Kung fu
The
words Kung Fu mean (approximately) skill by effort and can apply
to many areas of endeavor, but have become associated primarily with martial
arts in the western world. Chinese Kung Fu is one of the oldest martial
arts, and it's origins can be traced back over four thousand years. During
it's existence, several hundred different styles of Kung Fu have evolved.
In keeping with Chinese culture, many of the styles are based on observations
of nature, and mimic the movements of various animals such as the crane,
tiger, or the praying mantis.
Bruce Lee stated [1] that there were three main stages to the development of Kung Fu (or Gung Fu as he spells it) :
- Primitive no-holds-barred combat with natural techniques
- The intellectual refinement of techniques and the addition of complexity
- The distillation of techniques to their simplest, most effective form.
This approach was one that Lee has followed himself in the development of his own style Jeet Kune Do (the way of the intercepting fist), a style that was synthesised from many other fighting techniques.
I have studied a style called Lau Gar, which was developed by a tiger hunter called 'Three-eyed Lau', so named because of a large scar on his forehead resembling a third eye.
Forgive me if I'm overly critical but many of the websites dedicated to Kung Fu are truly awful (and I don't hold my general site out as any great shining light!) There are a mixture of disjoined pages that show a complete lack of visual awareness (Feng Shui? :-) ) or that consist of nothing more than flash animations. There is still useful information on some of these sites for the enthusiast or beginner, but just bear in mind what I've said when following the links.
Resources
For information about the origins of my personal favorite style, Lau Gar, then the page about its origins at the Stafford site is a good starting point. In fact this is quite a good all round site with lots of information about Lion Dances and Weapon Law etc.