Origins of Kung Fu

Kung Fu was said to be first invented by a shaolin monk Da-Mok, who came from India to China. Seeing that the monks were poor in health thus always not able to concentrate well and the fact that the temples were always being looted by bandits, he decided to introduced a form of martial art to strengthen these monks so that they will be able to defend themselves against the bandits and to improve their health. This martial art can be divided into two systems, the hard and the soft system. The hard system trains one to be well-built due to the vigorous training(Kung fu) and the soft, might not make one well-built on the outside but it certainly trains one to have great inner strength(Chi Kung). I remembered once there was a show about a group of shaolin disciples who will be divided into the two systems to learn martial arts, everyone aspire to get in to Luo Han Tang(hard system) and the weaker group was sent to learn the soft art. They were sad and demoralise until their asssignated master did some "Qing Kung" like running across the wall. This amazed them and made their realised that soft system is like a mystery of the Shaolin martial art.

Well, of course now we do not see people who learns the soft system able to jump high flying here and there except in the movies. But, the point to drive across is that still the soft system is not to be beckon with as well. It was also said that Da Mo has invented several different forms of the martial arts, there are some like the animal forms: Dragon, Tiger, Leopard, Crane and Snake forms. The more mysterious and perhaps just an exaggeration of imagaination from people that there is actually 72 forms of skill developed by him and each gives one the ability to have great power. Most people takes a long time just to train one skill, at most one can only acquire two or three. Mastering only one skill is enough to make one invincible. Da Mo who invented the 72 of them made him seemed to have extraordinary powers. From a story, he was said that he managed to come out alive from a fire set up by bandits who wanted to kill him and rob from the temple again. One of the astonished bandit shot an arrow at him but the arrow was stopped by him midway using his power and made it dropped without using his hands, legs or body. The bandits amazed by his powers, dropped their swords and began to repent.

Aside from these stories that show such amazing powers, the more pratical ones can be seen by people who practised kung fu and display their skills on the big screen such as the legendary Bruce Lee, famous kung fu stars Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Especially from Bruce Lee, you can see his power of his kick and punch that could really make one fly away no kidding. From Jackie Chan, his acrobatics stunts and fighting style. For Jet Li, he's actually from shaolin and got his kung fu background there.