The hushed silence that descends over the old courtyard inside the Shaolin Temple carries the expectation of something magical. Abbot Shi Yongxin, a rotund Buddhist monk with a shaved head and a ...

Inside a large hall of the lush Shaolin Temple in Central China, the stage is set. The arc lights are switched on and a few chairs laid out in a neat row. The place echoes in the collective hum of ...

This story appears in the March 2011 issue of National Geographic magazine. The master spent his last day of life wrapped in a quilt stitched by his wife, his rasping, irregular breaths filling the ...

Like many kids growing up the early ’90s, Master Shi Yanqing watched Jet Li movies and dreamed of being a hero. Unlike most of those kids, Yanqing lived only 170 miles from the 1,519-year-old Shaolin ...

Fourteen years ago, Australian cancer sufferer David Ian Burn visited Songshan Mountain in Henan province to learn Zen techniques to try and improve his chances of beating the disease. While the area ...