If it's time for you to get in touch with your inner Grasshopper, plan to spend Friday evening at the Rubin Museum of Art. Here, as arranged with Aperture Foundation, photographer Justin Guariglia will be joined by Shi De Chao, a monk from the Shaolin Temple - the official birthplace of kung fu - and playwright David Henry Hwang - of M. Butterfly fame - to launch Shaolin: Temple of Zen, the book.

Photographs, left to right: Cover; Shi Yan Lang, Tong Jian Quan (Through the Shoulder Fist); Shi Heng Fu, Chao Yang Quan (Facing the Sun Fist). All by Justin Guariglia from Shaolin: Temple of Zen (Aperture, October 2007).

Driven by his passion for Chinese culture, Guariglia earned the trust and collaboration of the legendary warrior monks of Shaolin, the most famous monastery in China. Over a period of eight years, he documented the private world of Shaolin from within the temple's walls. His photographs of everyday life, which is inexorably linked with martial arts, reveal a world that remains inaccessible to most Westerners.

This exquisitely designed book gradually draws readers into a private world with images that, while depicting the trappings of tourism near its entrance, allude to the experience within through ghostly figures in motion. The color photographs of the monks practicing kung fu, in their rich subdued tonalities, suggest the timeless hold that Shaolin exerts on its followers. The changing context of this ancient sect, as it is impacted by the hyper-modern world of contemporary China, is safeguarded by the residents, some of whom are 34^th-generation practitioners of "the vehicle of Zen."

In his essay, Matthew Polly writes that the temple, built around 492 AD, was later "drawn into the contentious political realm, and played a role in shaping China's future that would forever cement its monks as folk heroes." The history of the temple, which has been recorded since around the tenth century, is epic. Many episodes of rescue, resistance and revenge have become popular legends, which later found their way into Western pop culture.

Perhaps the most enigmatic and alluring translation of these mythic stories was the TV series, "Kung Fu," starring David Carradine as the aforementioned Grasshopper. "After fifteen-hundred years," Polly writes, "America opened its eyes to a profound tradition that was invented in an isolated monastery in the middle of rural China. It wasn't long before some of us who had seen the show, or other pop interpretations, started looking for the source."

This Friday, October 12, the source will be with you in New York, starting with Happy Hour, at 6:00 pm. At 7:30, there will be a martial arts demonstration with Justin Guariglia and Shi De Chao, followed by a book signing, a slide show, and a screening of China's first blockbuster film, "Shaolin Temple," by Jet Li. Free and open to the public, with a $7 bar minimum for the cabaret-style film screening.