Although you may have never before heard the term, I am sure you have been exposed to Chinese Wushu. Movies such as Hero, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and films by Jet Li and Jackie Chan have all made wushu popular in the US. The term “wushu” comes from 2 characters in Chinese. The first character, Wu, means “martial” or “fighting”. The second character, Shu, can be translated as “art”. So the term Wushu literally means “martial art”. Wushu is synonymous with the more common term, Kungfu: a term literally meaning “learned skill” or “hard work” and actually originally referred to any skill that could be acquired through hard work.
