animals in wushu ?

[golden arhat]

why do i never see crane leopard tiger or dragon performed in wushu ?
i only ever see eagle, praying mantis, monkey or other more obscure animals snake
why not 4 of the original animals ?
just doesnt make sense to me really

[Ben Gash]

The five animals are not commonly expressed in northern styles, especially not the leopard and crane. As most wushu performers do northern style forms.......

[BruceSteveRoy]

The five animals are not commonly expressed in northern styles, especially not the leopard and crane. As most wushu performers do northern style forms.......

i don't think you are entirely correct to say that the northern styles don't express the five animals in their forms. but i think i understand what you mean. i studied northern shaolin for a while and we did a lot of the five animal forms as well as fighting techniques and sparring with the animal styles. now in a southern style we have 10 animals and what i notice is that in the northern style we had tiger forms and leopard forms and crane forms and snake forms and dragon forms (btw northern dragon and northern leopard are awesome). but in the southern styles they have lots of animal techniques in each form. kind of like putting a bunch of animals in a giant kung fu blender. so i would say its just expressed differently rather than rarely expressed.

as for wushu i don't have the first idea about the content of their forms. all i know is they wear really shiny pajamas and run in circles and jump a lot. o and thier weapons are made from aluminum foil.

[Ben Gash]

As I never said either of the things you've said are incorrect, I don't exactly know what to say. I just said it wasn't common, which it's not. Your previous school was pretty esoteric, and not a good measure for what is typical in northern schools.

[SPJ]

Wushu lessons, curriculum, and competition forms are evolving.

Not an expert on wushu.

But there are "standardizing" "compulsory" routines in "games" such as Asia games etc.

Chang Quan was the starting routine. other styles were compiled and added on.

such as Tai Chi, Ba Gua, Xing Yi, southern boxing (Nan Quan) etc.

recently there are also staff (Gun Shu), broad sword (Dao Shu), etc

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[SPJ]

oops.

what I meant to say is that other styles or forms may or may not come later.

:D

[David Jamieson]

yeah they are adding new routines and attempting to bring all pai under one banner it seems.

the wushu bague is possibly the worst bagua I've seen, the xingyi is just ridiculous. both of these are so far removed from the applicable traditional versions of same that it really makes you wonder what the heck they are doing over there.

the tai chi is more kungfu looking and the energies have been variated radically, which again raises the question of what the heck are they doing.

the nan quan is nothing like the Hung that it was pulled from and the chang chuan has been argued about forever by traditionalists as being flowery and ineffective.

however, as a form of expression it's valid. i wouldn't learn contemporary wu shu if i wanted to atually learn solid fighting principles. those may be there in some teachers, but for the most part, contemporary wu shu ahs been rendered wholly inadequate in this area and is strictly a performance floor gymnastic routine with martial flavour.

and if anyone wants to test their contemporary wushu against someone who trains martiality, then by all means, go have a look about and try and see if your wushu will win in a fair fight. My money says it won't.

It is still a lot of effort to learn and do and looks nice in performance. But that's all I'll give it really.