Shifu Yan Lei - Genuine Shaolin Kung Fu, Qi Gong & Rou Quan

There is always a shock in seeing Shifu Yan Lei. Not on the TV screen but standing before me, holding his hand out for me to shake, a large smile on his face as he apologises for being late. Fully clothed with a cap pulled down firmly over his shaven head, he looks more like a well mannered English language student than a 34th generation fighting disciple from the Shaolin Temple in China, and the director of his DVD company, “Yan Lei Productions”.

While I was waiting for him to turn up, Marek Budzynski - his director and main cameraman, who he now greets with a bear hug - had been showing me footage from the latest DVD’s they have just shot in China. In the middle of a lush green forest, Shifu Yan Lei jumps off a large rock and starts kicking a near by tree. In a deserted courtyard Shifu Yan Lei takes a beating from a Shaolin Disciple before throwing him effortlessly onto the ground, and on a large sandy beach with old wooden Chinese fishing boats tut tutting in the background, he takes on a local gang one by one. This last scene taken from a short film he shot while they were in China.

Shifu Yan Lei’s skills and presence on the screen is awe inspiring. And with thousands of hits on his youtube site as well as major distribution for his DVD’s, he is establishing quite a name for himself. While Marek continues with the editing, Shifu leads me to the apartment upstairs and makes me some Chinese tea, confessing, “If you ask me to make English tea, I still don’t know. But I think not hard, just one bag and some milk.’

I reassure him that Chinese tea is just fine and we sit opposite each other, sipping our tea. Then he takes his cap off and fixing his determined eyes on me, transforms himself from English language student to Shaolin Warrior. I have to admit to feeling a little nervous.

COMBAT: Firstly I want to congratulate you on your success. You’ve been in this country five years. You originally came here to help your brother open a Shaolin school, you’ve made three DVD’s all on general release, you have four more coming out, a short film, a very successful teaching programme of your own in Brighton. It’s quite an achievement.

SHIFU YAN LEI: When you do martial arts, you only have one moment, you fight, your mind has to be there, you train, your mind has to be focused so you can be your best. You do the same in your day-to-day life. This is why martial arts is always linked with success. I make the DVD’s the best I can. I don’t want people to get confused so I teach a graded path to the practice. An A – Z as to how to become a Shaolin Warrior. You have a destination; I show you how to get there.

COMBAT: As a teacher you have a reputation as a tough taskmaster.

SHIFU YAN LEI: I teach real Shaolin martial arts. I will not compromise. If you want to be good then this is what you do. If you don’t like it then you are dreaming and you can never be good so go and do something else. Don’t waste your time and my time. I love Shaolin martial arts. I feel very proud of this tradition. I teach small groups in Brighton and private classes to students who are really serious about martial arts. After a while if you want to advance in Qi Gong then you have to learn directly from a master. People study under my DVD’s then come to Brighton from all over Europe, I give them private lessons so they are on the right path. I want serious students. I want to be able to pass on my knowledge; I don’t always want to just teach them baby steps. This is one of my biggest frustrations. I would love my students to become masters like me. But I have to accept that not everyone’s kung fu is martial arts. Western people always think kung fu means kicking and punching but the literal translation of kung fu is time and effort and this is what it takes. Some people put a lot of time into playing the violin others writing a book, others making money, I put a lot of time and effort into my martial arts. This is why I am a master. And now I have another kung fu... my film.

COMBAT: Marek showed me a clip of the short film you made, it looks like the kind of old style kung fu films I used to watch and love as a boy.

SHIFU YAN LEI: This is the idea. Everything I do is very real and I want to show real kung fu without tricks. I know film technology has come a long way, but I don’t like wires, I still like the fight scenes in the Bruce Lee films because you feel they are real. This is the kind of film I want to make. I have studied martial arts since I was a boy.

I come from a very poor background and when you are poor in China life is very hard. I don’t think you have hard life like this in England. Even in the Shaolin schools, they are easier now, but when I was studying martial arts there, we did not sleep in separate beds but slept on one long wooden platform, we had no running water so I had to get up at five-thirty, take water for my master, then line the boys up and go running up the mountain. We were very hungry and couldn’t afford to eat properly. I was very naughty when I was a young, I would go to a restaurant and order some noodles, then a little later on, other boys would join me and order noodles – in China if you eat with someone then you always pay for them, you never pay separately – the boys would eat and go, the restaurant owner would ask me for the money and I would look at him all innocent and say I didn’t know them, they just came and ate with me.

There was nothing he could do so we would get all this food for free. There were a lot of restaurants in the village and we were always doing things like that. It sounds bad now but then we had to or we would be so hungry it would make it difficult for us to train.

COMBAT: I’ve always been curious about what it must be like to learn at the Shaolin Temple.

