Feng Mo or YinShou gun??

[LFJ]

Ah, didn't see that! My theory collapsed! If so, the new case will be: These are "exactly" the same: Mad Devil!

further opinions??

hey, omarthefish, in order to confirm what you said for us, can you provide us with a link to that in baike?? (most of us are not familiar with Chinese resources and use Google translator! )

In a general sense, 风魔 is often actually misused for 疯魔. However, there are cases such as with stick sets in Shaolin where the former is deliberately used because of it's meaning of 风中魔啸, which means like a "demon hissing in the wind". It describes the sound of the stick whooshing through the air. I'm not sure why this is a difficult concept to grasp...

[omarthefish]

In a general sense, 风魔 is often actually misused for 疯魔. However, there are cases such as with stick sets in Shaolin where the former is deliberately used because of it's meaning of 风中魔啸, which means like a "demon hissing in the wind". It describes the sound of the stick whooshing through the air. I'm not sure why this is a difficult concept to grasp...

It's an easy enough concept to grasp. Just kind find a citation for it. The only hit I get on google for "“风中魔啸” is your post on this thread. With baidu I get bubkis.. At least it scans right. Meh. As an abreviation for “风中魔啸” "feng mo" works. Kind of funny the big super secret explanation is for the new wushu set while the old timey traditional name is well known. "A demon whistling in the wind" is readable. A "wind demon" is not.

Adding "stick" to them as a third character doesn't somehow make the first characters mean the same thing, as Omar suggested.

Not as a linguistic rule, sure. But as a context clue, it does because "feng mo" staff, is such a well known phrase that when typing in Chinese with predictive text, the 3 characters pop up together. Heck, just as a test, I just type the letters "fmg" and 风魔棍 pops up with 疯魔 as a secondary choice.

Anyways, fine, I'll accept that around the Shaolin temple these days, 风中魔啸 is how they explain it. The other 90% of what I was saying, I can see you were already saying 4 or 5 years ago.

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Ah, didn't see that! My theory collapsed! If so, the new case will be: These are "exactly" the same: Mad Devil!

further opinions??

Well, FWIW, LJF has convinced me of the alternate explanation, at least around the current temple. As far as linguistics go, getting all proscriptive is a lost cause. If people are using it the other way, then it has another meaning regardless of whether it's "correct" (in quotes) or not. It wouldn't be the first time pop culture, Chinese or American, has gone and made up new meanings for stuff. I was listening to a Chinese educational podcast the other day (popup Chinese btw, fantastic learning tool and their partner Sinica is super interesting for keeping up with Chinese news and trends) and the topic for the week was "Chinese proverbs that Chinese people all get wrong". They discussed 4 or 5 Chinese proverbs that almost everybody in China uses wrong. lol.

So seriously, anyone wanting to learn a little Chinese or who has already learned a lot but wants to polish up a bit: http://popupchinese.com/

hey, omarthefish, in order to confirm what you said for us, can you provide us with a link to that in baike?? (most of us are not familiar with Chinese resources and use Google translator! )

I'm sorry. Baike is basically the Chinese equivalent to Wikipedia. There is an actual Chinese wikipedia but nobody really uses it. Baike is fully integrated with baidu which is basically mainland China's equivalent to google. So one of the two things I tend to do when I hear a Chinese phrase that I am not sure about is to just baidu (www.baidu.com) and see how other people are using it. I don't mean looking it up like a dictionary. I mean just seeing people's blogs or discussion boards and watching how other Chinese people use the phrase. The second thing I do, if it's convenient at the time, is ask my (Chinese) wife.

That's for popular usage. For official usage, my first "goto" is baike, which is usually in the top 3 or 4 hits for a word of phrase searched for without context. Anyways, in this case, I got this:

http://baike.baidu.com/view/44641.htm

　1、指发疯，癫狂。《云笈七签》卷一一九：“亲戚家女使，近患风魔疾，尚未甚困。” 元 张可久 《汉东山》曲：“ 蓝采和，没奈何，假风魔。”《西游补》第六回：“﹝行者﹞登时粧做风魔之状，呆睁着两眼对着项王道：‘还我 头来！’”
　　2、指人痴呆、糊涂。 元 无名氏 《谢金吾》第二折：“你也心儿里精细不风魔。”
　　3、疯子。 元 王子一 《误入桃源》第三折：“这两个汉子是风魔，是九伯。” 元 无名氏 《马陵道》第三折：“白日与小儿同耍，到晚来与羊犬同眠，打也不知，骂也不知，端的是个风魔了 也。”
　　4、形容言行轻狂、放浪不羁。 金 董解元 《西厢记诸宫调》卷一：“秀才家那箇不风魔；大抵这箇酸丁忒劣角，风魔中占得箇招讨。” 元 曾瑞 《端正好·自序》套曲：“教人道我，豪放风魔。”《醒世姻缘传》第一百回：“依随着他，上庙就去上庙，游山 就去游山，耍金鱼池，看韦公寺，风魔了个足心足意。”
　　5、指迷惑。谓使人着魔。 金 董解元 《西厢记诸宫调》卷一：“那多情媚脸儿，那鹘鴒渌老儿，难道不清雅？见人不住偷睛抹，被你风魔 了人也嗏。” 元 王实甫 《西厢记》第一本第一折：“刚刚的打箇照面，风

What I didn't find was any popular usage or dictionary reference matching LFJ's claim. Wife says there's no such thing as a "wind devil" and LFJ has nothing in his profile to indicate he knows what he knows.

As it stands now though, I'm convinced. Someone changed my opinion in an online argument. Better bring your umbrellas folks because it might be raining frogs today. Cat's and dogs are making friends even as we speak . . .

[LFJ]

Note that I'm not saying 风中魔啸 is a traditional Chinese idiom, nor that "wind devil" is a traditional concept either. But this is indeed how they explain the name of the stick sets using the wind character.

As I said, they are usually modern sets with lots of running, jumping, and whooshing about. So it is likely that they took the naming idea from 疯魔 and deliberately used 风魔 with the individual characters describing how the sets sound.

Not that it would immediately be understand as such, but context is important, and that's just how they explain it. Rather than making a new name, or using another common idiom, they took the existing concept and reinterpreted it.