Wushu is a cover-all set of Chinese martial arts that has a strong emphasis on jumping around all over the place looking rather cool, which is one of the reasons why I’ve always liked drunken style so much. Rather than having the more classically minded inspiration of animals, drunken style takes its inspiration from drunk people. The principle is that you fight with deception, pointing away from yourself or looking in another direction to confuse your opponent then flicking out a strike while they are distracted.

I had never seen the whole form performed in one go, but thanks to the fun of Google video here it is. It’s really rather funny to watch the guy fall over, sway, then perform an astonishing flip with almost no effort.

Personally, I do Wing Chun Kung Fu, in the ‘Wing Tsun’ style of Leung Ting. It’s not very pretty, but it is effective! Here’s some people who are very good at it, and here is the first form in all its bland glory!

Sadly, like many martial arts, and other old organisations, there are political arguments about who has the best form of Wing Chun which has led to lots of different schools and various spellings of the name being trademarked, such as Wing Tsun, Ving Chun, Ving Tsun etc. Each school has various good and bad points, but people only really begin to appreciate these fully after about fifteen years of practise, at which point they usually seem to split off and create their own version which is different from the others, gets its own trademark, and says that everyone else’s version isn’t right… Fortunately, unlike religion (where this also seems to happen a lot) this usually only creates a bit of tension rather than the death of millions, but it’s a shame that people can’t get together and try and agree on these things.