Africans get a kick out of Shaolin kung fu

Ten grey-suited Buddhists crouch like leopards stalking a muntjac before barrelling across the stage in an explosion of gravity-defying pivots, kicks and somersaults that would make an osteopath wince.
These are the warrior monks of China's fabled Shaolin Temple, the birthplace of kung fu which is spreading its gospel to Africa as part of a wood-smashing, sword-dancing, spear-balancing grab at global ubiquity.
"Shaolin kung fu isn't simply a physical exercise," said 26-year-old Shi Yancen as he limbered up at the Chinese-built Grand Theatre in the Senegalese capital Dakar ahead of the monks' first ever show in west Africa.
"Through learning kung fu you can also learn and admire the culture of Buddhism."

Shi, who has an incongruously gentle face and looks barely out of his teens, has been mastering kung fu for half his life in the austere surrounds of the Shaolin Temple, nestled in the forested mountains of Henan, one of China's most impoverished provinces.
A common sight for years across Asia, the United States and Europe, the Shaolin monks are turning their attention to Africa, where kung fu has been largely overshadowed by tribal martial arts but is quickly growing in popularity.

Since 2008, monks from the temple have been wooing sell-out crowds in South Africa, Cameroon, Congo-Brazzaville, Equatorial Guinea, Burundi, Uganda, Eritrea, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Malawi, eyeing Africa's huge untapped potential.

The attention is paying off, with thousands of youngsters taking up kung fu each year, and 12 nations, including Senegal, participated in the fifth pan-continental kung fu championships in Madagascar in September.
The temple has no schools yet in Africa but its foreign liaison officer, Wang Yumin, told AFP its strategy was to bring pupils to China and get them to spread the message of "love, justice and health" back home.
"The Shaolin Temple has the mission to spread our tradition and Africans have the same demand to share our legendary culture," she said.
Students from six African countries started five years of training at the temple in 2011 and the monks have also begun shorter courses, all funded by China.

Legend places the origins of the Shaolin tradition at 495 AD, when the emperor Xiaowen is said to have ordered the construction of a temple, deep in a mountain forest, in honour of a wandering Indian monk named Batuo.
Around 30 years later another Indian ascetic named Bodhidharma arrived and spent nine years meditating in a nearby cave before teaching the monks Zen Buddhism -- known as Chan in China -- and the beginnings of what would become Shaolin kung fu.