SHIFU YAN LEI: From the first day I arrived at Shaolin I was never interested in forms, I just wanted to learn fighting. For me, this is what martial arts is about; health and fighting. Self-preservation on both accounts. I was always fighting with the older boys and testing my skills. In the end I got into so much trouble that the Shaolin Abbot sent me to a Ch’an monastery to learn Buddhism, I think he hoped I would calm down. The Abbot there wanted me to become a monk. I was eighteen. I said to him, how can I become monk? I know nothing about life... I’ve never wanted to be a monk. Disciple is enough for me. Sometimes - because I shave my hair - people still make the mistake that I’m a monk. I eat meat and I am married, I tell them, so how can I be a monk? I am human like you. The Buddha was a monk but not a God, he was also human. We can achieve amazing things just being what we are. We spend too much time dreaming if only we could be something else. We have to accept the good and bad things about ourselves. I never want to forget my roots and where I came from. My roots have made me what I am. I want to go back and show people this life in China, the contrast between this very traditional village and the very developed city. China is a country of extremes. I have been in the West five years now, I try to understand Western people, this is my job, I am in this country but I would like for them to understand me and my culture and what China is really like. I have many different story lines that Marek and I are developing with a writer at the moment. This is the next project I will do and I am very excited about it.

COMBAT: The latest DVD’s you have just shot are stunning. It’s very impressive, a Shaolin disciple taking an English film crew to China. How did that come about?

SHIFU YAN LEI: When I make enough money from the sales of my DVD’s then I make more DVD’s. The first DVD – Kung Fu Journey - was made from the money I made from teaching, and these DVD’s were made from the sale of my last two DVD’s – The Way of Qi Gong volume one and Fighting Punches and Kicks. I wanted to film in the province I come from – Xin Jiang – but it was snowing heavily when we went to China and very cold so we filmed in Canton province instead. I used to live there and this village is very traditional, they are very religious and they have temples everywhere. There had never been Western people in this village before so everywhere we went we would be surrounded by people. My producer came out earlier and she got frustrated at never being able to go out without someone with her. We once had to close a shop down and lock ourselves inside because she was surrounded by so many people and it was getting out of hand. But after a while most of the villagers got used to us. We stayed with my friend’s family, and as well as using the local people to act in the film I also used them as the crew. But the people in this province don’t speak Chinese so it could be very stressful at times. Just to do simple things would take a lot of patience. For example, Marek built the lights and the dolly once he got to China; so I would have to go into town with him to buy the material, translate from English to Chinese to someone who would then translate to their language. I didn’t even know the English for these kinds of things. Not very easy but it was worth it.

COMBAT: You made four DVD’s. What are they about?

SHIFU YAN LEI: One of them is called Kung Fu Ch’an, this is about how you can use Kung Fu to reach the spirit of Ch’an. I don’t do much talking in this; I use my body as the language of the DVD. The two Qi Gong DVD’s are the next volumes to The Way of Qi Gong. The first one is a sitting form. The Bodhidharma created this especially for his monks who sat for hours in meditation. This form is very very powerful. If you practice them seriously you will get very good results, they purify all the toxins from the body and generate strength. They are called Bone Marrow Cleansing and Tendon Changing Classic Qi Gong. They are very famous but they have never been taught properly in the West, they have never been explained in full detail.

I also teach the first steps of body conditioning with the special vibrational massage. It sounds strange at first to ask people to beat themselves but it acts like a very powerful massage, you don’t beat hard. You use a bamboo brush and it gives you energy, you feel very invigorated like you have just had a cold shower. It works with the Qi Gong forms. And the last DVD is an ancient Shaolin form called Rou Quan. Rou means soft and Quan means hard so it means Soft Fist. This is similar to Tai Qi and as well as it being very good for health you can also use the movements for self-defence.

COMBAT: You are most famous for your Shaolin Steel Jacket Technique. I first saw you demonstrating Shaolin Steel Jacket at the Seni show and it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. When the two Shaolin Monks kept breaking sticks over you, one of them flew off and I caught it, I have it here, it’s solid wood.

SHIFU YAN LEI:It’s... how you say... for brushing floor.

COMBAT: A broomstick.

SHIFU YAN LEI: I buy from hardware shop.

COMBAT: Can you tell us a little bit more about the technique?

SHIFU YAN LEI: When I learnt it, I was young; I wanted to be strong and to use it for fighting. As you can see I am short so if I fought against someone taller than me then I would be at a disadvantage. Learning Shaolin Steel Jacket meant that I wasn’t scared to get close to my opponent. But now I am older so I have become more interested in my health. It’s written down in the old Shaolin books, that if you practice the Qi Gong form that I teach on the DVD’s, they make your body into iron, not just your ribs and your back but your whole body. These techniques are as relevant today as they were thousands of years ago. In some ways more so, we have many things that can make our body unhealthy like using computers too much or working too much, eating the wrong foods. To use our Qi to protect ourselves from the sharp end of spear or the blow of a brick, of course this is not useful and has no relevance in our day-to-day life, but to use our Qi to protect ourselves from ill health and ageing, that is a different matter. These Qi Gong forms balance the body, and then when the body is balanced they use the power of the body. When you practice a lot you can use your own body to make it’s own medicine. I study this a lot, because it’s internal you can’t see, so maybe I don’t believe, I want to know is this real or not? Does it work or not?

I am very happy with the results.

COMBAT: As well as the Qi Gong you obviously do a lot of external training as well. You have no fat on your body and a lot of muscle. Do you do weight training?

SHIFU YAN LEI: No, I never do weight training. This slows the body up. I have a martial artists body. It’s from punching, kicking, running, squats, press-ups. I mix internal and external together. It’s all from my training, you watch my DVD’s you will see.

COMBAT: Thank you for talking to us and I look forward to watching your new DVD’s and good look with getting your film made. I hope to see it at a cinema soon.

SHIFU YAN LEI: Thank you.