Wu Shu Styles

During my research about Chinese film and martial arts techniques I found an article(that is the link that will take you to the article) taken from a book that I would like to share with you. It outlined a few of the basic parts of "wu shu" which is the adopted Chinese martial arts form. In this style you have the form of:

• "bare-handed exercises which include a long list of styles, such as shaoloin quan (which was used by Jet Li in his video Fist of Legend) zhaquan, huaquan,... monkey style, tiger style, eagle style, bear style and many others." This particular style I saw play out in many of the movies I watched, primarily it was present in Fist of Legend as well as in Kung Fu Hustle. Both of these movies utilized different styles in which they showcased throughout the movies.

• "Weapon exercises using spears(as seen in Legend of the Red Dragon), cudgels, swords, hooks, whips, staffs, darts, and others." This style was very visible in the movie Legend of the Red Dragon because in that movie alone, there were spears, swords, hooks, staffs, and darts used many times throughout the movie. Honestly I cannon recall a fight scene in that movie where a fight was done without weapons aside from the different times where the children were involved in the fighting.

• "Partner exercises with two ore more persons performing, either bare-handed or using weapons." This style really came to light in the movie Robin-B-Hood with Jackie Chan because of the choreographed fight scenes where Jackie would fight with his partner in the movie known as Octopus. The two men would use crazy acrobatics to make their adversaries look like fools while fighting them, which is normally the manner in which Jackie fights in his other movies which I have seen.
• "Group exercises by three or more persons, sometimes using music." This type of wu shu I observed in the movies Hero and in Kung Fu Hustle because both had some very large scale battles and a few of them did have people who were actually part of the scene playing musical instruments as an addition to the fighting
  

This clip which I am going to add from the movie Hero includes elements from both weapon exercises as well as from group exercises.


I found this article interesting because of all of the different styles that were listed of wu shu that I have actually been able to observe during my time of watching these movies outside of class. I found it pretty educational to me because in reading it I was able to identify some of the different styles and I was able to add more to my experience in watching the movies in doing so.