Difference between kung fu and wushu
Kung Fu is a collection of martial arts, developed in china (actually from china, Tibet, Hong Kong, etc also). Today the word kung fu is used to represent all the Chinese martial art styles such as Wing Chun, Tai chi, Baguazhang (pa kua), Xing yi( Hsing I), Hung Gar, Hop Gar, Choy Lei Fut, Hop gar, fanzi quan, Baji quan, Lau Gar, etc. In traditional kung fu schools the students learned both empty hand fighting techniques, weapons, chin na (joint lock techniques), shui jiao (Chinese grappling ) and chi kung (Chinese internal development system for cultivation of chi), etc and some times some spiritual concepts and a good philosophical background. Wushu is a sports version of kung fu. Wushu was intellectually developed by the communist government of china after 1949 mainly to ward off the real martial art practice. Wushu is a mixture of many Chinese martial arts. It literally means warrior art. Kung fu literally means great hard work or the result in a person’s attributes or skills due to a prolonged hard work.
Later the wushu is divided into two, taolu and sanshou (sanda). Taolu covers many routines like tai chi, changquan nanquan, jian shou, etc. San shou is sometimes called Sanda or Lei tai and it concentrates 100% on fighting aspects especially for Tournaments.
(%) PEACE …
A good description about the basic difference between traditional Kung fu and sports wushu.
chinese communist government killed Kung fu and made wushu…
kunfu wushu is cool
[…] bookmarks tagged nanquan Martial Arts Blog: Difference between kung fu and … saved by 5 others Freyjaslilcub bookmarked on 02/06/08 | […]
I personally like wushu more than kung fu as it involves more action.
Although Kung fu is much more popular than wushu, I think the latter is much more interesting and encompasses a wide aspect of martial arts. As the author has mentioned, it is the sports version of Kung fu which would mean that Wushu is more physically challenging with lots of movement variations that is most likely targeted for tournaments.