Shaolin Kung Fu and its practicing monks are
legendary figures that have populated culture all around the world, from music to film and
even comic books. Their legendary reputation is often preceded
by tales of the incredible feats of mental and physical endurance that these master monks
have been doing for centuries. Yet how much of this is real and how much
of it is just legend? Hello and welcome to another episode of The
Infographics Show- today we're going to take a look at one of these individuals and delve
into the incredible world of superpowered monks as we learn about the unbreakable monk
who can't get hurt. Zhao Rui is a twenty nine year old monk living
in China who has become world famous after Russia Today broadcast video of his incredible
feats across the internet. According to Rui, he ran away from home at
the age of sixteen after becoming fascinated with martial arts. His goal was to join a Shaolin temple and
dedicate his life to mastering his physical and mental selves. For two years Rui studied at his temple, being
trained in Sanda- or Chinese kickboxing- and 'hard Qigong', or the practice of drawing
great physical strength and endurance from an inner energy known as qi. After learning all he could from his temple,
he left in search of masters who could further his training, and spent his life moving from
temple to temple, honing his mind and body. According to Rui, he used to be a very self-conscious
and nervous kid, and perhaps because of his shortcomings he dedicated his life to making
his mind and body incredibly tough. Whatever his motivation, it's safe to say
that Rui achieved his goal, as today the monk is capable of incredible feats which would
severely injure or even kill normal people. One such stunt involves Rui laying on four
sharpened metal spears, during which he uses special breathing techniques and deep mental
focus to toughen his flesh so that his skin is able to actually prevent him from being
impaled. But is Rui's skin truly unbreakable? In the famous bed of nails stunt where individuals
lay happily and uninjured across a bed of nails, the body's weight and the force of
gravity pulling on the body are both dispersed across the heads of hundreds of tiny nails. While the head of a single nail may not seem
like much surface area, add that up across the hundreds that make up the traditional
bed of nails and you come up with a pretty large amount of surface area for the body's
weight and gravity's force to be dispersed across. This prevents the nails from piercing the
skin as you would normally expect them to. So does Rui's spear trick do the same thing? That's likely, given that Rui always provides
his own spears, and if you've ever seen the feat repeated by so-called Shaolin stage shows,
you'll notice that the spears are in fact not sharply tipped at all, but rather blunted. While being able to lay your full body weight
on even a blunted spear is still an impressive feat, a further investigation into how the
feat is done reveals Rui's secret- the spear points are always placed on his thighs, his
abdomen, and his collarbone. The collarbone is very dense and can easily
resist the force of the blunted spear, and as with the body of any extremely well developed
athlete, the abdominal and thigh muscles- some of the strongest in the body- can be
with effort hardened considerably. The real trick here is the way that Rui is
able to ignore what must be considerable pain and flex his muscles so as to stiffen them
for such a long time. Rui's next trick is the bending of iron rebar
using just his throat, which when you see it admittedly looks like both an incredible
feat and something incredibly uncomfortable to consider doing yourself. Rebar is after all used to reinforce concrete,
so it must be pretty tough stuff. Well, yes and no. See rebar works by bundling large groups of
rods together, yet the individual rods are thin enough to be flexible. This helps a building have just enough flexibility
when needed to not shatter, yet the groups of rods together are able to lend great strength. It's a bit like taking a single matchstick
and crushing it in your fingers, yet when you take ten of them and try to repeat the
feat they are able to share the stress equally and resist being crushed. There's also the fact that Rui always bends
very long bars, and as most of us know the longer an object the more prone it is to bending
and the easier it is to do so. If you need even more proof though simply
google “normal people bending rebar with their throats”. You'll soon see that it's a favorite stunt
of self-help and confidence-boosting seminars, with everyday people like you and me called
on stage and told that if they “believe in themselves” they can bend rebar. Then the individuals- who typically pay upwards
of $1500 per seminar- magically rush towards each other and bend the iron bar, typically
hugging in joy at their newfound super-confidence. Turns out they could've saved $1500 if they'd
just believed in physics. Then of course there's the infamous electric
drill bit, where Rui takes a modern electric drill, allows an assistant to press it against
his head, and then fires it up. Rui screams, focusing his body's qi at the
point the drill is pressed against his skull in order to resist the drilling. At least, that's what it looks like he's doing. A closer inspection however reveals that first
of all, the drill is running counter-clockwise, which is not the direction you would run a
drill if you want to actually drill into an object. Drill bits have special grooves cut into them
that when powered up 'bite' into material, and as the drill bit spins the grooves mechanically
