Points of interest fill a journey of self-discovery

Fortunately, Matthew Polly's debut, "American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China," suffers from none of the genre's fatal missteps. Polly's chronicle of his two-year hiatus from Princeton to study kung fu in China is an original and insightful book, moving beyond mere fish-out-of-water territory to become a story of personal redemption that's never a drag.

The action begins in 1992. Feeling cowardly, boyish, unattractive, and spiritually confused, Polly arrives in China ignorant and determined to find the legendary Shaolin monks he had been dreaming about ever since absorbing "Kung Fu" reruns back in Kansas. He hopes their brand of "chi ku" ("eating bitter") training will rub out his character flaws -- "Things That Are Wrong With Matt," a self-improvement to-do list that becomes the book's running joke and connecting thread.

On this journey from wimpy novice to confident journeyman, we meet Polly's trainer, Coach Cheng, and colleagues like Deqing, one of the Shaolin Wushu Center's top athletes. In clear layman's terms, Polly describes the history and practice of the fighting styles he studies. He also reveals a China in transition. To support themselves, the monks must perform tourist shows. Bastardization saves their Buddhist art but also dumbs it down for an increasingly consumer-driven Chinese public.

Polly is no prose stylist, but he does write with a pared-down efficiency that focuses on dialogue and action, not flights of fancy. Passive voice -- " I was," "it was" -- is his only major grammatical offense. As for lapses in content, the female locals he encounters exist mainly as one-night stands. Not that a lonely, male "laowai" ("foreigner") in remote China wouldn't obsess about sex, but a more generous view of women would have served the book well.