Summary of Matthew Polly's American Shaolin

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 I was accepted to Princeton, but I was so busy trying to fit in that I didn’t have time for intellectual activities. When I went back to school that fall, I started the Spanish club at my high school so I could demonstrate leadership potential.

#2 I had been taking kungfu classes since freshman year, because when I was nine years old I had seen a rerun of David Carradine’s Kung Fu and was never the same again. I had been studying Chinese culture and religion, and I wanted to learn real kungfu.

#3 I had decided to fly to China and ask around until I found someone who knew the answer. That’s the way quest heroes did it in the fantasy novels I favored. Maybe I’d chance upon an old crone who’d give me a magical artifact to help me on my journey.

#4 I was extremely ashamed of myself, and I couldn’t tell my father that I had been the boy that bullies loved to hate. I requested a leave of absence from Princeton, and began making preparations for my journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: May 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9798822523821

IRB Media

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Insights on Matthew Polly's American Shaolin

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

I was accepted to Princeton, but I was so busy trying to fit in that I didn’t have time for intellectual activities. When I went back to school that fall, I started the Spanish club at my high school so I could demonstrate leadership potential.

#2

I had been taking kungfu classes since freshman year, because when I was nine years old I had seen a rerun of David Carradine’s Kung Fu and was never the same again. I had been studying Chinese culture and religion, and I wanted to learn real kungfu.

#3

I had decided to fly to China and ask around until I found someone who knew the answer. That’s the way quest heroes did it in the fantasy novels I favored. Maybe I’d chance upon an old crone who’d give me a magical artifact to help me on my journey.

#4

I was extremely ashamed of myself, and I couldn’t tell my father that I had been the boy that bullies loved to hate. I requested a leave of absence from Princeton, and began making preparations for my journey.

#5

I had been studying Mandarin for three years when I went to China. I had handed the cab driver a little card that read GREAT WALL SHERATON in English and Chinese, and said in what I thought was Chinese, I go there. From that moment on, he talked to me nonstop in a language I did not understand.

#6

Chinese is a tonal language. Words spelled the same way mean different things when pronounced with one of the four different tones. I was trying to convert my expenditures up until this point into minimum-wage hours when the doorman offered to help me convert some of his local currency into dollars.

#7

I visited Tiananmen Square, the largest public square in the world. It is like a gray, stone version of the National Mall in Washington, D. C. It is bound to the north by Tiananmen Gate, which leads to the Forbidden City and bears a huge two-story portrait of Mao Zedong as its only ornament.

#8

I visited the Shaolin Temple, which was in Henan. The old woman there said that it had been destroyed by the Japanese during World War II, but was rebuilt by the government.