The Shaolin must go on

A Chinese monk and an American doctor team up to bring Shaolin secrets to Vegas

By Andrew Kiraly

The music isn't right.

It's a recent Wednesday afternoon at the Shaolin Institute on West Sahara Avenue, and the dozen-odd students are gearing up for another 4:30 practice, stretching, horseplaying, practicing stances. Standing out in his orange robe like an exclamation point, Shi Xing Wei claps his hands once to get their attention. On cue, music pours through the speakers--but it's not the usual New Agey stuff of flutes and strings. Rather, a bomping R&B song floods the room, and for a second everyone looks perplexed.

"That's the wrong music," says Richard Russell, owner of the studio. The CD is switched--the Asian music now coming through like a breeze--and with only a few giggles, class resumes. Today the students will jog while hefting sandbags, will try to knock each other down while dancing on one foot--all manner of things that, on the surface, don't have much to do with kicking ass.

But someone's still smiling. It's the teacher, Shaolin monk Shi Xing Wei, who seems to silently relish the music gaffe far above anyone else. What's he thinking? Who knows. He knows only a few handfuls of English. But maybe it's because the music glitch is a humorous microcosm of his situation. Indeed, the life of Shi Xing Wei (pronounced "shishing way") is filled with such fish-out-of-water moments. Since relocating to America more than six months ago, the 26-year old Chinese monk and martial arts expert is always bumping into America, and America is always bumping into him--whether it's R&B music sneaking into the stereo or his bewilderment at the sheer bounty offered by a grocery store.

The Shaolin Institute at Sahara and Buffalo--with its wall-length mirror, copious floor pads and rack bristling with the kinds of weapons you'd expect to see only in movies--is much more than a place for children and adults alike to learn the ancient art of kung fu. Call it instead a cultural crossroads, where a guy from Brooklyn found a way to import to Las Vegas a martial art that saved his life. Where a monk who'd spent half his life in a temple in China found a portal to a new home. Where the two men--who are both teacher and pupil to one another--hope to spread the methods and teachings of Shaolin--and debunk the high-flying myths that dog it like so many kung fu B-movie villains.

"Self-defense is not the purpose of this," says Russell, who heads the institute. "I had a guy come in here from across the street, he says to me, 'Do you teach fighting, combat?' I said no. I looked at him and said, 'We're not for you. This is not what you're looking for. This isn't about learning to kick people's asses.'"

Monk rock

A martial arts training center that's not about fighting? The statement comes like a kung fu kick to the shin. And yet it's a concept that only buttresses the fact that the Shaolin Institute is as legitimate as kung fu training centers can get in Vegas or elsewhere, largely because of the presence of Shi Xing Wei, a 32nd generation Shaolin monk who hails from the Chinese province of Henan. He's one of only seven monks living and training in the United States. There are three in New York City, three in Houston and, now, one in the most improbable place for a monk who's committed to singlehood and sobriety: Las Vegas.

Sure, when Shi Xing Wei goes through stances--swiftly, now like a mantis, now like a cat, now like a crane, a blur of orange fabric whispering--he looks dangerous. When he wields a Shaolin staff, windmilling it in whooshing arcs, he looks scary. And when he handles the swords, spears and other heavy metal that make up the basis of other Shaolin forms, the normally smiling Shi Xing Wei looks downright deadly. Overall, he gives the impression that the fleet footwork (if not the flying) of movies such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon isn't, in fact, all that farfetched.

But both Russell and Shi Xing Wei insist that his arrival in Las Vegas on a three-year visa is less Enter the Dragon and more Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance--in other words, it's not about kung fu fighting, but rather fostering mindfulness, discipline and a healthy attention to detail. When Shi Xing Wei and his students lock in and out of stances like human calligraphy, it's not practice for some what-if in a dark alley. It is its own point. Hardly New Age fluff; rather, it's ancient wisdom.

