I'm in Dengfeng, in Henan Province, in China. I'm a 15-minute bus ride away from the Shaolin Temple, and I plan to go there tomorrow.
This is where Gung Fu started, and it's still going on here. Many of the schools have moved from a larger city, Zhengzhou, to this charming little town. It's China, though, so the town's not that little.
I ended up visiting Tao Guo Gong Fu Vocational Institute today, and saw the students goofing around on the weekend. (No training on weekends). They showed me their Gong Fu, and I showed them mine. Even though it's been about five years since I trained to any serious degree, I think I did alright.
These kids are amazing though. They're only 15 or so, and they can do acrobatics and execute incredible techniques with all sorts of weapons. Tomorrow I will see them train in a massive multiple-thousand-person square like in all those movies.
Awesome.