---
title: "Wulin (武林) — Chinese Martial Arts & Kung Fu"
---

**Wulin** (武林, *"the martial world"*) is an open, carefully-sourced knowledge base for **Chinese martial arts** — what most of the world calls **kung fu** (功夫). It gathers the histories, lineages, forms, principles, primary-source manuals, and video of the Chinese fighting and cultivation arts in one place, written for curious newcomers and serious practitioners alike.

<Callout type="info">
  **Also known as:** kung fu · kungfu · gong fu · gongfu · wushu · 功夫 · 武術 · 國術 · Chinese martial arts · Chinese boxing. If you came here searching for any of those — welcome, you're in the right place.
</Callout>

## What is "kung fu"?

*Kung fu* (功夫, *gōngfu*) literally means **skill refined through patient effort** — any deep skill, not only fighting. Applied to the martial arts it spans the whole Chinese family: the **internal arts (內家)**, which lead with intention, breath, and whole-body connection, and the **external arts (外家)**, which lead with conditioned structure, speed, and power.

<PageRef space="notes" slug="what-is-kung-fu" text="What is Kung Fu? — the term, the history, and how the styles fit together" />

## Explore Wulin

The wiki is organized into sections — start with whichever pulls you in.

### 🥋 The Styles

Field guides to each art — how it moves, where it came from, its signature forms — across both great families: the **Northern** styles (Mantis, Bagua, Xingyi, Baji, Tongbei, Pigua, Chuojiao, Cha, Northern Shaolin) and the **Southern** styles (Hung Ga, Choy Li Fut, the Hakka short-bridge arts, and the Fujian crane family).

<PageRef space="notes" slug="northern-styles" text="Northern Kung Fu Styles — a field guide to the Northern canon" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="southern-styles" text="Southern Kung Fu Styles — a field guide to the Southern canon" />

### 🗡️ Forms & Weapons

The routines (套路) and the arms: foundational drills, the deep Mantis form library with move-by-move scripts, and the weapons — saber, staff, sword and halberd — bridged to the Ming manuals where they were first written down.

<PageRef space="notes" slug="forms" text="Forms &amp; Weapons (套路・兵器) — the routines and the arms" />

### 👤 The Masters

The generals, monks, patriarchs and reformers who made and carried the arts — from the Ming military writers to the Republican synthesizers and the lineage-holders of the diaspora.

<PageRef space="notes" slug="masters" text="The Masters (宗師) — a sourced who's-who of Chinese martial arts" />

### 🧭 Concepts & Principles

The ideas every art shares: trained force (勁), standing practice (站樁), the Five Elements, the four gates of technique, martial virtue, and the cultivation language of *qi* — honestly framed.

<PageRef space="notes" slug="concepts" text="Concepts &amp; Principles (拳理) — the ideas behind the movement" />

### 📜 Source Texts

The actual old manuals (拳譜) this wiki is built on — in the original Chinese, public-domain where possible, arranged in the order they were written.

<PageRef space="notes" slug="source-texts" text="Source Texts (原典) — the manuals, in order" />

### 🏛️ History, Institutions & Lineage

The real textual and institutional story — Ming military roots, the internal/external split, the Republican Guoshu reform, and the post-1949 diaspora — with legend clearly labeled.

<PageRef space="notes" slug="history" text="A Short History of Chinese Martial Arts" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="internal-arts-lineage" text="Internal-Arts Lineage Map — who taught whom, drawn out" />

### 📖 Stories & Legends

The famous tales martial artists love to tell — challenge matches, foreign strongmen, bodyguards — sourced and labeled where we can.

<PageRef space="notes" slug="stories" text="Stories &amp; Legends — the tales, documented where possible" />

### 🎬 Video

Form walkthroughs and rare archival footage of the past masters, indexed by style.

<PageRef space="notes" slug="videos" text="Video Library — form footage and archival film, by style" />

## How this wiki works

Wulin aims to be **rigorously sourced, not received opinion**. We build on public-domain primary texts and reputable scholarship, we cite what we claim, and we label legend as legend — no art was really "invented" in a single tidy myth. Where a text or film is still in copyright, we link to it at its source rather than reproducing it.

<PageRef space="notes" slug="sources-and-method" text="Sources &amp; Method — our citation policy and where the original scans live" />

## A sister project

Wulin grew alongside a companion wiki devoted to the internal art of Taiji:

- [**taiji.openmindspace.org**](https://taiji.openmindspace.org) — Taiji (Tai Chi) in the same depth.

<Callout type="info">
  Wulin is young and growing — new style guides, manuals, and footage are added continually. Wander in, follow the links, and come back.
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