Among the green peaks of the Song Shan mountain range is a town named Dengfeng, which has the highest concentration of hardmen in the world.

You can hear them all morning, training in the dozens of schools that line the road up the mountain — the chopping, punching, roundhouse kicking and brick-smashing exponents of the ancient Chinese martial art of kung fu.

Sixty thousand martial artists from all over the globe study in Dengfeng because of its proximity to Shaolin Si, the Zen Buddhist temple whose fighting monks are renowned worldwide for their mastery of spiritual discipline and deadly force.

Millions of tourists visit the temple every year; it has turned a small market town into the chop-socky capital of the world. But behind a public front of impassive calm and iron discipline, all is not well in the world of kung fu.

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There is a broad resentment that, despite its 5,000 years of history and Beijing hosting this year's summer Games, China's most famous martial art has not been accepted as an Olympic sport. And there are grumblings about the institution that, for many of its fans, is synonymous with kung fu — the Shaolin Temple itself.

Kung fu masters in Dengfeng complain that the Shaolin temple's abbot is compromising its status as a place of religious contemplation with the vulgar pursuit of commercialism. Even more seriously, doubts are being raised about the quality of the martial arts practised at Shaolin.

A shocking and heretical question arises: have the world-famous kung fu monks gone soft?

In legend, Shaolin kung fu was invented 1,500 years ago by the temple's founder, the Indian monk Bodhidarma, to counteract the effects of long-seated meditation. Throughout China's turbulent history it was also a practical means of defending the temple, which was repeatedly razed and virtually disbanded by Mao's Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution. The economic reforms of the past three decades have, though, created as big a boom in kung fu as in the rest of the Chinese economy. Down the road from the temple is the Tagou Martial Arts School, founded in 1978 by a master and handful of acolytes: now it is the biggest kung fu academy in the world, with 25,000 students and 3,000 teachers on two sites.

“It grew like a snowball,” says the school's president, Liu Haiqin. “It's the story of China in miniature.” Graduates of the school go on to become sports teachers, athletes, soldiers, bodyguards —as well as actors, extras and film stuntmen.

So it would have been a popular step if, as well as featuring in the Olympic opening ceremony, kung fu could have been a medal event. “This is the most popular martial art in Asia, so it is a pity that it could not be an Olympic sport,” says the Rev Shi Yongxin, the abbot of Shaolin Temple. “It is a sadness for orientals that it cannot be part of the Olympic family.”

Explanations include the late candidacy of the sport, the reluctance of the International Olympic Committee to expand an already unwieldy Games, and a local suspicion that the West would not welcome an event in which China would win still more medals.

Instead, kung fu has consoled itself by holding a tournament in Beijing next week, coinciding with the Games, though not part of them.

Even this has caused controversy, after the decision by the Shaolin Temple not to enter its monks in the competition. According to the abbot, this is because of differences in style between Shaolin kung fu and the competitive martial art.

“In competition you must have rules about what you can and cannot do - you don't just fight,” he says. “But the monks of Shaolin do not fight for show — we fight to defeat our opponent, by any means necessary.”

Among secular kung fu masters, this suggestion provokes ironic smiles. The true reason the monks will not compete, they say, is because they are nervous of losing, thereby compromising the Shaolin mystique, and the significant income that flows from it.

“If you ask me, 'Are they scared?' I couldn't deny there's something in that,” says Mr Liu of the Tagou School. “How many champions have they trained? How many medals have they won? The best place in the world for kung fu is our school.”

Such deprecation of the Shaolin monks is part of a broader suspicion of the abbot. His business ventures — from the T-shirts and scented candles sold in the temple souvenir shop to an online gaming site and an overseas branch in Australia — have provoked accusations of commercialism.

The abbot insists that the temple's business interests are taken care of by professional managers rather than the monks — and that in any case the income generated is matched by the outgoings involved in running and maintaining a large temple. On the challenge to his monks' kung fu prowess, he is withering.

“We could beat those people, no problem,” he says. “They wear big gloves on their hands so they don't get hurt and we wear nothing.

“But we would still win.”

HITTING THE SPOT

— Bruce Lee took kung fu to Hollywood posthumously after dying during the editing of Enter the Dragon, released in 1973

— Kung Fu, the award-winning American television series, aired for the first time in 1972 and introduced audiences to a Shaolin monk who travelled through the American Wild West

— Hong Kong Phooey, a dog, police station janitor and skilled martial artist kicked kung fu into UK pop culture when his cartoon series began airing in 1974

— Jackie Chan is credited with creating a new kind of kung fu film during the 1990s, blending slapstick with martial arts in films such as Rush Hour

— Kung Fu Panda took £299 million in global ticket sales this summer, becoming Dreamworks’ most successful film

Sources: internationalhero.co.uk; imdb.com