American Shaolin by Matthew Polly (Gotham Books)

Matthew Polly’s biographical novel American Shaolin has the long and amusing subtitle of Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of the Iron Crotch : An Odyssey in the New China. It is the story of an American man who drops out of a prestigious college and goes on a journey to learn the art of kung-fu from the Shaolin Temple in China.

Matthew Polly grew up in Topeka, Kansas. He was the epitome of the 98-lbs weakling who was tormented by bullies at his school and while many people have an inner voice telling what they ought to do, Polly was fifteen and had an inner “to-do list”. When he was fifteen, there were five main points on his list of “THINGS THAT ARE WRONG WITH MATT”. 

Topping the list was “ignorant”, followed by “cowardly”, “stil a boy / not a man”, “unattractive to the opposite sex”, and “spiritually confused”. In dealing with his ignorance, he once picked up the New York Review of Books but even with a dictionary in hand, he couldn’t understand it. This inspired him to study and read more and his efforts led him to being accepted at Princeton University and was doing quite well, so he felt he could cross off being ignorant from his list of THINGS THAT ARE WRONG WITH MATT.

However, number one on his list was being cowardly. Polly started learning kung-fu when he was in the ninth grade after seeing a rerun of David Carradine’s television series Kung-fu. He was inspired by Carradine’s character - “the half-Asian Shaolin martial monk who wandered the Old West righting wrongs” and “seemed to be as strange and helpless and yet was a total badass.”

Polly’s obsession with kung-fu led to his interest in China and Chinese culture. He took courses in learning the language as well. As Polly was busy with his studies, he didn’t have time to practice his kung-fu which he had been studying for three years. He felt even after three years, he would not be able to defend himself adequately. That’s when he came across Mark Salzman’s memoir Iron and Silk, a story about a Yale graduate who studies with a martial arts master in China. This sets his plan in motion.

In 1992, Polly left Princeton and using the money from his college which his father had set up for him, went to China in pursuit of dreams to learn martial arts from the birthplace of kung-fu - at the Shaolin Temple. It did not matter to him that he did not even know where the temple was located. 

So begins Polly’s real adventure as he first goes to Beijing, then travels north to the Shaolin Temple and learns that there are numerous forms of kung-fu and that foreigners are only allowed to study at one of the state-sponsored schools. He manages to find a school that accepts him and for the next two years training and studying and learning that there are different types of “iron kung-fu” in which “a part of the body (such as the head, neck, stomach, or, most frightening of all, the crotch) is made impervious to pain.”

This book is a must read for any fans of old Jackie Chan movies where the harsh training seems to be exaggerated, only it’s not as Polly can well attest to. The story is an inspiration to anyone who has a dream and to see that dream fulfilled. ~Ernie Hoyt