How Jet Li turned the Shaolin Temple into a kung fu cash cow for China
- Paid just 1 yuan per day, the martial arts superstar was stunned to find ‘there were no monks’ when he turned up to shoot 1982 film
- ‘After the movie came out the Shaolin Temple became very popular. A lot of tourists, a lot of martial arts schools’
The 1982 film The Shaolin Temple famously launched the career of martial arts superstar Jet Li. But perhaps less widely known is that it also essentially created Shaolin kung fu as we know it.
The Shaolin Temple is now a Unesco World Heritage Site and the heart of tourism in Henan province in central China. Scores of martial arts schools lie on a mountain; ticket sales bring in tens of millions of dollars each year; the temple is now a commercial empire operating more than 40 overseas companies; and international media has even dubbed its abbot, Shi Yongxin, “the CEO monk”.
But when a film crew from Hong Kong’s Chung Yuen Motion Picture Company turned up in 1980, they found an abandoned site in disrepair after decades of neglect.
“When I was working in Shaolin there were no monks ... only three monks ... and they had just finished the Cultural Revolution,” Li said in an interview with Kung Fu Magazine in 2001. “Not a lot of people knew about the Shaolin Temple. After the movie came out it became very popular. A lot of tourists, a lot of martial arts schools.”
It was the first martial arts film made in China and the first filmed on location at the Shaolin Temple, an ancient Buddhist monastery that is revered as the birthplace of China’s most famous wushu style.