There is no thing as "Shaolin Kung-Fu", although a lot of schools advertise with that term, just because it's popular. It describes a composition of various styles, loosly connected to the Shaolin temple. "The" Shaolin Kung-Fu wouldn't be possible because there are far too many basic styles (Tiger, Dragon, Snake etc.) and their various schools. Compare it to the term "car": It's just the common denominator for a thing, but more specific there are sedans, trucks etc and they all come as different brands. Same with the term Kung-Fu.

If i had to guess:

First kid is doing a Shandong Wushu form (not exactly sure, mainly because of using the head so much), second kid i'm pretty convinced does Hung Gar, which is the more common Kung-Fu style teached in western countries.

Tags changed from "martal art,kung fu,ninjitsu,kum do" to "martial art, kung fu, wushu, kendo" by gold star member rembar.

Nick Gillard has been with George Lucas from the beginning, doing the choreography for every saber fight since 1975... He's constantly traveled to keep up with trends and new styles... GL asked him to find something much more exotic for "these Jedi and Sith at their prime". Wushu was the only solution...

The wild swings are called flares, and serve to misdirect your opponent and gain momentum on your strikes... In EPIII Obi-Wan and Annakin stand inches apart doing infinity flares at high speed... Most would say it's just showing off, but it serves an important purpose when you can be cut in 2 at any moment...

And it was Mace Windu that beheaded Jango Fett... Not Obi-Wan.

I love watching this sport, but I would never take part in it. Much like hockey, cause I cant skate.

The one thing that i do not like about the gracie dynasty is the lengths that they go to, to show how good their martial art is agianst other arts. Kenpo, and some other thing on GoogleVideo.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naWEbPDz80w

Fistly bringing one art form and dueling another to prove that one is better than the other is foolish. "There are many styles of Wushu. One style is not better than the other, there is only difference in skill." -Jet Li's Character in Fearless.

There is a terrible stereotype that follows KickBoxing, MMA, and even my style of Martial Art is that we do the art in order to show our egos. In somecases we do just that, but in most cases its because we have no choice. Training to fight is one thing but training as a warrior in all your aspects of life is the way, only doing it halfway is foolish. The only certain thing in martial arts is that there is uncertainty.

This was a great vid! I think that submissions work from any angle, but I perfer to do my fighting from a distance behind Tachi!

LOL Wow, I got owned. In my defence I didn't just use wiki to try pretend like I know what I'm on about. It is true I have not done wushu, instead comments didn't sit right with things a friend of mine who has done a number of martial arts told me. I just wanted to convey what he had told me, but couldn't remember properly. My mistake was using wiki to try remind myself of the specifics of what he said which, having read your post, I realise I instead warped badly. I will in future try to comment only when I am confident in my own understanding of a given issue and don't need to compensate for bad memory by checking potentially questionable sources... sorry -_-;;

Ghostly....uhhhhh....wow. Wow.

No personal offense to you, but you've never trained wushu, san da, or san shou, have you? Because uhhh....Wikipedia isn't the source of all knowledge, contrary to popular belief.

To be TRULY pedantic, your interpretation of the word (via Wikipedia) is completely wrong. Although "wu shu" may translate figuratively as "martial arts" (it more accurately translates as "martial skill", similiar in many aspects to the comparison of "do" versus "jutsu" in Japanese martial arts), it is not generally used in the martial arts world as a blanket term for martial arts or even Chinese martial arts (CMA). This is similiar to Tae Kwon Do, which means "the art of kicking and punching", but which trains most practitioners much more on kicking techniques than punching techniques. The "meaning" of a word isn't always the definition of the thing it represents, dontcha know.

Wushu nowadays is generally used in China and in CMA communities around the world to describe this gymnastic/acrobatic activity, while the blanket term used for CMA is "kung fu" or "gong fu" if you really want to be anal about it. Also, san shou/san da is a style in and of itself (originally the ruleset under which the style developed), not a subset of wushu. In fact, if you look into the history of CMA and its transformation over the years, wushu developed into what you see in this video due to influences by the Beijing/Peking Opera House, which mimicked or incorporated CMA movements into choreographed theater fight scenes, rather than any Western influence. As a result of the change of wushu, along with the rising popularity of kung fu flicks in the U.S, "kung fu" was slowly adopted as the new blanket term for CMA.

Wushu practitioners nowadays practice forms and choreographed sequences like this one, while san shou/san da practitioners generally practice by sparring. There is very, very little overlap between the two.

The misconception of what wushu and kung fu are, I think, is largely due to the fact that people like to share their own beliefs on topics that they actually have little to no experience in.

But what do I know? Good, bad? I'm the guy with the 4 oz. gloves.

Unbelievable the amount of debate a clip like this can generate - that's a good thing of course.

Maybe I should've given the following title...

