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Chinese GongFu In the center of the vast Chinese nation lies the Mountain of Songshan, one of the country’s holiest spots and home to the Shaolin 1)Monastery, the birthplace of kung fu. The Buddhist monks of Shaolin were 2)pacifists, who mastered a deadly art using kicks, weapons and well-placed 3)punches. They were able to kill a man with the palm of a hand. These deadly skills are 4)in line with their faith and 5)spirituality, because Buddhists believe that, in order to follow the path of 6)compassion, they must 7)root out the heart of evil. In AD 527 the religious teacher, Da Mo, traveled from India to Shaolin to spread the word of Buddha. He spent nine years living alone and  meditating in a cave above the Shaolin temple. To keep his muscles healthy, he developed a series of movements and breathing exercises based on the movements of animals. These were to become the basis of kung fu. When Da Mo returned to the Shaolin temple, he began to teach the monks these techniques, and his tool of meditation evolved into a tool of 9)combat. Kung fu was born. As Shaolin’s 10)reputation grew, more and more young 11)novices traveled from all over China and attempted to join the 12)order. They had their heads shaved as an external sign of inward purity, and they swore an 13)oath of 14)obedience to their masters. Their training was 15)relentless. Their fists would become as hard as iron and their bodies almost www.ryedu.net. 16)impervious to pain. Training would leave its mark not just on the students but also on the temple itself, as over the centuries their pounding feet crushed the stones beneath them. Kung fu, which in Chinese means “learned skill” or “great achievement,” has now given rise to more than 1,000 styles of martial arts. The Shaolin style is still probably the most famous of all. Today, the temple welcomes millions of tourists a year and sells them a 17)commercialized version of its history. But in the less visited temples of the Songshan hills, the original spirit of Shaolin lives on. 
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