Wushu's future?

[Ray Pina]

In the future, will Wushu practitioners wear baggy camo gear with ruffles and sling plastic, cheap replica M-16s on their shoulders while rolling around beautifully .... land in a crouch stance, shoulder their toy weapon and shout: "Bang. Bang"?

I was wondering about this while showering last night. People -- especially military personel -- would probbaly think it rediculous.

[crumble]

Yes, if they are doing "Warfare for Health" (tm).

Warfare for Health (tm) is a holistic approach to fitness and cunning. Based on ancient western military exercises, Warfare for Health (tm) gives you all the fitness and homeland defense skills, with none of the post-traumatic stress disorders that come from watching the merciless slaughter of your mates! No more watching the life slowly leaving out of poor hemoraging Private Mike. "I'm so thirsty, so cold, so very cold..." Warfare for Health (tm) is only for defense, never for expanding the borders of your nation, and certainly not for global domination - that would not be enlightened, now would it?

Send a check made out to "Cash" based on the level of achievement you are willing... uh, to achieve!

"White" Flag: $100 - you'll look good in uniform, but you'll raise the white flag of surrender at the first sign of conflict.

"Yellow" Stream: $300 - you'll put up a good fight, but you'll wet yourself.

"Green" Beret: $500 - You be a fighting machine, but you will have to go around wearing a beret -- geek!

"Blue" General: $1000 - This represents a significant level of money - ah, I mean dedication. You will be a general. How many people can say that, right? But you will be "blue" -- yes, you will be sad. Because you will know many secrets that no one else knows. There's a certain amount of sadness with being so great!

"Brown" something or 'nother: $3000 - look, you need brown before becoming a black belt/sash and you want black belt/sash right? So pay up.

"Black" horseman of the apocalypse: $8000 or 67% of you assets, whichever is greater - you are a bad mammer-jammer, for darn sure! True, this is "Warfare for Heath" (tm) so you would be blown apart the second you stepped on a real battlefield, but real battlefields are very enlightened, are they? Oh yeah, did I mention you now have "vigor"? It's kinda like chi, but _western_! Very ancient and very western. Cool huh?

Act now! This is a limited time offer!

[Ray Pina]

Very good

[truewrestler]

[crumble]

Thanks guys. Good insight E-Fist!

[Kristoffer]

vigor rules

[norther practitioner]

The sc guys wore camo at taiji legacy this year.

[MasterKiller]

I think he was referring to Contemporary Wushu, sc_guy, not Traditional Wushu (kung fu).

BTW, I saw those camo shirts at Taiji Legacy.

[Unmatchable]

what about tai chi?

[ngokfei]

IMO

Wushu is going to grow very much like TKD & Kempor of the 80's. Very easy to teach especially since China has created a very indepth curriculumn.

Good for overall basics(Northern & Southern stylist) and I think a fantastic means to weed out those individuals who can't cut it in a TCMA

[wall]

I think that the current (last 10-15 years) trend of contemporary wushu becoming more and more like poor gymnastics (especially chan quan) will actually stop soon, perhaps already prior to the 2008 olympics. There will be a "devolution" back to the MARTIAL aspect of Wushu routines, with emphasis on power, martial techniques, precision and striking and just the odd butterfly or tornado, rather than the current few sloppy stances and kicks intermixed with loads of twists to splits, 720s, etc.

The Wushu authorities are waking up to the fact that they are:

1 - ruining what Wushu was, as in a stylized rapresentation of Chinese MARTIAL Arts, the emphasis on martial.

2 - to become approved as an Olympic event it will makes sense and be accepted by the IOC as CMA, and the only forms martial event at the Olympics, it won't get approved as a crappy copy of an existing event (gymnastics).

W

[mickey]

Greetings,

I am shocked by the growth of contemporary Wushu. The forms have nothing in them. From the combative viewpoint when you finish a form there should be no opponents left; when they finish their forms their opponents are on the ground--laughing.

The only thing that is good, and I echo ngokfei on this, are the basic training methods. The traditional martial arts had this, but we did not SEE them do stuff like the chin to toe stretch. It was often passed of as inspiration. When wushu arrived here it was like, "it was no joke", people can do these stretches. We weren't accustomed to seeing the Chinese martial arts performed with such speed and power. Kung fu was supposed to be soft and graceful. All traditional martial artists simply need to do is upgrade and reemphasize the basics. Then they will be ahead of the game.

mickey

[crumble]

Originally posted by Kristoffer
vigor rules

Thanks for my new signature!:

[GeneChing]

Did someone say camo? I love camo. I was into camo way before it was trendy. But we don't carry camo uniforms, only camo belts - I guess that's so people can't see your waistline.

Truth is actually stranger than fiction. At one point, Wushu did exactly what you describe, except it was the people's olive drab uniforms, not camo. Just prior to the Cultural Revolution, Mao's wife Jiang Qing, had restriced all performances down to eight propagandist operas. Martial arts were already government supported at that time, but wushu was still in it's formative years - the compulsories were not quite in place yet. Everyone still practiced traditional kung fu because that's all there was. In order to toe the line, the traditional martial artists, mostly led by Yu Hai (a famous Shandong master and the big monk in Shaolin Temple), created new forms based on the people's weapons - sickle, hammer, and of course, rifle and bayonet. So they actually were doing wushu-like forms for rifle, wearing military uniforms no less. It ws mostly adapted spear technique. Now this is different than the actually military martial arts that train bayonet sparring based on spear technique (still in use today.) If you want to know more, you'll have to check out our upcoming issue - MAR/APR 2004 which should be on stands by the end of the month. I've been working on a big piece about the evolution of modern wushu that covers the bayonet period. And there's an article on Xingyi Bayonet practice.

[shaolinboxer]

LOL

Gene, that was fantastic.

Looking forward to the article.