Whilst it's no Karate Ghostbusters, I still had a blast watching Kung-Fu Panda at the cinema recently.

Blessed as we are with 5RMB DVDs on every street corner, it's easy to forget how much cooler movies look on the big screen, and that goes double for the richly detailed animation and subtle nuances of Jack Black's fart jokes.

Ever since I left the cinema (Grand Shanghai Cinema 世纪大上海电影院 on Xizang Lu) I've been thinking about how great it would be to become a dedicated student of the martial arts. Scaling walls at the speed of silence, ripping out a man's heart and showing it to him before he dies, free haircuts.

However I've looked into it, and apparently it takes time, patience, study and exercise. So instead I've been cruising TaoBao for tourist tat from the temples of Shaolin.

The Venerable e-store Shaolin Temple Of Joy seems to have removed it's most controversial item- a 9,999RMB set of scrolls divulging ancient secrets of the ancestors, but you can probably download all of that stuff anyway. The true path to warriordom rests on three key factors:

1. Wisdom: this cool ancient (reproduction) scroll (99RMB) with something or other written on it should take care of that
2. Speed: which is no problem in these hi-tech monk shoes (268RMB)
3. Timing: Piece of cake with this awesome Watch (78RMB).

   [Disclaimer: Students should be aware that the path to TaoBao is often fraught with many difficulties, credit card registration, and no english menu- but patience is the key to victory.]