Blog

Chinese Kung Fu 中国功夫 – History of Chinese Kung Fu

Kung Fu (an Anglicization of gongfu [功夫]), means "hard-won achievement" while Wushu [武术], in today’s jargon, means "martial arts". However, the "wu" [武] of wushu is itself composed of two component characters – the one stacked over the other in the style of a mathematical fraction – which is often the custom in Chinese wherever the one syllable (usually the leading syllable) of a two-syllable word is itself a product of two older syllables: zhi [止], meaning "stop" (as in "to brake" or "to arrest"); and je [戈], meaning "cudgel" (or "sword" or "spear" – or, more generally, "weapon"). In other words, the "wu" of wushu means to fend off the armed attack of an aggressor. Shu [術] means "technique" – or, in the collective, as here: "art".

Continue Reading →
1 753 754 755 756 757 1,697