They were very beautiful kids (especially the girl looked destined to become an incredibly attractive girl in the future), but they looked so incredibly sad. I am not going into details, but as Michael has explained to me, they have had a pretty hard life.
The Iranian family gave us a ride back on their motor with a container-like thing attached to it.
"Here's the foreigner parade ladies and gentlemen!" Michael said, and he was right.
Iranians, an Englishman, a Korean and a Dutchmen with a Japanese heart.
Time to get back to school!