Monk Takes Off His Shoe: My Life as a Shaolin Shoe Salesman

A Shaolin Side-Trip
by Gene Ching

Back when I was in college, I never thought I'd be making my living in the martial arts. I especially didn't consider being a shoe salesman as a career choice. Don't get me wrong. I respect shoe salesmen. A good shoe salesman is really hard to find nowadays. One of my best friends was a shoe salesman before he got his acupuncture license. And wasn't Al Bundy a shoe salesman? Now he's a cop on Dragnet. I confess, I'm a shoe salesman too, and in this Shaolin side-trip, I'm going to sell you some shoes. Think of it like an informercial, something you watch view late at night when nothing else is on, like the Knife Collectors Channel. If you can't stand informercials, just skip this article and click here. At least I'm honest about it. Don't say you weren't warned.

The Founder and Shoes
Let's begin with a big flashback, back to the very beginning. Shoes are deeply symbolic for all Shaolin practitioners. They invoke the legend of the founder of Shaolin Kung Fu and first patriarch of Zen, Bodhidharma (or Tamo in Mandarin.) Tamo is recognized by his shoes - or shoe, to be specific. In Asian art, if you see a monk with one shoe, it's Tamo. This stems from a legend about Tamo's ?death.? Tamo was poisoned by a jealous rival. The culprit was Bodhiruchi, known in China as Guang Tong. Guang Tong was also from India, a dharma master of the small vehicle Buddhism and first patriarch of northern branch of the Chinese Tilun school. Six times Guang Tong poisoned Tamo's vegetarian meals, but Tamo ate it anyway. Once, he even vomited up live writhing snakes immediately after, just to demonstrate the futility of further attempts. But by the sixth time, Tamo decided that his mission in China was done. The Dharma had been transmitted and it was time to move on. So Tamo "died" and was buried at Xionger Shan (Bear Ear Mountain) near Shaolin in 536 CE.

But the story was far from over. Soon after, Song Yun, a diplomatic representative from the Northern Wei, encountered Tamo near the Qin range on the road to Zhongnan Mountain. Tamo was carrying one shoe. He told Song Yun that his Emperor had died and that he should return quickly. When Song Yun returned, he found that Tamo's claim was indeed true. But since Tamo had "died," Song Yu was accused of lying and thrown in jail. Friends appealed to the courts, and it was decided to exhume Tamo's grave in order to prove Song Yun's outrageous statement. Sure enough, Tamo's body was gone and Song Yun was freed. All that remained in the coffin was Tamo's other shoe.

That was the original Shaolin shoe. I'm tempted to say that the most popular shoe at Shaolin, Feiyue martial arts shoes, pay homage to Tamo, but that's going a bit too far. Those guys on the Knife Collector Channel would hesitate to make such a sales pitch. Maybe I'm not that good of a shoe salesman after all, but I'm not going to make something like that up just to close the sale. I will say this - Feiyue shoes are the most popular among Shaolin practitioners today. Every martial artist should try a pair of Feiyue shoes. It's not like they're prohibitively expensive and its' the only way you'll know why all the rest of us wear them.

Fencing Master on Shoes
Personally, I can't think of shoes without flashing back to my college daze. I was an NCAA fencer back then, captain of the Epee squad for San Jose State University. Like I said, I didn't go to college to sell shoes. In truth, I went to fence. One of the greatest fencing American coaches was at SJSU then, the late Maestro Michael D'saro. There I met Maestro D'saro - or 'Stro as we used to call him - at a fencing summer camp during my senior year at high school and he invited me to come to SJSU to fence. In retrospect, he probably regretted it, since I never reached the caliber of so many of his other students. 'Stro produced several national champions, Olympians and NCAA All Americans. He forged a champion fencing team for SJSU. Nevertheless, fencing was grossly under funded, so the only gear that the sports department provided for us was a new pair of fencing shoes every year.

That wasn't too bad, really. Fencing shoes are about as specialized as you can get, so they?re pretty expensive. Since we were all starving college students, we coveted a good pair of shoes. And 'Stro, he forced us to take care of our shoes. I can still hear him now, yelling at us for wearing our fencing shoes anywhere off the fencing strip or outside the salle d'armes. He'd bark at us in his Brooklyn accent while madly waving a saber, "Your shoes are your connection to the earth! It's your most important piece of equipment other than your weapon!" 'Stro punished us with more lunge drills if he ever caught us wearing our fencing shoes outside. He made sure that we kept our soles clean (which is a better pun spoken than written.)

