i dont mean to sound dumn

[ChinaTown]

Wushu is a performance art. Try fighting against a Karate master with it and you'll learn the hard way.

Remember that Karate VS Drunken Fist video? Thats what I am talking about.

http://rds.yahoo.com/S=96781308/K=karate/v=2/SID=e/l=VDP/SIG=12h5p8dq4/EXP=1131057476/*-http://www.karatedogojuryu.ch/videofight/KaratevsWingChun.mpg

[ovine king]

I understand what your saying but I think your just writing stuff youve read and heard. My kung fu sifu trains martial arts at a wushu school every year. He said there very tough fighters and fight just like anyother northern kung fu school. The reason why it would be hard for anyone to switch from wushu to wing chun or other way round is because wushu is the most charicteristicly Northern kung fu we know of, and wing chun is the most southern. They have diffrent backgrounds and are totaly diffrent. Both are fighting arts. There is a strong performance part to the style but its still a fighting art.

No.

I am writing things that I know.

One thing that HAS to be made clear: WUSHU is the term now used to describe a very specific art which is the one set up and organised by the chinese govt. as an attempt to re-instill some sort of national pride into its people by reference to its past glory. Wushu is no longer the generic term for martial art that it used to be. As a result, certain routines were developed, referencing the older more famous fighting forms with virtually all application removed. During the teaching of these new forms, application isn't taught as the emphasis is on perfermance. Even today, wushu competitions is all about the performance. Later, to quell the ever increasing discord between practioners of REAL chinese martial arts about the all show no go of the national art being taught in schools in china, a fighting format was adopted that could then be used for every one who so wished to participate in. It has to be said that this fighting format bears very little resemblance to how a more traditional chinese martial arts practicioner would fight due to the limitations of the rules and environment

i.e sport.

This is the san shou rule set.

Admittedly, in recent years, the chinese govt. has been desparately trying to get the descendents of the styles that were kicked out to return to china so to speak and join the wushu board. How this has affected the way wushu is taught I do not know but judging from the amount of performance schools there are compared to old school fighting schools there are, my guess is that it has done very little. Even the famous Jing Woo, once noted for its revolutionary methods of teaching chinese martial arts and fighting is now not much more than just another chinese wushu school.

Wushu is not characteristically northern and wing chun is not the most southern. That old differentiation is something that came about during the late 1800s early 1900s in canton to mark out a difference between the local people of the canton region and the growing migration of northerners. think of it as an earlier version of "white men can't jump". if you look at how the styles work, you'll see that differences come about more to do with the time period from which they were developed and the popular theories of the time. geography has little to do with it.

so, going back to what you say.

i don't doubt that the wushu guys your sifu trains with are pretty hard-core because those who participate in the san shou fights tend to be. In my class, there's a rather big eastern european chap who doesn't actually train in the club's style but comes along for the, what is essentially, kick-boxing (with different rules) training. This would also account for why he would say that they fight in pretty much the same that any other northern martial arts school does; because they train to fight in the same format.

Incidentally, you're in the UK so I'm going to guess that your club is part of the BCMAA. I'm also going to guess that the wushu school your sifu goes to is also part of the BCMAA which again points to the San Shou competitions being the common ground between the schools, hence, several northern styles fighting the same.

[Goju_boi]

wushu can either be the sport or the generic name for chinese arts,so you sifu maybe just did some style of kung-fu and called it wushu.

[Russell]

The Beijing Wushu Academy.

[MenteReligieuse]

This might not be true, but I heard that the gov't didn't only promote wushu for it's touristic/international value to promote china, but also to dilute the effectiveness of martial art. The Chinese Communist Party ruling with an authoritarian nigh tyrannic hand, they wouldn't want to have a population able to fight back.

I guess this is highly arguable.

[ovine king]

it's not that they feared people learning how to fight.

it's that they feared individuals might be able to stand out as a hero for the people.

historically, "characters" such as wong fei hung (and his student lam sai wing) and fok yuen kap have shown themselves to have had more power and influence over the common person than the govt. did.

chinese history has a long record of individuals, often with a martial arts background, having lead revolts, fought enemies and generally, band together with the kind of enthusiasm that no govt. ever did.