American Shaolin by Matthew Polly

1.  One of Matt’s goals for self improvement includes becoming more compatible with women. “The problem was we were genre incompatible.  I was starring in a quest movie:  young man travels to exotic land, overcomes obstacles, acquires cool skills, learns important life lessons, comes of age.  She was looking for love;  I was looking for Yoda.  She needed rescue; I needed my rest.”  pg39  The other test he sets for himself is to become a man not a boy.  To what extent to you see him aware of his own limitations throughout the book?

2.  Americans abroad have a reputation of being called “ugly Americans” because they are brash, loud, boastful and inconsiderate.  Is Matt all of the above?  A laowai is the Chinese word for American foreigner.  How does he seem to them?  What are the perceptions Matt conveys of the Chinese which you find particularly striking?

3.  To what degree has modernity impacted upon the Kungfu school?  The Chinese small town setting must appear quite provincial to him, even though he is from small town Minnesota himself. “The one exception to all the tourist trappiness was the six or seven private kungfu schools with similar names-Shaonlin Kungfu University, Shaolin Wushu Academy, Shaolin Wushu and Kungfu School.  ..School uniforms were jogging suits made in the school’s colors- just like Enter the Dragon- so, scattered among the thousands of tourists clogging the road were gaggles of students in red or yellow or blue suits, skinny and dusty and clutching various kungfu weapons:  wooden staffs, tin swords, dull-pointed spears.”  p45.  Do you notice that the fame of movies has diminished or enhanced the Shaolin tradition?

4.  In memoirs, pictures relay what words inadequately describe and I find myself looking at them after a passage in the book, namely to see what Cheng looked like for example.  Were there any other pictures you would have wanted to see?

5.  Matt has found that men as a species are hard wirded to be as they are, competitive and sometimes destructive.  Yet he is sensitive to what the Budhist monk philosophy preaches about face, humility, honour.  What does he discover are his own limitations and does that pose a threat to his instruction? “The difference between a man and a monster is demarcated by moral lines, and I’d drawn mine around the leitai.  In that instant, I’d crossed over, becoming the thing I had hated most, a bully, looking for weakness and feeding on it.  i was the villain.  Most physical wounds heal, but those to the pride rarely do.”

6.  Explain the mushroom phenomenon, or the evolution of the Chinese westernized man personified by John Lee.  “The truth was that John’s father was like many successful Asian immigrants.  He was educated, an engineer, so his move to America was a matter of choice, not desperation, and therefore represented the gamble of a lifetime, a bet that his and his family’s life would be better in America than back in Taiwan.” pg267.

7.  John Lee’s life experience is a good foil to that of Matt in all respects but one.  He is not a serious kungfu student.  He does not apply his whole heart and soul.  pg. 266. “His weight-lifted, corn-fed, beef-eating muscles were thick and marbled, a filet mignon compared to the monks’ rump steak.  This was a flesh-and-blood demonstration of the prosperity effect.  No wonder ambitious Chinese wanted to go to America.  Who wouldn’t want their children to be taller and stronger than they had been?”

8.  Matt doesn’t say much about his relationships with women by the end of the book, meaning instead to concentrate on the benefits he achieved by actively seeking out a challenge for himself and mastering it.  Has he gained your respect as a writer and as a person by the end of the book?  Was the conclusion satisfying?