What do you think of Kungfu,wushu or other taolu such as Taiji or Taichi,Mantis, tiger, crane, snake, dragon ?

I love Chinese martial arts. I started out in Japanese martial art and had a teacher who encouraged me to also explore the history of the style I learned and get down to its roots. It has been an interesting journey since this was way before internet and everything was done painstakingly by finding books, reading and doing footwork to talk to people who have found interesting things. After many years I ended up in China. I started in Kung Fu out of curiosity to see how it compared to the style I had learned. You have to learn a martial art in order to understand it. You can not just study it from books. Then had a serious injury (not from Kung Fu) and went to Tai Chi. I made a full recovery thanks to my teacher and much to the surprise of the doctors and returned to Kung Fu. Letting go of Tai Chi was hard so I stuck with it too. I have had the opportunity to go to China to train and watch some of the greatest Masters in the art. It is truly amazing.


Unfortunately, there are not many really good Chinese martial artists in the US. It is difficult to get all the essence and principals of a martial art when you did not have the opportunity to study the art for about 20 years every day for 8 hours like they do in China. This kind of training is necessary because Chinese martial arts is very complex and one can not grasp the essence of it by going to class twice a week for an hour and very little practice in between those classes the way a lot of Americans do. The American culture is not made for this kind of dedication to martial arts. We have so many other obligation with jobs, studies, families and other things it is very difficult to dedicate a large amount of time to martial arts. Very few people are lucky enough to do this, so much gets lost. I believe that this contributes to the bad opinion people have about Chinese martial arts calling it not a fighting art and a dance. I assure you it is not in China. I currently train with 2 very well known Chinese masters and in between I train in an American Kung Fu school. While my American teacher is very good for an American teacher and does his best to teach there is just no comparison. While my American teacher has done a great job of laying the foundation he simply does not have a lot of and therefore can not teach the really fine internal nuances which are present in Chinese martial art to make them work in fighting.|||Wushu is just like Chinese calligraphy,few people due to the chaos in nowdays can reach the standard as the ancient Chinese did. In the old days, there were not so many creations, pace of life was slow, so people could concentrate to the culture such as wushu, calligraphy,poem.

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|||some Chinese martial arts practitioners who got the chance to learn it from the Real masters , and learnt the "Real" thing.... very impressed.

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|||i think they're good... i study Yang Tai Ji Quan 24 form, 42 form, Sword Form. Praying Mantis Tai chi (Tai Ji Tang Lang Quan), seven star Praying Mantis (Ji Sing Tang Lang Quan). Sword style. Spear style. Nothern Long Fist. Dragon Palm (Long Xing Quan) i've never got a chance to study Tiger, Crane, n Snake.


you must dis-assembly these style first in order to use it in real combat =)|||Wushu I can't get into. Its just dancing. Just not my thing, I always though beauty was in practicality.





Taiji is ok, I did Yang and Chen. As far as health goes they're alright. Though practically nobody actually knows how to employ it in actual self defense so again, its not my thing other than as a mode of meditation.





Mantis is cool if you can find a skilled teacher that's actually used it. Although there is too much chasing hands for my taste, I always went against the grain in that stuff. Not to get too deep but contact and trapping are considered the basis for the system. I always just pressed more for the attack because catching hands just isn't very effective.





Tiger/Crane (I did hung gar) is fun. But I don't like their reliance on "bridging." Basically they like to be in contact as much as possible. Kinda screws you up though when everyone likes to fight like a boxer and avoids giving you that "bridge."





Snake and Dragon I have no experience with. Though I'm not going to break my fingers trying to snake fist somebody...





The ultimate problem with all of them is that 99% of the people in them just want to look good but don't actually like to spar and work out. Its just not realistic training in most cases.|||I love all chinese martial arts - unlike some other people, I don't particularly care to become a "warrior". I love it because of various other reasons, mostly because it has given me some inner-peace - I always thought there was something missing in my life until I started kung fu training. I do, however, also appreciate the self-defence skills I've been taught over the past 15 months.


My favourite - wushu.


Would love to do tiger, but I am positive that I am too old for that.


Will eventually move on to Tai Chi and do that until the day I die.|||Kungfu is the old and original martial art, the other Asien MA are more or less copies or offshoots.





Taichi - covers breathing and internal energy. It is considered a very difficult style because the taolu's are hard to learn.





Dragon is very good from the above, look at some demos.





The rest of the animal styles - they can teach you how to move in many ways, but they need to be mixed together and with punches/kicks to be of a real use, otherwise you just look like a clown.





Wushu and kungfu refer to all chinese styles.





Modern wushu...well if you take the competitional aspects, this are 0.


Focus on learning how to move your body and become powerful than learning a routine|||woww...some very impressive answers on this page.