So wait... Jet Li is doing action movies?

Twitch is a superb webstite and I don't be be negative, but your explaination on what wushu is isn't correct!!! First of all Wushu isn't divided into Northern SHAOLIN-style Wushu and Southern SHAOLIN-style Wushu. You CAN devide it into Northern and Southern Wushu, but Shaolin is just one of the many schools just like Wudang (yep, the rap group "Wu-Tang Clan" is named after this school). Your description on what Northern and Southern Wushu is, is pretty much correct though.

Anyway, I'd like to give a right description on what Wushu is. I guess all of you will probably know Kung-Fu...... what the most of you probably DON'T know is that Kung-Fu actually is supposed to be called Wushu!

The explaination for this lies in the fact Kung-Fu is a Cantonese word and most Chinese people who live in "the west" speak Cantonese. Besides that most of the Chinese movies are made in Hong Kong (where they speak Cantonese) so this is why everybody knows Chinese martial arts by the name of Kung-Fu. However...

The main language of China is Mandarin, so one should actually use a Mandarin word for Chinese martial arts > which is Wushu (translates literally as "military art" but is better known as “martial art”). Besides that Kung-Fu isn't even the correct term for Chinese martial arts as it actually means "skill". Now perhaps you'd ask yourself "Why do Cantonese people use the word Kung-Fu for Martial arts when it actually means something else?"

Well, this is because in the past the Chinese often used the expression "Lay Ho Kung-Fu!" when somebody was good at fighting (it literally means "You good skill"). So they began to use the word Kung-Fu for martial arts, but now you know it actually means skill and a football player has Kung-Fu in football and a cook has Kung-Fu in cooking, et cetera, et cetera. Here's the good part... you actually know Kung-Fu just like Keanu Reeves did in the Matrix (Keanu's skills suck way time btw ). So you may not know any Wushu, but you certainly have some Kung-Fu (skills) in watching films!

To make thing a bit more clear (or complicated ) there's actually two kinds of Wushu: Traditional Wushu often called "Kung-Fu" and modern Wushu often called "Wushu". You've probably noticed that a lot of martial arts movie stars have a wushu background, so to be a bit more specific:

- Jet Li and Donnie Yen > modern Wushu or Wushu

- Jackie Chan, Gordon Liu and all those Shaw Brothers films > tradional Wushu or Kung-Fu

- (and for those who'd like to know what kind of martial arts Bruce Lee did > originally Wing Chun which is a traditional Southern Wushu style, but he made his own style Jeet Kune Do which has nothing to do with Wushu)

Modern Wushu which consists out of two parts: "taolu"(forms) competition and san shou or sanda (full contact Chinese kick boxing). It was born during the 1950's the China government decided that it's country's national sport would be born. Based on the traditional Chinese martial arts, modern (or contemporary) wushu was to serve as the new sport for a modern society. It is a competition/performance based art which is both exciting and pleasing to the eye. The sport's main intent was the focus on athleticism, exercise, health and the ability to demonstrate wushu movements with a fighting-like spirit. Like any other art form the grace, flavour and style had to be embodied in the performance of every practicioner. The sport is wide spread throughout the whole of China enabling the country able to develop some of the best wushu athletes the world has ever seen. This will continue to be the case as China looks to have modern wushu as an event in the Olympics for Beijing 2008.

cool, thanks for clearing that up.. you guys rock!

Holy crap, I bow to your might. My source was misleading. I am humbled. If you wish, can you e-mail me directly and direct me towards great information like this so I won't be mislead by a wrong source again? E-mail me here.

thank you

Mr. guest is right, Jet Li and Wu Jing(the kid from SPL) are both from the China's national Wu Shu team, and Jet Li as kid, won about 13 times at the national wushu championship, they all practiced modern Wushu, which is a complilation of traditional wushu, they practiced Wai Gong( exterior styles) from a variety of traditional styles from the east and north of China(and yes, it includes Shaolin styles as well).

Much of mainland's WuShu activities still remain "underground" today. After the country was liberated by the red army, thousands of Wushu clans or groups either cooperated with the government and helped contributed to what's known as Modern Wushu today or they simply dispeared.

