Our table of contents is now live
Shaolin Special 2009 (#10 but who's counting ;))
We'll have the cover story live in about a month. We appreciate your support on the newsstands.
amitoufo
what would become of all your shaolin special issues if
You know, they'd probably sell better, uki. Seriously, magazines about actors - celeb rags - they're the ones that are still doing great business on the newsstands. And as for the tourist part, even travel mags do better on the newsstands than martial arts mags.
If they're all actors, they're method actors. They face challengers all the time. You can go up to the temple today or any of the 68 private schools and issue a challenge - it'll be answered. Sure, there are definitely showman there - all the demo teams and Shaolin shows are modern wushu players - but the demo teams only represent a small percentage of the population of students at Shaolin (in this issue, we report that at 58,000 full-time students) and those monks in shows are mostly performance monks, if they are monks at all. Many of the shows don't have real monks, only actors like you say. A few of the shows don't even have performers from Shaolin. We've addressed all this here before.
But on a deeper level, if I were to take uki's question seriously, it reflects something even more interesting. If all the monks at Shaolin were just actors, it would be the most phenomenal improve play ever. And it would be about martial arts. Where else in the world does something like that exist? Washington DC maybe? ;) That, on it's own, is fascinating and newsworthy. Think about it.
We all have our roles to play. Here on the forum, I play an administrator. Uki, you play a troll. Hey, it's showtime. Try not to forget your lines this time, ok uki? :p