'Wushu Dance (nothing resembling fighting contained within, real hard knocks would just go for the neck with a broken bottle or their massive hairy man-fist)'

I remember the last competition I was in, just holding my combat steel broadswords and looking at any and all wushu blades. Those things are practically made of aluminum foil; they're so light, most divisions didn't allow weapons forms with wushu weapons, and a good thing too. Swinging around twin 5 pound swords, then stopping on a dime better not be compared to wiggling a sword lighter than a cardboard cutout. I guess they do serve their purpose of being light and weak, for fancy stuff, though. But the worst wound you would get if fighting against that would be a deep papercut, maybe; it would probably just slap you a bit.

Even in the modern sense of the word, Wushu does involve sparring. It is composed of 2 things, "Taolu"(forms) and "Sanda" (free-fighting) or "Sanshou" (free-hand). At Wushu competitions both events are normally held, the former being the choreographed fights and the later being full contact.

To be really padantic though, Wushu is not actually a specific martial art, it literally means "martial arts" and while it is often used to refer to the choreographed fights, it also refers to free-fighting and in fact any martial art, so it's wrong to say it doesn't involve sparring either way you look at it.

EDIT: The reason for the misconception is, I think, largely due to the fact that Wushu taught in the west largely focuses on the acrobatic forms and jumps. There is generally not even any mention of the actual fighting side of Wushu.

Baqueta, you've hit the nail on the head. If you're looking for a martial art to learn to fight and have for some reason decided to limit yourself to kung fu, san shou/san da, maybe Hung Gar, and possibly Shuai Jiao would be your best bets. If you want to learn to do flips and somersaults and stuff, wushu is the bees' knees.

Pyrex: Either you're mistaken, or I've misinterpreted what you've said. Wushu doesn't have any sparring, and certainly doesn't have any full contact sparring. These choreographed fights are as close as it gets. Kung fu does have sparring, but there the vast majority of it is a long way from full contact (e.g. no punching to the head, no kicks to the legs).

Personally I think Wushu's just as worthwhile as any other martial art, depending upon what you want to get out of it. It isn't going to help you much at all in a real fight, but it's damned good exercise and a lot of fun...

No, DD, the weapon is actually a spear (qiang if you want to be all ethnic about it). You can tell by the stabbing motions made, as well as the characteristic tassle tied to the top near the head to distract enemies from the actual path of the blade.

I'm with Budzos on this, though, after getting into actual martial arts, I can't even look at wushu the same way. Neat acrobatics, I suppose.

I changed the tags to more accurately reflect that wushu comes from China, and is in fact not related stylistically with karate. Also, nowadays wushu has come to mean the acrobatic performances seen in this video, rather than a style accumulating actual fighting skills. The most famous practitioner of wushu right now is probably Jet Li.

Note this is not self promotion. Even if i was this good i could not take the shape of a east Asian person.

I posted this in response to something that happened to me today.

I was in a little grassy area about five paces from my apartment, and was practicing Hsing I Chaun. So i attract some attention, but most people just go on about their business. However today some one asked me if I was practicing "Ju Jitsu" and when I said that it was not he scoffed at the thought that some one might practice some other art than Ju Jutsu.

This attitude is wholly American, that martial arts is a test of testicular scale. "If one thinks that Kenjutsu is an art of banging sticks together does not know the true meaning of Kenjutsu." - Gaku Homma

This attitude taken by largely egotistical persons is that some one practicing a form is to be threatened and baited into a senseless fight. It clearly states in a translation of the samurai code, that one warrior should not engage in useless fights because said warrior could die, and that would be dishonorable to die over a cup of tea. This sort of thing happens to me all the time.

This attitude that states that Kung Fu or traditional martial arts will not work in a "real fight." I no longer believe that a fight can be fake, because you are still putting your life on the line. The difference between a one who knows the true meaning of Kung Fu, Wushu or any thing, is that they avoid all useless fights, meaning that the run away if they can. The American stereo type of martial arts is that grappling, judo, jiu justsu, and the such will always prevail over traditional martial arts, this is not the case. When a trained grappler is put against a trained person (lets say an actor) bruce lee, jet li, chan, Donny Yen, I would put my money on no one, because both skilled fighters will put up a good fight. So to say that one art, or countries art will win over another is foolish. This sterotype comes from Tae Kwan Do dojo that give you a belt after a couple weeks of training.

Until the practitioner can successfully solve conflict with out violence they are not a true master, even petty conflict.

Nice to hear a voice of reason around here.

In reply to your comment:
“Tony Jaa would be the first guy to say that what he does in the movies isn't 'real' Muay Thai - I've seen a couple of interviews with him where he's pointed it out. Some of it is a reasonably fair representation, but the acrobatics and the jumping kicks are much more akin to wushu, capoeira, free running, or tricking.

The guy has an undeniable talent, and I really loved Ong Bak. The Protector (aka. Ong Bak 2) had some great fights, particularly the 5-6min one-shot scene that southblvd mentioned. The problem with The Protector was that it was seriously malnourished on plot - even by the (not high) standards of martial arts movies.”