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Shaolin Temple: soft power and hard realities

By Harvey Dzodin: 0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China.org.cn, October 19, 2011

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Shaolin Temple martial arts performance [file photo]

I was excited to read in China.org.cn that the Shaolin Temple had opened a new cultural center in Austria in the presence of the head of the temple's base in Henan, Abbot Shi Yongxin, because by happy coincidence I was in Vienna. Knowing that the Shaolin Temple was both world famous and in my opinion one of China's most famous brands and biggest soft power forces, I decided to pay a visit to the center and its leader, Master Shi Yanliang. I was impressed by what I saw but am worried about the future of the temple and the purity of its brand.

The Austria Shaolin Cultural Center, to use its formal name, is in a quiet residential neighborhood near Vienna's center. I was impressed by the Austrian students I saw studying there who generally range in age from six to sixty although the Master told me that his oldest student was in his eighties. I was even more impressed when he told me that the current head of the Austrian government Chancellor Werner Faymann, had been a student of qi gong at the Shaolin Temple in Vienna in 2004 and that he was a great admirer of Chinese culture. Maybe if his peers around the world followed his example, countries would practice more love and less war!

Vienna is not the only venue for the Shaolin Temple in Europe. The first center came to Berlin a decade ago and the predecessor of the current new center followed two years later. The Shaolin Temple also has a presence in Rome.

I think that the center plays as important a part in spreading China's soft power as the government-sponsored Confucius Institutes do. In fact, I would opine that the martial arts discipline for which the Temple is best known are all that many people know about Chinese culture, perhaps aside from Chinese cuisine.

People admire the skill of the Shaolin performers, together with the music and the settings. I'd put the Temple's touring performances of almost unbelievable skills seen by millions as every bit as influential as the gold standard for theatrical virtuosity: the wildly successful Canadian Cirque du Soleil.

Yet in this bright and sunny picture there are a few potential storm clouds on the horizon that could seriously harm the Shaolin Temple's influence and its reputation. This, in turn, would not do China's reputation any good either.

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