Through a translator, Shi Xing Wei says: Chinese kung fu is not about dominance or fighting. They made it because when monks meditate on the Buddha, they don't move their bodies. They stay in one position and get out of shape. You sit there too long, he says, and you get tired, more and more. But if you exercise this way, you can last longer. Shaolin isn't for helping you to fight. It's to help you learn Buddhism.

It's wisdom that Russell says saved his life when he got into a terrible car accident in 1996. The accident, he says, left him with minor brain damage, which effectively ruined his career as a private practice doctor and intensive care consultant.

"I was fodder for malpractice suits," Russell says. "After the accident, I'd had three strokes, constant migraines. There was no way I could practice medicine." The job loss affected his wallet somewhat, but the real blow was to his psyche. "The loss of identity that came with it was just horrible. I mean, I'd spent my entire life taking care of people. Medicine was my life. I floundered."

Russell had always been interested in martial arts; he'd earned a black belt in karate, had done some kung fu training in China. But something told him that studying martial arts might be good for something other than throwing kicks and punches. It might just hold the key to healing himself. That impulse took him to China in 1997, where he studied kung fu in a Shaolin temple under Shaolin grandmaster Shi De Cheng. "I was just another face in the crowd," he says. But little did Russell know that training under the same master was another disciple who would contact him years later and continents away.

"I was such a discombobulated wreck after the accident. I was scattered all over the place," he says. Russell, with his big frame and shaved head, can have a brooding, almost gruff manner about him; when he talks you can hear the echoes of the brusque Brooklynite within. Yet for all his apparent seriousness, he breaks readily into laughter like it's an unexpected relief. "Doing Shaolin helped me focus, it helped my self-esteem and discipline. It really helped put me back together in a lot of ways."

Three years later, Russell was working in his home office one night when the phone rang. As far as he could tell, it was a Chinese guy on the other end.

"Shi De Cheng. Shi De Cheng," the man said. He was saying the name of the monk Russell had trained under years earlier.

Russell figured it out. "My phone number had slipped out," he says. Shi Xing Wei, who had trained for some time along with Russell under Shi De Cheng, had gotten a hold of it, and now he was calling from the MGM Grand, where he was performing at the time in the casino's "Masters of Shaolin" show. Russell showed up at the hotel and convinced Shi Xing Wei's handlers to let him go for the night. "The handlers keep them in their rooms," Russell explains. "They think they're going to try to escape." What followed was a whirlwind tour of Vegas nightlife for Shi Xing Wei--who is well-traveled but not worldly--including a helicopter ride over the Strip and dinner at Hooters. A friendship quickly formed--and a plan hatched. With his medical career effectively ended, Russell had been toying with the idea of trying to bring Shaolin monks here to start a real Shaolin Institute. It took him more than two years to work it out. "It was a lot of time, letter-writing, politics," he says. And about $10,000 each for attorneys' fees, visas and various INS bills to pay to eventually bring over Shi Xing Wei and 38-year-old Shi De Cheng, who is due back in October.

Training day

So far, the institute has proved to be more a noble struggle than a smash success. In a culture obsessed with results instead of process, true Shaolin is a hard sell in the States, Russell finds. Since opening the institute last February, he's sunk about $60,000 into the project and is just starting to break even.

Shi Xing Wei agrees. Through his translator, he says that many people in the United States are interested in learning kung fu because they want to be like Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan. But it's not like that at all. When he went off to the temple at age 12, his father told him to think about kung fu as though it were his job. His whole life's work is about kung fu, he says. This is a long-term process that takes your whole life to learn. Kung fu has no ending. Even right now when he wins in tournaments, he says, he still has a lot of work to do because kung fu has no ending. You need to practice and enjoy it every day.

With Shi Xing Wei's devotion to the art, it's no coincidence that most of his students are Chinese youth who still maintain strong cultural roots. Poll the parents at a class--which Shi Xing Wei holds six days a week, in approximation of a true temple's relentless schedule--and they'll talk not about how their kids can fend off schoolyard bullies, but rather about improved concentration, discipline and better grades.

