The current status and future of Wushu

[rovere]

The term wushu originally meant military art and is made up up two parts. One part is the character for ge (halbred) and the other is to stop. (In oracle bone text this part and corresponding character was actually the verb to run.)

The ge is strictly a military weapon (never employed by civilians) and the character is found both in oracle bone inscriptions and bronzes. The combination of the two parts of ‘wu’ can be interpreted in several ways such as using the military to stop insurrection or using the military to stop invasion and so on. The verb to run also refers to the infantry.

Wu is definitely in the realm of the military and would not refer to civilians practicing martial arts nor would it refer to dance .There are other characters that would be used to represent these activities.

In Chinese ****phones are common so I wouldn't make to much of a deal about the similarity in sounds. There may be an anthropological connection (e.g. both movement that may have ritualistic looking actions) but different root meanings to the actual words.

[GeneChing]

For as long as wu (武) has been translated into English, we've been told the 'stop the spear' origin of the root radicals of the character. It's one of our most commonly held beliefs. However, most calligraphy scholars dispute this now.

The component radical zhi (止) means 'stop'. This was stated by King Chu in the Spring Autumn period (770-476 BCE) as documented in Shouwen Jiezi by Xu Chen (d. 147 CE). Recent archeological discoveries of early Chinese writings have shows that the character radical descends from 'foot' not 'stop', thus implying marching. Some of the oldest calligraphic findings imply that wu was comprised of three radicals: weapon, foot and crossroads. Now many scholars believe that the origin of the character wu was changed to 'stop the spear' for political reasons. The original meaning may well have been 'marching with weapons'.

For more, see:
Wu Qi: Combat Energy - The Chinese Concept of Wu By Adrian Chan-Wyles Ph. D 2006 January/February
Jia Gu Wen Zidian by Xu Zhongsu
Wenzi Yuanliu Qianshou by Lian Yin

[kristcaldwell]

dang, you totally nailed me...i guess i'm just a bit sensitive with all the wushu bashing on here. i wasn't referring to you when i mentioned the wushu "villifying", i was referring to the previous posts.

the applications are demonstrated in the same manner as Ed Parker Kenpo self-defense technniques are done (i don't let this out much, but i used to be a kenpo instructor). if anything, i consider it a step up by the IWuF. also, they require a written exam on the history of wushu and WuDe. the way i see it, they're finally moving back to the origins of wushu - and i think many (if not most) traditional schools are lacking such requirements.

i trained at a chin woo school in the US, and all that was required for advancement was being able to perform the next routine in the curriculum (i always asked about applications and many times the instructor either didn't know one or gave me something absolutely farcical). hopefully, modern and traditional wushu will eventually meet each other in the middle and promote CMA as a whole...with so much in-fighting, this would something that has been missing in the CMA community.

[rovere]

The radical is 'foot'. Originally the character related to marching, running or walking on guard duty - therefore the verb to 'run' and only later changed to 'stop'.

Some have made the argument that in defensive position, the foot was used to steady the ge in the ground to defend against a chariot or mass attack - the foot acting like a wedge. So this is where the 'stop' verb came from but I have not been able to verify that part of the 'story'.

I have been told by some ninjitsu practitioners and others that it refers to, as you have said stopping the spear - but the character for ge is definitely not a 'spear'; or axe; or sword; or... and the origin is definitely the other way around. That is using the military to stop something...

When I was doing oracle bone translation in graduate school (almost 35 years ago and now and I remember very little) the military connection to 'wu' was well known.

[GeneChing]

"Stopping the spear" is a rather colloquial translation, but accordingly, very common. It should really be ge as you say, but then you have to translate ge, which sort of defeats the attempt to translate wu. I suppose you could go with 'stopping the pole arm' or 'stopping the dagger axe' but both are rather clunky. Of course, as any sinophile knows, the ge carries a ton of historically implicative baggage - most significantly that it was a weapon of warfare, not a personal arm. Such is Chinese translation, as I'm sure you know. It's the ol' Chinese box of translation - a pervasive problem with CMA.

I've also heard some people say that the foot implied that the spear...sorry the ge ... was being trod on, thus reiterating the notion of stopping it. That's similar to your wedge story. I'm personally a little skeptical that my foot could wedge a ge against a chariot charge, but that's another tangent.

I must say that I've always favored the notion that the meaning was changed by King Chu for political reasons. That's just sooooooo Chinese. Sure, it may have been two-and-a-half millennia ago, and my notion of what is Chinese now has little bearing on what it may have been then, but such is my bias.

[rovere]

I guess I wasn't clear. The shaft end of the ge was planted in the ground and then the foot was placed on top of it to keep it from lifting up - using the body weight as a counter force; not as I implied wedging the end against the foot. Anyhow I'm still not convinced since there were strategies with shields that were used to upset and overturn the chariots (which as it turned out were not, by many accounts that effective.)

Politics make much more sense as even in Shang times.

[GeneChing]

Read Three Faults in Chinese Martial Arts Today by Gigi Oh with Gene Ching - another supplemental article from our MARCH+APRIL 2015 issue.

[PalmStriker]

A great article/interview/assessment.