[lenepp]

"it also holds onto a significant amount of kung fu tradition"

There is a huge political controversy in the kung fu world that this article doesn't address, which is the Chinese government's perceived hostility to the idea of letting its citizens train to really fight, for pretty obvious ideological reasons.

Essentially, the claim you will hear from some Chinese masters (often part of the diaspora) is that while the Communists discovered that the veneration of martial arts was too deeply engrained in the culture to eradicate, they could transform people's idea of martial arts itself into something more like dance or a gymnastic performance. They did this through the creation and control of various wushu institutions and the transformation of the Shaolin Temple into a training ground for a performance troupe (I said it's a controversial view).

In particular, according to this view, the ancient legends associated with the Shaolin temple allowed the government to create something totally new, that people would nonetheless perceive as part of an old "kung fu tradition."

There's only one really good, trustworthy book out there (that I know of) on the Shaolin temple. It's called The Shaolin Monastery, and it's by a professor of East Asian Studies named Meir Shahar. Definitely worth a read if you're interested in learning more.