Thanks to my connection with KUNG FU MAGAZINE and my long list of collaborations with publisher Gene Ching (most recently a review of THE MARVELS for KFM), I was quietly tipped off to the return of the Venerable Shi Yongxin (释永信) Abbot of the Shaolin Temple monastery in Henan China.
On one of his last visits to the U.S. I had the honor of meeting him. Additionally I had the privilege gifting a signed copy of my premier children’s picture book LITTLE MONK & THE MANTIS: A BUG, A BOY AND THE BIRTH OF A KUNG FU LEGEND. That book is now part of the Abbot’s personal library at the temple itself.
Despite the potential access I was unable to participate in his San Francisco appearance. I suspect I could have played photographer for the official KFM interview and taken the opportunity to gift him a copy of A TIGER’s TALE volume 1. Alas I’ll have to wait for his next visit and perhaps even take the 13 hour drive to Red Mountain Arizona for the eventual opening of North America’s very first official Shaolin Temple.
The Abbot stopped in the San Francisco
Gene Ching for YMAA.com
Bay Area, where I reside. Then he spent the week in Arizona, where led a Land Blessing Ceremony at the site where the Red Mountain Shaolin Temple is to be erected. This is an ambitious project, a full-scale subsidiary Shaolin Temple, the first of its kind in North America. The following weekend, he returned to
California, but to the south where he oversaw the inaugural North American Shaolin Kung Fu Games. The Shaolin Kung Fu Games aspires to stage competitions in six continents. Each of
these Games serve as qualifiers for a World Shaolin Kung Fu Games to be held in 2024.
The Red Mountain Shaolin Temple is a non-profit organization with the mission to improve the health and happiness of all those who visit through the distinct practices and culture of Shaolin. They have chosen to undertake this mission because of how truly beneficial these practices can be to a person’s physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being. By constructing a temple in northern Arizona, they can ensure greater accessibility to Shaolin culture in the Western Hemisphere and hope to make Red Mountain Shaolin Temple the penultimate institution for Buddhist, martial arts, and meditation study in the United States. They undertake this mission as an officially sanctioned branch of the original Shaolin Temple in Henan, China.
The temple complex is currently in the concept phase with a completion goal of 2026.
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