<p>IT takes a special kind of person to leave the comforts of Princeton University and move to rural China to smash his forearms against tree trunks. </p>
<p>Meet Matthew Polly. </p>
<p>In “American Shaolin,” Polly recounts the two years he spent studying kung fu at China’s famed Shaolin Monastery - and gaining a unique perspective on American-Chinese relations. Against the wishes of his parents, in 1992 he dropped out of Princeton and flew to China, with no idea of how to find the monastery - said to have been the birthplace of kung fu - or if it even still existed. </p>
<p>Eventually locating it, he persuaded the monks to take him on as a student and began their brutal training regimen. He studied kung fu seven hours a day, six days a week, let himself be beaten up and physically tortured and even engaged in bloody fights with members of other kung fu schools in order to defend his teachers’ honor. </p>
<p>He also participated in the everyday life of China’s fighting monks, which apparently isn’t always exactly monastic. From harnessing his growing kung-fu skills to picking up local girls, to drinking the infamous Chinese alcohol (baiju), Polly dove deeply into the full Shaolin experience. </p>
<p>Amid alcohol-fueled flying kicks, he also took part in some of the more arcane aspects of kung fu, including Iron Kung Fu, in which a practitioner repeatedly abuses one of his body parts in order to make it impervious to attack. For Polly this meant his forearms - hence the smashing of tree trunks - but he also describes what he observed of “Iron Crotch Kung Fu,” in which a master works for years to make his groin impervious to injury. </p>
<p><a href=“A KUNG FU ODYSSEY”>A KUNG FU ODYSSEY;
<p><a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/~paw/archive_new/PAW06-07/12-0411/books.html#Books1[/url]”>PAW April 18, 2007: Books and Arts;