Japanese ninja beat Shaolin monks? Nonsense!
BEIJING - CHINA'S Shaolin Temple, the cradle of Chinese gongfu, is demanding an apology from an Internet user who said its monks had once been beaten in unarmed combat by a Japanese ninja, local media reported yesterday.
'The so-called defeat is purely fabricated, and we demand the Internet user apologise to the whole nation for the wrongs he or she did,' the Beijing News reported, citing a notice announced by a lawyer for the Shaolin monks.
Shaolin Temple, which is located in the northern province of Henan, became famous in the West as the training ground for Kwai Chang 'Grasshopper' Caine in the 1970s Kung Fu television series.
Ninjas - professional assassins trained in martial arts - date back to mediaeval Japan.
Relations between Chinese and Japanese are sensitive at the best of times, and emotions still run high over Japan's invasion and occupation of parts of China in the first half of the 20th century.
According to the newspaper, the Internet user, who uses the online monicker 'Five Minutes Every Day', said on an online forum last week that a Japanese ninja had gone to Shaolin and asked for a fight and that many monks had failed to beat him.
'The facts that the monks could not defeat a Japanese ninja showed that they were named as gongfu masters in vain,' the Internet user was quoted as saying in the posting.
The Shaolin Temple 'strongly condemned the horrible deeds' of the user, the newspaper said.
'It is not only extremely irresponsible behaviour with respect to the Shaolin Temple and its monks, but also to the whole martial art and Chinese nation,' it quoted the monks as saying.
REUTERS
(http://www.straitstimes.com/Asia/China/Story/STIStory_153614.html_
Songshan Shaolin - http://www.shaolin.org.cn/html/index.html; http://www.shaolin.com.au/history.htm
Ninjutsu - http://www.winjutsu.com/ninjakids/nk_history.html
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