Many people have tried to bring the abbot to the US, including some of the monks here. Tried and failed. Unfortunately the abbot travels with a large entourage and it's hard to get visas for all those people, especially now.

DeMasco suceeded at great expense - it was the second application and I have it on good authority that it was very expensive. I imagine USSD recouped much of the expense from the seminars, but it is to their credit that they managed to get Yongxin here and rent the Anaheim Convention Center just for the occasion. The whole group - the Abbot, 15 warrrior monks and some special entourage people - was here from the 22nd to the 27th. They did the seminars for USSD, which I hear was quite sucessful, then visited Disneyland and Universal Studios (man, talk about your fun photo op.) After that, the abbot stayed in SF with two other monks for 2 more days.

Probably the most interesting things came out of the cross talk interview, at least from what I have heard second hand. One very controversial answer to a caller from Houston (figures) certainly has created waves amongst the US Shaolin community. I'm still trying to find out more and will tell you more when I know a little more.

As for USSD, did I ever tell you that I was training at Shaolin when Sin The brought is Shaolin-Do tour group came through? The monks had a very interesting reaction. To them, it was all Shaolin Kung Fu, since to them Shaolin is the progenitor. Never mind the level of skill, the were flattered to see that many people in the tour group, bowing to the altars and such. So when DeMasco came through, with a huge tour bowing before the abbot, it left an impression. There are hundreds of small groups that visit Shaolin all the time, but the groups of 50-100 are more impressive, just for the sheer logistics.

Now, as mentioned earlier in this thread, Sin The (and Chan Pui) set a steles at Shaolin. That was in the early years when Shaolin really needed money for reconstruction. Now, it would be much harder to set a new stele. In fact, the only new one I've seen was set by Taguo a few years back. It will be very interesting to see if DeMasco manages to set a new one.

FWIW, the abbot gave DeMasco an extraordinary sword as a gift -a very unusual and unique dao - I would have loved to see it in person. I'm surprised that DeMasco hasn't done much with that yet.