force the drill bit deeper into the material. When run backwards though, the mechanical
action actually forces the drill bit backwards, as it pushes against the material it is inside
of. By running the drill backwards, the tip of
the drill bit is actually trying to push itself away from Rui's head, not bore inside of it. Then there's also the fact that nobody has
ever been allowed to inspect the drill bit itself, yet from what can be seen in his video
and from other similar videos, the drill bits seem suspiciously blunted at the tip. Even running the drill backwards while pushing
the drill into the skull would do some serious damage to the skin and bit of flesh between
it and the bone, but a dulled bit would have no way of 'biting' into the skin, and would
simply spin in place doing exactly what we see as the end result in every one of these
videos: reddening the area severely and possibly drawing a bit of blood. Lastly, there's the fact that a bystander
is never allowed to assist with the drilling, and instead Rui or any of his copycats always
have their own assistant, or do the drilling themselves. While drilling themselves it's obviously easy
to keep the drill pressed close enough to look real, without actually putting enough
force that the dulled drill bit would actually do some damage. In Rui's video though perhaps the most damning
bit of evidence against this trick is the fact that he routinely puts his own hand on
the drill, likely to provide enough push back so that the assistant knows not to push any
harder. Next is another staple of Rui and other alleged
Shaolin practitioners pseudo-magic shows. This is when Rui takes a long metal bar and
repeatedly bashes it against his own head until the bar bends. This is supposedly showing off Rui's incredible
toughness and durability, as surely it's only his mystical mastery of qi energy that keeps
him from concussing himself into unconsciousness. Well, you've probably guessed it, but we're
going to ruin this one for you too. Careful observation of the bar that is always
used in this stunt reveals that it is very long, and almost always has a weighted tip
on one end. Typically the weighted tip is adorned with
metal rings as a sort of rattler, to make a dramatic sound as Rui smashes the bar into
his head. Yet the weighted tip also adds more weight
to one end of the bar than another, which becomes important as we carefully observe
Rui's technique. As can be easily seen in his videos, Rui smashes
the bar into his head repeatedly at the mid point of the bar, which forces the lower half
of the bar to rapidly decelerate. The upper half however is still moving very
quickly, and the stress of sudden deceleration is channeled to the point of contact between
Rui's skull and the bar- the middle. Think back to the example of squeezing upright
matches between your fingers- where do they break? The middle, because that is where they are
structurally weakest. The longer an object the weaker it becomes
at its midsection, which is why modern ships are built in sections that are then joined
together. In Rui's case, the weighted tip which dramatically
rattles with each impact helps lend more weight to one end of the bar than another- the end
which is still traveling at high speed as the middle of the bar is suddenly decelerated
by Rui's skull. This adds additional force to the top of the
bar, helping it bend. But wait, because we've saved the best for
last- although admittedly that drill to the head thing was pretty jawdropping, until we
debunked it anyways. In Rui's final example of super-human-dom,
he shows off a large knife which he quickly chops some fruit up with, displaying its sharpness. Then he loops a bit of metal between the handle
and about midway up the large blade, and slides his head inside the loop that's created. He places the sharp edge of the blade against
his throat, and then has the loop attached to another rope which is itself tied to a
parked van. The van is put into neutral and Rui incredibly
pulls the van along while avoiding slicing his own jugular open. Absolutely incredible! Or at least it would be, if the stunt were
real. You guessed it, it's not. First, when Rui demonstrates the sharpness
of the blade he is always seen using the front half of the very large knife to slice the
fruit or vegetable. He is always very careful not to show the
knife edge-on to the camera, which would give away the fact that the bottom half of the
large blade is actually dulled. At this point the stunt is no different than
his laying on spears, the force on the blunted edge of the knife is dispersed sufficiently
to cause nothing more than a very red mark. Sadly Zhao Rui is not a master of the mystical
energy field that permeates all life known as qi, and is instead a master of what many
modern martial arts practitioners have termed 'Bullshido'. While Rui is in fact an extremely talented
athlete, and does display incredible mental fortitude to be able to bear large amounts
of pain, his feats don't prove that he is an unbreakable Shaolin monk, but rather that
he is a very clever stage magician and that physics is a thing. Sadly with everything Shaolin being popularized
around the world by mass media, performers everywhere have popped up putting on very
profitable, and very fake, displays of their superpowers achieved by mastering ancient
techniques. Of course the actual Shaolin temple in China
has not been of any help in reclaiming China's real cultural treasures, as they have been
too busy happily licensing their name on everything from instant-noodles to cigarettes.
