I personally enjoyed this arcticle and agree with it. It is time that Modern Wushu withdraw itself from its current name of Wushu, I am tired of having to use the term kung fu instead of wushu. And when I do use the term Wushu, I always have to go into an in depth traditional translation of the difference between wushu and kung fu. Modern Wushu in a sense gives the term Wushu a different image then what the word actually means. What do you guys think?
I think it is too similar to mushu pork and then I get hungry everytime someone starts talking to me about wushu.
I kind of missed the point of the article. Was he saying that Sport Wushu should not use the term Wushu? I thought he was saying that we should call all Kung Fu, Wushu. That would just be confusing because you wouldn’t know if it was sport Wu Shu or traditional Wu Shu.
I think we should just stay the same. Traditional Wushu=Kung Fu. Sport Wushu=Wushu. The names are already too entrenched to change.
it needs some sort of rectumication…
I kind of agree that the names are too entrenched to change as well.
But if it were to change i think using the words “Traditional” and “Sport” respectively for kung fu and wushu would help.
with karate they don’t seem to have a problem. It’s either some form of traditional karate or some sport karate.
I will say though, that as entrenched as the words kung fu and wushu are within the chinese martial arts community, there are lots of people in the english speaking world, who don’t even know the difference between the asian martial arts on a whole, so maybe it’s not as engrained as we think?
I’ve had numerous encounters with people who aren’t farmiliar with the term wushu at all, and had to explain to them what the diference between it and kung fu is.
however alot of these people have a very limited understanding of what kung fu is in the first place. Names are important. I find that people confuse the names of schools for the name of the system taught in the school. kung fu is a complex animal and tricky names already complicate matters.
I’m kind of uncertain about wether or not changing the name at this stage in the game will only confuse matters more.
glad it’s not my responsibility 
An Tianrong’s article
Here’s a link to the article being discussed, just in case you couldn’t figure it out.
The name game in CMA is really nutty, especially when you start bringing in the alternate spellings of Kung Fu, Gung Fu, Gong Fu, etc. The problem with what Master An is discussing is that Kung Fu (or Wushu) truly belongs to the world now. It’s not just a Chinese thing. In China, you can have something like ‘name rectification’. Hell, they rectified the entire language with the simplified characters. But in America, as well as the rest of the world, it’s a more democratic process. The people will call it Kung Fu, because that’s how it’s known in pop culture. With Crouching Tiger, Flying Daggers, etc., you’re starting to hear about Wushu in pop culture, but no one’s going to change the name at this point.
We’ll have more from Master An coming next update. Stay tuned! And forward the article to your friends. Tell them to join the forum here. Help us grow!
I guess I understand the whole, calling it kung fu due to the popular way it has been spread throughout film. I just seem to like the more traditional meanings of kung fu meaning energy/time, or skill, and wushu meaning the art of resisting the spear, stopping ones spear, stopping ones own spear, or martial arts. I apply the term kung fu to more then just my martial arts. But at the same time find myslef falling in with the flow of the modern terminology. Its just hard to represent your school when you tell them you study wushu and they say “those guys dont fight do they?” and you say, “ok heres how it is…” I suppose that Ill have to go with the flow, at least in outside circles.
I know what you mean
It’s tricky because no matter what you do - whether you chose wushu or kung fu - you get caught in semantics if you know a little Chinese. It’s part of the the old 'east is east, west is west" culture clash - very tough to translate without a long boring lecture. And in the end, pop culture doesn’t care. Pop culture is just getting past calling it all ‘karate’. The main point is that you can’t change the common vernacular to be more ‘correct’. What are you going to do? Cite people for using the wrong term? It has to happen organically and at this point, we’re only big enough to be labelled by one term. For average Americans, wushu needs to be defined.
When you put it like that, it makes a lot of sense. Hopefully we can all do our part to educate those who we come in contact with regarding this subject matter.
I dunno about the rest of Europe but around here the term Wushu is used as frequantly as ‘Kung Fu’, among Martial artists atleast. Of cors, the average non MA won’t know the difference between CMA, TKD or Karate, so the Wushu/Kung Fu issue is not important.
That’s interesting, Kristoffer
I speak from an American perspective so the European take is intriguiing. I’ve always felt that Europe was a bit more accepting of wushu than America. I don’t know why, nor do I know why I feel that. Obviously if it’s made more progress in the language, that’s some validation of my feeling. What do you think? Would you say that’s different for diffrent European countries? It must be, yes?
in america we were forced to grow up in a puritanical society and forced to have sex with one person for out whole lives. while in europe its the sex capital of the world…
**** eurotrip still has me laughing.
Do you think there could be a connection between this and the geographical locations? Europe as a whole has throughout time been more “mixed up” in terms of dealings with other countries. As well as the relation between Britan and Hong Kong. Just a thought.
So Gene, if name rectification is in order, will we all be posting to the Wu Shu Magazine forum soon?
eurotrip
NRG: That’s doubtful. If you look in our archives, you’ll find that we used to be called Wushu Kungfu Qigong (along with a bunch of variations on this title :rolleyes:). We dropped the wushu and changed qigong to tai chi to meet the needs of our newsstand. Americans just couldn’t handle a title with three Chinese words.
