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Monday, September 19, 2005
What does Kung Fu mean?
I was browsing through my website stats and came across several search phrases which refered to my site.
In particular, there were several entries in search engines asking what does Kung Fu mean, sometimes, what does Kung Fu mean in Chinese.
The latter is easy to answer: it means Kung Fu (like asking what does breathing mean in English...)
"Kung Fu" literally translated into English, however, means hard work, and can be used in that context in any sentence, like griping about how much hard work you have to do for your taxes etc. and the phrase is not necessarily synonymous with martial arts, unless you raise a tensely gripped fist whilst staring intensly at it and rasping through a tooth-clenched grimace "Gung Fu!" (yes, for the final time, Gung, gong, kung and any other way you want to write it in English is the bloody same and the Chinese don't really care, because you don't write it like that at all in reality!).
Kung Fu of course is also taken to mean martial arts, Mou Seut in Cantonese, Wu Shu in mandarin, or literally, War/Fighting Skills/Craft/Art.
Why Kung Fu is hard work is obvious, its bloody hard work training, drilling, building and hard work always hurts else it would be easy.
Any martial art requires great effort, focus, perserverance and dedication, it's as simple as that.
So when some idiot says to you ala Keanu, "I know Kung Fu!", ask him how many years of his life he's put into it. Me? Only about 12, a bit of a slacker one might say.
Toodle-loo
In particular, there were several entries in search engines asking what does Kung Fu mean, sometimes, what does Kung Fu mean in Chinese.
The latter is easy to answer: it means Kung Fu (like asking what does breathing mean in English...)
"Kung Fu" literally translated into English, however, means hard work, and can be used in that context in any sentence, like griping about how much hard work you have to do for your taxes etc. and the phrase is not necessarily synonymous with martial arts, unless you raise a tensely gripped fist whilst staring intensly at it and rasping through a tooth-clenched grimace "Gung Fu!" (yes, for the final time, Gung, gong, kung and any other way you want to write it in English is the bloody same and the Chinese don't really care, because you don't write it like that at all in reality!).
Kung Fu of course is also taken to mean martial arts, Mou Seut in Cantonese, Wu Shu in mandarin, or literally, War/Fighting Skills/Craft/Art.
Why Kung Fu is hard work is obvious, its bloody hard work training, drilling, building and hard work always hurts else it would be easy.
Any martial art requires great effort, focus, perserverance and dedication, it's as simple as that.
So when some idiot says to you ala Keanu, "I know Kung Fu!", ask him how many years of his life he's put into it. Me? Only about 12, a bit of a slacker one might say.
Toodle-loo
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Hello.
I've been a reader of your blog for awhile now. I like your thoughts on martial arts! Keep up the writing.
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I've been a reader of your blog for awhile now. I like your thoughts on martial arts! Keep up the writing.
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