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The use and spread of the term kung fuhave been attributed to the

popularity of Hong Kong motion picture and television star Bruce Lee and

the television series of the early 1970s, Kung Fu, starring David Carradine.

Kung fuas a generic term for Chinese martial arts appeared at least three

years before Lee’s initial appearance on U.S. television in 1966, as the char-

acter “Kato” in The Green Hornet series, after the term was used by Ed

Parker in his Secrets of Chinese Karate.In this volume, Parker gave what

he called Chinese Karate the name kung fu,or chuan(pinyin quan;fist) shu

(art). This latter phrase, despite a similarity of sound in its English render-

ing, is unrelated to the term kung fuand more closely connected with the

term quanfa(ch’uan’ fa), “fist way,” which is fighting with the bare hand

or empty hand. Another term for the Chinese martial arts, Chinese boxing,

likely derives from translation of the term quanfa.

In the 1920s, the term adopted by the KMT (Kuomintang; pinyin

Guomindang, or GMD), the National People’s Party, for Chinese martial

arts was guoshu(national art). With the establishment of the People’s Re-

public of China in the 1950s, the Mandarin term wushu(war art/tech-

nique/method) was adopted for the fighting arts of China and has gained

314 Kung Fu/Gung Fu/Gongfu

David Carradine practicing the art of kung fu on a studio lot in Hollywood. (Hulton Archive)