The southern styles like Wing Chun are more well known because there are HK movies about it, and more ppl from the south migrated to different places around the globe.

Jet Li won the title of Men's National All-Around Champion only 5 times not 13 as stated above.

Fearless is his greatest movie since Fist of Legend!!
Please dont do a movie with Jason Crappam...I cant believe he's a trained martial artist??! He looks awkward as hell!

Jet need to stay away from crappy straight to video action flicks!
And Corey Yuen needs to learn some new moves!

Dear JET LI
I'm from AFghanistan and i like u so much ur films and ur nice style . i wanna be in future like u.
Please send me some action pictures of urs i really like u.
thanks alot i love u

My email
asad_mahmoodi@hotmail.com
asad_am81@yahoo.com
bye bye
Asadullah from AFGHANISTAN

hi jet li if this is him my name is donathan

i love you so.... much Jet Li. i like your martial art epics and i 'm worried you quit.

i hope you like it. hohohoho

halooooooooooooo

Great post, Guest. I might want to further add that although the term "Wushu" is indeed the literally more correct term for Chinese martial arts (at least much more than the "Kung Fu" ("work skill") that Westerners have adopted from the Cantonese, I believe the term "Wushu", which really means something like "martial techniques") was a fairly modern term that only came into popular usage due to its official employment by the CCP in the 1950's. Before that, Chinese martial arts was called "Guoshu", or "national techniques", a term created by the GMD, and the term "Guoshu" is still used in Taiwan today to refer to Chinese martial arts, as the GMD fled there after 1949. Although the "Guoshu" of Taiwan have retained more of the combative aspects of the Chinese martial arts than today's modern Wushu of China, which is really nothing more than a spectator's art, with the so-called "San-shou" employing kickboxing techniques rather than Chinese martial arts techniques, which makes practicing the "tao-lu" of modern Wushu seem rather useless. The most correct term for Chinese martial arts is the ancient pre-12th century term "Wuyi", which literally means "martial/military arts", though that term fell out of usage by the 12th century AD and almost no one uses it today.

Also, I might want to add that Jackie Chan's "style" is also not traditional Wushu at all, but rather the performance-oriented acrobatic skills and techniques of Beijing Opera/"Peking Opera". While throughout his acting career, Jackie Chan has learned some non-Chinese modern martial arts as well like Hapkido, Taekwondo, kickboxing, etc. and has applied them in some of his movies. So his background in martial arts is somewhat like Bruce Lee's, but of course Bruce Lee was a professional martial artist who could really fight and created his own "Jeet Kune Do" style while Jackie Chan's skill is nowhere near that of Bruce Lee's and doesn't have enough prestige and proven-fighter merits to create his own real martial arts style. So Jackie Chan's style that he uses in films and practices is not at all traditional Wushu but Peking Opera acrobatic and performance techniques and skills combined with a hodgepodge of non-Chinese martial arts and a few exposure to traditional Wushu.

On the other hand, while it is correct that both Jet Li and Jason/Jackie Wu Jing were trained in modern Wushu which is performance-oriented and is not really a martial art at all, I believe that they also have some foundation and experience with traditional Wushu according to their biographies.

