Return to the Shaolin Temple

For a while now I've been a fan of Slate's "Well-Traveled" feature - a week-long travel diary to an interesting place coming from an interesting perspective. This week features a former Shaolin trainee's return to China after 10 years and his view of the changes that have taken place in the country. It promises to be an interesting week.

The granddaddy of all Chinese martial arts monasteries is the Shaolin Temple, the birthplace of both kung fu and Zen Buddhism. In 1992, when I was 21, I dropped out of Princeton to pursue bad mofodom there. I lasted two years until I finally reached the point of diminishing returns: It's easy to be tougher than most, impossible to be tougher than all. Besides, there are limited - legal - career options for that particular skill set. So I went back to college, thinking I'd never return. But friends who have been to Shaolin recently kept telling me I had to go back. Everything's changed, dude. You won't believe it. And so I am traveling back to Shaolin on a kind of personal 10-year reunion to see what is different and what has stayed the same. I am in a compare-and-contrast frame of mind.