Shaolin Temple is the birthplace of kung fu and Zen Buddhism. For 1500 years Shaolin has managed to adapt and survive but the wars and upheavals of the 20th century nearly finished the temple off. Then in the early 1980s the temple was reborn thanks to two men: Deng Xiaoping, who encouraged Chinese enterprise, and the other was Jet Li, who starred in the 1984 box office hit Shaolin Temple. Today the temple has multi-million dollar investments in property, media, healthcare and tourism.