Regarding Jet Li, he actually learnt some traditional Wushu from some of the last real masters of the "internal" arts, namely Wu Tunan (1885-1988; Wu and Yang styles of Taijiquan?), Li Ziming (1904-1993; ? Baguazhang) and Sun Jiayun (1913-2003; Sun style Taijiquan) during a meeting with the 3 masters. Jet also reportedly trained under Sha Guozhen (1904-1992: Lion style Baguazhang) for a short time. I am willing to bet that these masters, although all of them are dead by now, were true martial arts masters of traditional, real Wushu and can probably beat most people up if they were alive today. BTW notice that pretty much all of them lived to a very ripe old age, with Wu Tunan at a remarkable 103, as expected of a true practitioner of real Taijiquan, which is both a fighting art and health art. However, I am also willing to bet that Jet's short training under these traditional masters probably didn't have much of an effect on Jet's acting career, since it was Jet's training under his modern Wushu coach Wu Bin that gave him the skills to perform all those stunts and "cool moves" as seen in his movies and won him fame. This might account for why Jet honors Wu Bin so much and doesn't talk much about his training under these old traditional masters. This is further evidenced by Jet's essays on Wushu that can be found on his official website, where though he recognizes that the original true purpose of Wushu was survival that throughout history to now, he says that society's changes and demands "necessitated" (here Jet adopts the politically correct stance of the CCp; however, it was probably more like due to the possible misunderstanding of traditional Wushu by the CCP or an intended move by the CCP to suppress "counterrevolutionary" elements and destroy potentially dangerous threats from the populace) a dramatic change in the aim of Wushu, probably referring to the CCP move in the 1950's to remove the combative aspects out of traditional Wushu to create modern Wushu performance art.

Regarding Jason/Jackie Wu Jing, it was also stated in his biography that both his father and grandfather were also martial artists and were descended from the Yellow Banner of the Eight Banners, making him Manchurian. Wu Jing has also said that his father also trained him. So, he might possibly have some roots in traditional Wushu too, though I speculate that him, like Jet Li, probably prefers the performance-oriented non-combative Wushu of modern times rather than traditional Wushu, solely for the aim of making good movies, after all modern Wushu has incorporated dance-like gymnastics and acrobatic moves in their routines and look more "spectacular" than traditional Wushu.

Finally, I believe Gordon Liu/Gordon Lau is the only actor out of the 4 mentioned above who is trained in real traditional Wushu. He is a practitioner of "Hung Gar"/Hongjiaquan/Hongquan, being an adopted brother/disciple of the famed martial arts director Liu Jia Liang, who is also a real traditional Wushu martial artist, his father being a disciple of the famed Lin Shi Rong/"Lam Sai Wing", the disciple of the famed master Huang Feihong/"Wong Fei Hung", the protagonist of so many old-school HK martial arts movies. Notice, however, that Gordon Liu's moves in movies aren't as flashy as Jet Li's, Wu Jing's, or Jackie Chan's, as the former 2 are primarily modern Wushu performers while the latter is trained in traditional Beijing Opera/Peking Opera performance techniques and skills. I don't believe Gordon Liu has any background in any of these performance-oriented arts (which are much better suited for movies), thus his lack of fame and popularity compared to the other stars.

I might also want to add that Jet's comment that Fearless would be his last Wushu film meant that Fearless would be his last film that has a martial arts dominating theme to it or all about martial arts or martial arts masters. It means that the films later on that he will be making, while they could and are probably also action films that incorporates Wushu style fighting choreography, are not primarily about the martial arts or do not have a dominating martial arts theme to it. "Wushu films" that Jet might be thinking would be films like the "Fong Sai Yuk" and "Once Upon A Time In China" series, "New Legend of Shaolin", which are films about martial arts masters (Fong Sai Yuk/Fang Shiyu, Wong Fei Hong/Huang Feihong, Hung Hei-Goon/Hong Xi Guan in this case) or having a dominating martial arts theme (like his "Shaolin Temple" films). Jet Li's other films like Lethal Weapon 4, Kiss of the Dragon, Danny the Dog, Cradle 2 The Grave, etc. are not Wushu films, even though they use Wushu fighting in the films. Hence, Jet Li might be making more of those type of films that, although Wushu is incorporated in the fighting scenes, are not primarily about Wushu or Wushu masters or do not have a dominating Wushu theme in it. This might be hard for Westerners to understand since in the West, the common stereotype for Chinese films about old China is that they are all "kung fu films", which is inaccurate. Hence, Jet Li's new upcoming project "The Warlords" (which is set in 19th century China, yea the time when men had their heads shaven half bald with pigtails at the end- Qing dynasty - from imdb, it seems to be a historical-type movie about an assassination attempt) may really perplex Westerners, who might think "oh look, it's ancient China and I see Jet Li doing kung fu. Why did he say that he wasn't going to make any Wushu films anymore?"