Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Hephaestus Books represents a new publishing paradigm, allowing disparate content sources to be curated into cohesive, relevant, and informative books. To date, this content has been curated from Wikipedia articles and images under Creative Commons licensing, although as Hephaestus Books continues to increase in scope and dimension, more licensed and public domain content is being added. We believe books such as this represent a new and exciting lexicon in the sharing of human knowledge. This particular book is a collaboration focused on Chinese martial arts.More info: Chinese martial arts, also referred to by the Mandarin Chinese term wushu and popularly as kung fu, are a number of fighting styles that have developed over the centuries in China. These fighting styles are often classified according to common traits, identified as "families" (, ji ), "sects" (, p i) or "schools" (, m n) of martial arts. Examples of such traits include physical exercises involving animal mimicry, or training methods inspired by Chinese philosophies, religions and legends. Styles which focus on qi manipulation are labeled as internal (, n iji qu n), while others concentrate on improving muscle and cardiovascular fitness and are labeled external (, w iji qu n). Geographical association, as in northern (, b iqu n) and southern (, n nqu n), is another popular method of categorization.