PQ: I’ve never actually been to Europe, so it’s hard for me to say. I imagine having more different countries so close to each other promotes more diversity. Also America tends to be kind of schizo when it comes to anything older than 200 years. We really don’t have old stuff, so the notion of new stuff can be confounding.
SLL: I would never have said the America is puratanical. But then again, I’ve not seen Eurotrip. 
Wushu versus kungfu: Artifical versus Real
Government Beauracracy versus Private Art
Wushu is the name for the Communist Chinese Government Kungfu.
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In Mainland china, on the street, in the parks, everyone will refer to the kungfu that they are practising as “government kungfu” and will make the distinction between any private traditional kungfu they might show you.
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It is the new artifical kungfu recently developed from old traditional kungfu for showy and athletic routines so that it can be used in a way as international gymnastic competitions to promote the nationalistic feeling and support the Communist government. It is extremely restricted in scope.
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It is used much the same as the old USSR used to use Olymipic sports.
It includes much of the new artificial Shaolin kungfu developed with the support of the communist government under the management of CCP party members such as the “abbot” of Shaolin Temple.
The Chinese government has used their full power to support their own new kungfu and suppress others and traditional kungfu both at home and abroad. They develop organizations and enlist members in foreign countries to aid their propaganda cause. They also use it as a hook to extract as much money as they can from foreign sources both inside and outisde china. To that end they use much propaganda and mystification about the definition of Government Kungfu or “Wushu”.
An interesting thing is that those who helped the government develop it’s Wushu routines never dare want to write their names down to any manual, book or record. It’s just far too dangerous for any such individual. They have long learned that in Communist China, anonymity means survival.
In Modern China, no significant societies are groups are allowed to exist unless they are under the control of the CCP. That always means having a CCP member on the organization. This includes martial art societies, any organization over 100 people or inter-provincial.
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I reserve the English term “kungfu” for the real kungfu. Kungfu that has been developed by individuals and martial art socieites historically and has survived mostly outside of China and continues thrive without control by the Chinese Government. They have an enormous range of practical fighting techniques and ancient training methods that are never to be found in Wushu.
Year Zero yet to come.
In fact to promote the name “Wushu” is to promote or attempt to legitimize Communist Chinese Government Kungfu or it’s practicioners.
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Which is probably the hidden purpose of that article.
I would hope with a change of government, the whole Wushu house of cards would fall and we would hear many interesting truths and old kungfu emerge. It would be a day of final liberation for Kungfu would that it ever come.
It’s definatly different from country to country. Despite simmilaritys in culture, differences are far greater. So I can really only speak of the Scandinavian region.
I think one reason the term Wushu is so common here is because when traditional Wushu was brought to this country in the 70’s, it was called Wushu from the get go. And because of all the Bruce Lee films at the time, Kung Fu started to get popular. Thus the ‘Wushu/Kung Fu’ issue has never been more than just names.
Also, modern Wushu never established very well around here. Not until a few years ago I started see some small groups of modern Wushu pop up here and there. Maybe they will be more popular in the future but today, traditional Wushu is and has been the popular one. Sanda competitions are very popular, so popular that people started to cut with the traditional and open up their own schools - training only Sanda but still calling it Wushu.
I guess our competition driven Sanda schools are our modern Wushu eh 
In fact to promote the name “Wushu” is to promote or attempt to legitimize Communist Chinese Government Kungfu or it’s practicioners.
Pardon my french but that’s Bullsh1t. If you know what Wushu means it doesn’t take alot to figure out it is also a collective term to refer to traditional Martial Arts.
If anything, it should be the modern Wushu changing name to Kung Fu! Because the name Wushu decribes what traditional CMA do, while Gong Fu describe a skill in ANYTHING. So in my opinion I think you are promoting a false name for the traditional arts.
But then again, they are only names to decribe arts from China/Taiwan. Just like Karate is to Japanese/Okinawan. We know the difference, so a global official name change is as rediculous as inpossible to do.
Wushu is also viewed upon as a FIGHTING art. When ppl around here talk about Wushu they think of traditional or fighting arts. Now that modern Wushu is starting to get more recognized, maybe the traditionalists wants to be more specific about the names, but in all honestly I doubt it. They are only names and both are accepted. Besides, arguing over the names won’t improve u’r side kick.
And if I train Shuai Chiao I say I train Shuai Chiao, people who knows, know. There’s no reason to explain the differences between Wushu and Kung Fu for anyone that won’t get it anyway. Just tell ppl the name of you’re style, that’s what I do.
Here is a very basic translation of the original meaning of the word Wushu, for those of you who have not looked it up.
http://www.completemartialarts.com/information/styles/chinese/wushu.htm
This also is a very broad translation attempt, the further back you look at the characters, it can be translated differently, depending on the time period in which it was used. In other words the oldest translation differs from the newest in the respect that when the word was originally used the Chinese language as a whole was completely different. You can find the most accurate translations of the ancient character in many literary works. Most defining it the way that I described in my second post (i think it was my second) on this thread.