"Coming here is more important than school for them," says Yuenchen Lin, whose twin sons, Niko and Niki, both 12, attend classes. "If they don't get good grades, I tell them they can't come to class. They love the way Shi Xing Wei teaches, because they get it right away and he builds their confidence. The way he teaches isn't like fighting, but like a personal test. They say, 'I think I should stay with Shi Xing Wei because I get straight A's.' They are so happy."

"This is the best all-around workout [for my children]," says Tiffany Bennion of her two kids, Hannah, 9, and Charles, 7. "For balance, for strength and conditioning, for cardiovascular, there's nothing that compares to it. What's great is how [Shi Xing Wei] accommodates, in a gentle, loving way, the different ages. You've got 12-year-olds here and 4-year-olds here, and he interacts with all of them really well."

Others are just happy to train their kids under someone honest. "I've been to other studios and it's all about pushing a product," says Louis Huang, whose 7-year-old son, Kevin, takes the class. "The other place I'd been was not like a studio, but a store. On and on, they come up with something. Every three months they change belts, and you need $40 for the testing and for the belts. Here [at the Shaolin Institute], the forms are more complicated and the training is harder, but Shi Xing Wei is a very patient guy. Class is supposed to end at 5:30, but he usually extends it an extra 30 minutes or so. It used be five days a week, and they added a sixth day without any extra charge. It's a Shaolin thing. You're not supposed to take a day off."

And the funny thing is that Shi Xing Wei has never been in a fight. He's won tournaments, but never had to deflect a swing from a biker type in one of those classic rough-bar scenarios. If Shi Xing Wei has any foe, it's the cultural hurdles he faces.

Coming to America

Shi Xing Wei, who would like to stay in the United States, does fight every day--to understand and adapt to American culture, a process both funny and sad. Funny: Russell says it's not unusual for Shi Xing Wei to spend hours in the grocery store, just gawking at the bounty, picking up one item, only to discover another he likes better. Sad: He tells the story of how Shi Xing Wei neglected for a time to use his phone card to call China and racked up $6,000 in international long-distance charges. Funny: Russell's trying to teach him to play the video game Unreal Tournament. Sad: Women, perhaps enchanted by the monk mystique, frequently pursue Shi Xing Wei, and he naively takes it as nothing more than friendly interest. But living under the careful watch of Russell, he has picked up some good Americana, such as a love for basketball, football and hiking.

"He's really kind of lost in our society," Russell says. "When you look at these guys, they're like babies in some ways. Shi Xing Wei has a very childlike curiosity. The relationship between us is almost like parent and guardian. I didn't expect that part. It just kind of came as I learned about him. But I don't think his curiosity will lead him into trouble for one reason: If he's unsure about anything, he comes to me. He calls me 'Lao Ban'--the boss.

"It's not that I'm a ruler; I let him do whatever he wants. But like when he got burned with the phone bill, he learned a lesson that he's in a culture and with people he doesn't understand." (However, he's not completely alone; Shi Xing Wei frequently dines with the families of Chinese students, which provides a comfortable cultural bubble.)

And while Shi Xing Wei admits to having a curious nature, he says he's not tempted by the myriad seductions of Las Vegas. He says: From the Chinese people's point of view, Las Vegas is like heaven. For people in China to think about legal gambling is impossible. When he came here, he says, his master Shi De Cheng taught him he needs to be careful, he cannot gamble, he cannot drink alcohol here. You see, he says, in the temple not only do you learn kung fu, but you learn strict policies. But those are just policies. People can still do things without the teacher around. But, he says, because he is a good Buddhist, even though his teacher is not here to watch over him, he can still control himself.

And self-control in a city of excess may be the most dazzling kung fu maneuver of all.

Shi Xing Wei explains: He came here not just for work or for happiness. He's on a mission from the Shaolin temple to let people know about kung fu and Buddhism. That's why he's here, he says.

So far, it's good. It's kind of strange, this city, he says, but more and more, he's getting used to it. He's adjusting his life in Las Vegas, and it's no problem.