The Shaolin Grind

The music video for GENER8ION and M.I.A.’s The New International Sound Pt. II features two kids from the Shaolin Tagou school in China. Xin Chenxi is nine, Chen Xi is fifteen. The school trains about twenty-six thousand kids total—basically an assembly line for discipline.

I saw the video first, then looked up the documentary. Dragon Girls by Inigo Westmeier is what actually gets at what the training is. You watch nine-year-olds moving in perfect formation with swords and you’re thinking about the hours. You’re wondering if they wanted this or just ended up here through circumstance.

The kids talk about missing home, missing people, and they do it with a kind of composure that’s unsettling. Then they’re back in the yard fighting each other, getting hurt, treating the blood like it’s nothing. There’s a moment where a girl is proud of a bruise. Genuinely proud of it.

After you know that, the music video feels different. The images are polished and they move well enough, but you’re watching something else now. You’re aware of what’s underneath the formation.

The training doesn’t really stop. The video goes viral for a week or whatever, and then it doesn’t matter anymore. But the kids are still there doing drills and kata and fighting each other in the dust. That’s the part that gets to me—the video is temporary, but the grinding just keeps going.