Eventually, human-sized action figures became visible amid the thick fog, bouncing about the stage meaningfully and manfully like grasshoppers-on-steroids, wielding poles with time-honored authority. Mysteriously, the house lights remained on when the troupe took the stage — and stayed on until the mist finally subsided.

"Do you want the story, the reason?" general manager Don Frantz asked during the opening-night party at — tradition! — Sardi's. "Some of it is cultural," he began loftily. "The show lives a little bit more than a Broadway show does. It's called by one man, kind of in the spirit of everything." [He didn't name names, but presumably the mad genius in control was Liu Tongbiao, the show's credited director-choreographer.]

"If you tell commercial artists, 'Do this. Do that. Do more.' — they will do it. He called for more smoke and more smoke and more smoke. We did more smoke on opening night than we ever did because we got excited. The smoke was on in the adrenalin rush of opening night. A new fire-alarm system was installed before White Christmas, and it's more sensitive than usual. The alarm triggered the house lights to come on. If it had happened with the old system, the sprinklers would've gone on."

The first-night crowd was not only mercifully dry but pretty much star-free. However, as befits an historic occasion like the People's Republic of China's first sighting on Broadway, the evening was steeped in cultural dignitaries: George Hu, the Governor's Office Asian Community Affairs Liaison; Commissioner Marjorie B. Tiven of the United Nations Consular Corps and Protocol; Mrs. Asha Rose Metengenti Migiro and Mr. Sha Zukang, both Deputy Secretary-Generals of the United Nations; Ambassador Zhang Yesui, Permanent Representative of China to the United Nations; Minister Liu Hanming, of the United Nations Chinese Mission; Zhai Deyu, Consul and Director of the New York Chinese Consulate Cultural Office, and Peng Keyu, the New York Chinese Consulate Consul General.

"This is part of a much larger project that we are involved with," said its initiator, Robert Nederlander Jr. "We have been bringing 'The Best of Broadway' to China for a couple of years now. We toured Aida and 42nd Street through nine cities across China. Also, we're helping them manage several theatres, and, as a part of that, we ran across some great talent, and we're helping them to develop it. Our focus is not to restage American shows and then bring them here. We're looking to the original Chinese work and working with creative Chinese talent, finding Chinese shows that work for that market and work for Broadway as well. We hope to develop an audience — not just a traditional theatre audience — but families who may want to bring their young kids to see great action. And, of course, theirs is the Asian community here in New York. It'll really be a broad audience base, we believe."

View the Entire Photo Gallery Li Lin Photo by Aubrey Reuben

Soul of Shaolin is Step One in that direction and timed deliberately to celebrate the Lunar New Year, Jan. 26, the Year of the Ox. Step Two, he said, should be arriving a year from now. "Part of the impetus for bringing these shows in in January is to coincide with the Chinese New York." The next opus has yet to be determined.

The Shaolin Temple Wushu Martial Artists — some 33 strong and all, of course, marking their Broadway debuts — performed the piece. It may well be the first Broadway show to tell its whole story in marital arts set-pieces. Four or five times, a narrator is heard, helping a Western audience over a plot point that otherwise would be lost in translation, but, for the most part, the show is hammer-hard and action-driven, with a jaw-dropping display of synchronized athletic skills and feats.

Set in a time of ancient turmoil, Soul of Shaolin tells of Hui Guang, who is separated from his mother as an infant and is raised by monks in the Shaolin Temple in China's Henan Province (where, incidentally, the entire cast has put in many long hours of training that couples the action of Kung Fu and the inaction of Buddhist meditation). Continued...