Ever watch Fight Quest?

Fight Quest is a television show on the Discovery Channel, where two trained fighters, Jimmy Smith and Doug Anderson, spend a year traveling around the world and take a week at different locations to learn various fighting disciplines from where the discipline actually originated.  It's an interesting series.

During one episode, the duo traveled to Deng Feng, China to spend a week at the Shaolin temple area.  I remember watching that episode a while back, but when I made my trek to China and visited the Shaolin temple, I was immediately reminded of it because I visited one area, in particular, that one of the fighters spent time at during filming of the show.

If you have watched the episode I'm talking about, you'll know from the following pictures that this is where the Shaolin monks had Jimmy punching a bag that hung from the structure.

OK, so here's the funny thing about this.  To get to this area in the Shaolin temple area you have to walk down a winding, stone staircase.  The staircase itself is off the beaten path and is kind of secluded.  We found it accidentally and were the only ones in this courtyard.  It's so secluded that is makes a good spot for a bathroom, apparently, because the entire staircase smelled strongly of urine.

Still, it was cool to see the exact place that I had seen on television only a couple months earlier.