is compulsory the same as contemporary?

[Shaolin Dude]

as in modern wushu

[dezhen2001]

im not a wushu guy but the words compulsory mean that these ones have to be either studied or done in competition i guess?

contemporary just means they are current as in modern forms.

so from contemporary wushu you can study the compulsory forms (such as chang quan, nan quan etc. i think?) if u get what i mean :)

dawood

[wall]

Above is correct. When referring to Wushu:

CONTEMPORARY = the standardized Wushu disciplines making up modern sports-oriented Wushu (eg. Chan Quan).

COMPULSORY = the standard routines in each discipline (eg. Chan Quan) that must be performed by athletes at international competitions.

[Brad]

In modern wushu there are compulsory 10 routines. They are: long fist, spear, straight sword, broad sword, staff, southern fist, southern broad sword, southern staff, 42 taiji quan, 42 taiji straight sword. In the world championships you have to use these routines, in national competition you can do individualy coreographed routines, except for the two taiji divisions which are compulsory.
There's also standard beginer, intermediate, and advanced rountines that are sometimes called "compulsory" by some schools(beginer compulsory, intermediate compulsory, etc.).

[GeneChing]

Another term that is being bandied about now is "sport wushu." This is to distinguish if from 'traditional' wushu in mandarin. Contemporary has its semantic problems because any modern martial art, take say jeet kune do, could also be called this. And as Brad and wall point out, Compulsory has a more specific meaning. There are definately sport wushu forms that have not achieved compusory status yet.