'Stro's shoe fetish bordered on superstitious, but as athletes go, 'Stro was one of the least superstitious coaches I'd ever met. He was a very practical man, never putting on the foppish airs that surround fencing. By nature, 'Stro was a street fighter and he taught me a lot about martial arts. In his precarious youth, he once stabbed someone to become a member of a NY gang called the Red Hook Stompers. For his hazing, he had to get four inches of blood on his blade. But a four-inch wound could be lethal and 'Stro had no intention of getting busted. So instead, he stabbed his rival in the meaty part of the ass. That kind of practicality is what made him a world champion swordsman. And his advice about shoes, alongside many other invaluable life lessons from him, has always stuck with me. Good shoes are important - very important.

Today, there are many more martial art shoes on the market then fencing shoes. However, the bulk of modern-day martial arts are designed with a Karate or Tae Kwon Do practitioner in mind. This is ironic, since it is the convention of those styles to go shoeless. The Japanese and Korean arts descend from a military tradition. They trained indoors, in the Dojo or Dojang, on clean mats were shoes weren't required. Ever been in a traditional Japanese or Korean home? You don't wear shoes inside. That's custom. But the Chinese arts are the people's arts, the arts of the street. Kung Fu was practiced by warriors, monks, farmers, fisherman, everyone. And it was mostly practiced outside, in the dirt. So we wear shoes. Hear that 'Stro? We wear shoes outside, all the time. Alas, rest in peace at that fencing Valhalla, Maestro, you know I'm only kidding. Don?t cut me.

Most contemporary martial arts shoes have a special pivot point designed into the sole on the medial ball of the foot. This is because Karate and Tae Kwon Do emphasize movements from the ball of the foot, where these arts tend to focus their pivot and power. In contrast, Chinese styles tend to be more "heel" based, so that pivot point doesn't really help us. Here's where Feiyue shoes really shine - their design is far superior for the unique footwork of Chinese styles, both indoor and outdoor. Have you got your pair yet? It's easy. Just click here.

Japanese Dreadlock on Acid
Flash forward to my first trip to Shaolin Temple, almost a decade after leaving Maestro D'saro's tutelage. I was training under a traditional Kung Fu Sifu from Hong Kong when I decided to make my first pilgrimage to Shaolin. He advised me not to go. It was the same old story - the monks are all Wushu fakes - Shaolin Temple is extinct. Obviously I didn't listen and ultimately, my Sifu had to agree with my disobedience. My Shaolin trips helped him lay the foundation for his empire. You don?t often get to tell your Sifu, "I told you so." Nevertheless, being from a Hong Kong lineage, we wore those "traditional" Kung Fu booties, the old-school handmade style with recycled tire sidewalls for soles. I was among many traditionalists that held such things as sacred, venerated for their antiquity, never mind that these traditional shoes couldn't have been much older than disposable tires. Ignoring that anachronism, traditional booties were where it was at.

But before I left for Shaolin, I took a little side trip. I was working for the Grateful Dead at that time as a consultant. I sit on the advisory board of the Haight Ashbury Free Medical Clinic's special division known as Rock Medicine, specializing in crises management, specifically with intense psychedelic reactions. The Dead had hired me and some of my fellow free clinic volunteers to accompany them on tour and care for their rather rambunctious followers, the deadheads. At that time, there was a neo-hippie movement happening in Japan. Japanese deadheads were following the tour, having bad acid trips about baseball demons and such, and then winding up in my care. Since I'm Asian, it was natural for me to be the one to talk them down off their bad trips, never mind that I barely speak enough Japanese to get in and out of a Kendo Dojo. Ever try to talk someone down off a bad acid trip? Try doing it when they don't even speak your language.

So just prior to my first Shaolin trip, I was on tour with the Dead in Washington and wound up working with these three Japanese patients who were having a real bad acid trip. Fortunately, the one who spoke the most English was the most sober. The one who was most tripped out, a mighty dreadlock, would babble something in Japanese, then it would be translated to me by the more sober one, and I would tell him, "It's only a drug. It'll wear off,"which would be translated back to the dreadlock. It was laborious but it worked out in the end. The drugs wore off and they came down fine. Later, I kept running into them on tour. Three Japanese deadheads, one of which a dreadlock, were hard to miss. I last saw them in the parking lot of Shoreline Amphitheatre in California, my neighborhood. They were trying to sell fish rice crackers and weird Japanese crafts, none of which any of the deadheads understood, so they weren't selling at all. We chatted for a while and I gave them my business card. They recognized the Chinese characters for Shaolin. The dreadlock said that was how I appeared to him while he was tripping, like some Zen monk to center him. I was flattered. He gave me a gift - a pair of intricately woven sandals made of straw. ?Samurai shoes!? the dreadlock told me with pride as he presented me with these treasures. "Perfect" I thought. They looked just like the sandals Tamo carried. It was an auspicious omen just before a trip that would change my life.

