Wudangquan

Wudangquan (Chinese: 武當拳; pinyin: Wǔdāngquán) is a class of Chinese martial arts. In contemporary China, Chinese martial arts styles are generally classified into two major groups: Wudang (Wutang), named after the Wudang Mountains; and Shaolin, named after the Shaolin Monastery. Whereas Shaolin includes many martial art styles, Wudangquan includes only a few arts that use the focused mind to control the body. This typically encompasses tai chi, xingyiquan and baguazhang, but most also include bajiquan and Wudang Sword.: xii, 2 

The association with Wudang originated with a popular Chinese legend in which tai chi, Wudang sword, and other internal martial arts are purported to have been created by an immortal Taoist hermit named Zhang San Feng. The terms Wudang and Shaolin were selected in the early twentieth century by the first modern Chinese martial arts historians to distinguish internal and external martial arts. However, they and later historians have found no historical connection between those broad categories and either place.

Since then, the term Wudangquan has often been used synonymously with neijia, but the term neijia encompasses all internal martial arts as well as qigong which is not a martial art.

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.