Do the Shaolin Monks still tour?

[sha0lin1]

if i rem correctly...you said that tour group in tennessee will be there till the end of the october..and another group is coming to houston around the end of october...would dis be the same group?
or a totally different group?
so there will be TWO DIFFERENT SHAOLIN GROUP in america at the SAME TIME??...wow....

on the tour you just came back from...were they actual monks? or just wushu people that practice shaolin??

The group in Tennessee will be there till the end of November. The other group is not the same but a different group. The group from Tennessee were actual monks. Monks that my master and Shi Yan Feng had grown up with. It was quite touching to see them reunite, how close they were to each other. Master Shi Yan Feng was quite surprised to learn that when he left Shaolin Temple he was taller than his brothers but now they are all taller than he is.

[Pk_StyLeZ]

The group in Tennessee will be there till the end of November. The other group is not the same but a different group. The group from Tennessee were actual monks. Monks that my master and Shi Yan Feng had grown up with. It was quite touching to see them reunite, how close they were to each other. Master Shi Yan Feng was quite surprised to learn that when he left Shaolin Temple he was taller than his brothers but now they are all taller than he is.

wth is that group doing over there and not here in houston!

[sha0lin1]

wth is that group doing over there and not here in houston!

Ya know I was asking myself that very same question. As I posted on another thread, Sevierville Tn was the strangest place I have ever been. It is a tourist trap. That area which includes Gatlinburg, and Pigeon Forge is full of a bunch of dinner theaters where you can catch all of these different variety shows. However, the shows were all of the "Hee Haw" variety. Dolly Parton I believe is from Pigeon Forge and she has built herself a Hillbilly amusement park called Dollywood. It was somewhat like a country Las Vegas without the hot women and gambling. It was however, quite beautiful being in the Smokey Mountains and we were real close to the main entrance to the Smokey Mountain National Park. I wanted to take the monks hiking up into the forest but time and circumstances didn't permit. They had lost time to catch up on with each other. We did take them to eat "American Food" which was amusing because they did not know how to use the utensils. I tried to show them but my master stopped me, he thought it was funny too and he told me not to, to let them figure it out for themselves. I spent the whole time wondering and hoping that they didn't think the rest of the U.S. was like that. I was reassured by Shi Yan Feng that alot of them had already been on other tours to the U.S. and other countries.

I felt sorry for them that they were stuck in a rut. They were not getting out to see/do anything, only going back and forth from the house they were staying at to the theater, and to eat at a chinese restraunt. The promotor of the tour was asking us lots of questions about Houston and if we thought the performance would do well if they toured it around the U.S. He also wanted to know if there were other places in the U.S. like that...maybe Branson, Mo. My response to him was to tour it in the bigger cities. He seemed to want to go to a place and perform the play for a month or so before moving on to another. I am not quite sure why he wanted to do that, I would think that after about two weeks the show would be played out. They are going back to China in November and they may come back next year and tour the show. I hope they do, I never get tired of watching the incredible martial arts that they perform.

I don't think that they were making too much money there. The tourists we saw seemed to be older people and they weren't even close to filling the theater.

[Immortal_Dragon]

Well to be honest with you...I don't think the Shaolin shows do well anymore at all here in the USA. You seen one you seen them all. I can't really imagine what a "sponsor" has to pay for a school from shaolin to come here and dow a tour. I am willing to guess that the sponsor loses a lot of money when doing these type of ventures. The "shaolin craze" is filtering out now as we seem to read about negative happenings to some of the shaolin monks and some of its students. The last two shaolin shows I went to watch were not all that very impressive. It's the same thing over and over. As a matter of fact, one show was trying to copy stuff from the "Wheel of life tour". I remember sitting near two guys that were trying to think how they could get back stage and convince a monk to defect, stay and teach. LOL. I just thought myself.....stop the madness.

[GeneChing]

They don't do as well as they did in the late 90's, but there are still plenty of Shaolin shows and they still sell out. Just look at our forum here - Shaolin Warriors are touring the US right now. That's the show coming to the Marin Vets here and to Houston. There have been Shaolin groups touring America consistently for the last decade. It has died down for sure, but they still sell, so they still come. I don't see it declining much more that the Gyuto monks or the Dancing Sufis.

[GeneChing]

Shaolin Warriors just sold out the Golden State Theater with minimal advertising. I hear this tour is selling out everywhere. We'll see how it does in Houston.

[Pk_StyLeZ]

Shaolin Warriors just sold out the Golden State Theater with minimal advertising. I hear this tour is selling out everywhere. We'll see how it does in Houston.

selling out ...uh oh..if it sell out in houston..that mean i must get my tickets now...but i dnt know if i am going to austin or stayin in houston..lol....