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biggest and bravest don protective gear and launch into each other with fists of fury under the corrective eye of their shifu.

Led not by a wizened Master Po, a cruel Pei Mei or any such mythical elder with long white eyebrows, today's Shaolin shifu (master) are young, burly and surly, some fresh out of Kung Fu school and quick to take a bamboo cane to the backsides of their junior trainees.

-YOUNG GRASSHOPPA-

In the dark chill of night, the spent students finally retire to their dorm rooms for a semi-normal albeit brief adolescent life reading comics, watching movies, or, most precious, sleep. The boys share up to ten bunks per room, which look, and smell, accordingly.

Conversely, there are only 7 girls at Shuiku, though none admit feeling uncomfortable around the pubescent testosterone of so many "brothers." With narrow eyes and long, silky black hair, Feng Jing Jing of Shanxi has been a Shaolin student for one year and plans at least another four.

Despite her quiet demeanor, the 17 year-old novice shares a tempered conceit with the rest of her male and female classmates, disdaining an ordinary teenage life of classrooms and tests. "Kung Fu is much easier than English," Feng Jing Jing asserts while slashing a broadsword in the air with lethal precision.

And what of the parents who are paying for these classes? For them, Kung Fu is an alternative investment into their child's future. And the earlier they begin, the larger the payoff they hope.

Cao Xu, 7, who likes doing cartwheels instead of walking, doesn't seem to mind being away from his mother and father back in Shanghai. Nevertheless, their adult ambitions have obviously been instilled in this little grasshopper's mind: "I want to be a heroand earn lots of money!"

-WHITE LOTUS-

Demonstrated by its box-office strength in the western world, the Shaolin lifestyle isn't only popular with Chinese. 20 year-old Felix Klemisch studied martial arts in his native Germany for four years before hopping on a China-bound plane to pursue his affinity for Kung Fu.

And towering over every other student and trainer at Shuiku is the 190cm Stephan Beck, the school's foreign veteran with a combined 9 months between two Shaolin schools (he quit the first school after making him stare into the sun for ten minutes a day "to build up [his] Qi"). Also 20 and from Germany, Stephan defies height, gravity and conventions, often training alone while the Chinese students are in group formation.

The two young Europeans confide that communication

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