Now I've worn those "Samurai" shoes to practice, just to try them out. After all, that's real hardcore traditional, no sidewalls there. They didn?t work for me at all. I was slipping and sliding like a duck on ice. Call me a tenderfoot, but give me a rubber sole over woven straw or sidewalls any day. It's a luxury of living in modern times perhaps - good shoes. 'Stro was right. Your shoes are very important, especially for combat. And if you want good shoes, click here.

Flying Fish on Shoes
One of the first things any keen observer notices about the Kung Fu practitioners at Shaolin Temple - the monks, the masters, the performers, the students - they all wear Feiyue shoes. The monks might slip into a pair of "traditional" sandals for a photo shoot, but when they practice, it's always Feiyue. Actually, for their daily practice, most Shaolin students wear t-shirts and sweats instead of robes. In fact, the vast majority of practitioners at Shaolin aren't monks. With them, Feiyue shoes don't seem quite so incongruous.

Feiyue means "flying fish." This is often confused since the font Feiyue uses for its logo contains a "y" that looks a lot like a "v." What's more, like any established name brands in China, there are many knock-offs like Feilong and Feiyun. That just amazes me since Feiyue shoes are so inexpensive; it seems absurd to buy a cheaper version. Feiyue shoes are manufactured in Shanghai, and they are actually marketed as a general athletic shoe, not specific to martial arts. But they excel as a martial arts shoe, which is why Feiyue shoes have been adopted by Shaolin practitioners, Wushu champions and traditional stylists worldwide.

After I put my first pair of Feiyue shoes on, I never went back to those sidewalls (and certainly not those straw sandals.) Feiyue shoes give me excellent fit an extremely affordable price. And you got to admire those patriotic colors. But what really sold me was their performance. The sole grips the ground with just the right amount of traction - not so sticky that I can't do sweeps, but not so smooth that I can't ground my horse stance to resist being swept. The canvas top gives a great "pop" for my slapping kicks. And the cushioned sole gives just the right amount of spring for my jumps and stomps. After all, thousands upon thousands of Shaolin practitioners can't be wrong. Far be it for me not to concur.

Unlike my beloved Maestro D'saro, I was very superstitious about my Feiyue shoes at first. When I first started wearing them, nobody was carrying them in the U.S.A. I had to go back to Shaolin the following year and stock up on a few more pairs. It's worthy of note that I was training a lot during that time, and my first pair lasted the whole year, much longer than any other martial arts shoe I had ever tried before. I had weird luck with Feiyue shoes for a while. On one trip, I had to leave Shaolin in a hurry (see my archived ezine article Wu-Tang enters Wudang.) I had scoped out all of Shaolin village to get the best deal and was planning to buy them that afternoon. But then, due to circumstances beyond my control, I had to make my purchase really fast and then catch up with some other travelers. In the shuffle I wound up with a few pairs that were the wrong size. On another trip, I was more careful, checking the packages to be sure the sizes were correct. Of course, I never would have thought that the package would be wrong, but it was. Typical China. Eventually, I convinced my old Sifu that he should start importing shoes to sell at his company. It made him one of the first importers of Feiyue shoes, as well as a tidy profit. Like I said to him before, "I told you so." But, like Tamo, my mission there ended and I had to move on. Now I've convinced Tiger Claw.com and MartialArtsMart.com to carry them. See, it's not really about selling shoes for me. It's about keeping me in good supply. Gotta have my Feiyues.

So there you go. I'm really more concerned with keeping myself in good shoes then selling them. But you got to do what you got to do in the martial arts. If selling shoes is the easiest way for me to have them readily available for personal use, so be it. And that's no sales pitch. It's the truth. In all honesty, I push a lot of products for a living, but how often do I endorse a product with a whole article? I love Feiyue shoes. You will too. And you can try out a pair for less than you'd pay for a movie (with popcorn and a drink.) I ask you, when has anyone pitched a martial arts product to you like this before? You'll find the lowest prices outside of China for Feiyue Martial Arts Shoesat MartialArtsMart.com. Be martial art smart, shop MartialArtsMart.com. We now return to our regular programming.

Written by Gene Ching for KUNGFUMAGAZINE.COM

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