kung fu

kung fu (kùng´ f¡´, k¢ng´, g¢ng´) Sports. noun
The Chinese martial arts, especially those forms that are similar to karate.

noun, attributive
Often used to modify another noun: kung fu movies; kung fu exercises.

[Chinese (Cantonese) kung fu.]

kung fu (noun)

wrestling: wrestling, jujitsu, judo, aikido, karate, kyokushinkai, tae-kwan-do, kung fu, ninjutsu

• The literal translation for kung-fu is: leisure time.

Kung Fu - TV series in the mid seventies combining the "fugitive-chase", "western" and martial arts scenarios.  set in during the American wild west expansion with immigrant Chinese population helping to build the railroads.  most notable for its jump cut editing and quiet fight scenes.

• track _Hated Chinee_ by Rapeman off of _Two Nuns And A Pack Mule_ CD  on Touch & Go (1988) CD36
• members: Steve Albini (Big Black), Rey Washam, David William Sims (The Jesus Lizard)

• David Carradine plays a half american, half chinese Shaolin priest running from the law for murder.
• David Carradine is a vegetarian
• pilot (vhs/ntsc) for the series

track _The Dusty Pouch_ MP3 by Ozric Tentacles off of _Afterwish_ CDx2 (1991)

Caine: "may I have some water?"
bartender: "is that all you want? water?"
bartender: "where did you come from?"
Caine: "the desert"
bartender: "the desert?  how the hell did you get across?"
Caine: "i walked"

Episode #23 (Prod #166208) "THE TONG"
     Teleplay By:: Robert Schlitt (also #33)
     Directed By:: Robert Totten (also #25)
     First Broadcast: ABC, Nov. 29 or Nov. 15 (Kung Fu Book & Epi-log) 1973
     Guest Stars: Diana Douglas, Richard Loo (also pilot & #3, 35, 48, 50&51)
     Caine helps a missionary woman rescue a Chinese boy from slavery to a member of the Dragon of Retribution Tong.

Lines:

• "I was thinking." - Caine, asked if his meditating was a prayer
• "I have a path. I seek not to change it but to follow it." - Caine
• "I seek only to become a cup. Empty of myself. Filled with oneness." - Caine
• "Evil cannot be conquered in the world...It can only be resisted within oneself." - Master Po
• "It accomplished nothing." - Caine, on a fight
• "I do not know your bible but our sage Lao-Tzu has said, "A wise man does not contend therefore no one can contend against him. Yield and overcome." - Caine (referring to TAO TE CHING chapter #22)
• "What will happen will happen whether one is afraid or not." - Caine
• "You think wisdom is a flower for you to pluck. It is a mountain and it must be climbed." - Caine
• "Time is carving you...,let yourself be shaped according to your true nature." - Master Po
• "I seek to rule nothing save myself." - Caine (in #20 "Spirit-Helper" he says 'I can lead no one.')
• "Either one of our deaths will be misfortune for both of us." - Caine
• "'You could kill him if you wished to.' 'Perhaps. But I could not wish to kill him.'" - Caine
• "No man has fear until fear comes to him." - Caine
• "It is not magic. It is a price that has been paid." - Caine on ability

Information: This may be the only episode where Caine [Carradine] actually speaks Chinese.

From the script comes the following and it is unknown how much of this was in the broadcast: "There is much evil in the world, Grasshopper. It has always been thus. And so our ancestors built this monastery and developed the art of Kung Fu so they might cultivate virtue and protect themselves from harm. But whatever one man possesses another will covet. The Manchu Emperor heard of our prowess. So he sent an army of soldiers to burn the monastery to the ground. Only five escaped. They made their way to Fukien and founded the Tong to overthrow the Manchus and restore the Ming Emperors to the throne. Violence became their tool and combating violence. Thus the Sage Chuang Tzu has said, 'By ethical argument and moral principle, the greatest crimes are shown to have been necessary and in fact a great benefit for mankind.' Two hundred years have passed. The Manchus still sit upon the throne. The Tongs still kill, no longer for noble cause. Yet they are the children of the five Shaolin priests who went to Fukien long ago.'" - Master Po

Also: "Do rich men hoard their goods? Do great men dispute over small matters?" - Caine

• 604 track _Grasshopper_ MP3 by Battle Of The Future Buddhas off of _Psionic Tonic_ compilation CD on Digital Psionics (2001)
• techno track _Grasshopper_ MP3 by Throb off of _Origins Of Man (Made Noise)_ compilation CD on Primate (1997)
• abstract IDM track _Grasshopper_ MP3 (192k) by Proswell off of _Konami_ CD on Merck #010 (2002)
• turntablism track _ScratchHappyLand (Side A)_ MP3 (160k) by Kid Koala off of _ScratchHappyLand_ promo10" on Ninja Tune #010
sample @ 12:26
• Master Po: "close your eyes.  what do you hear?"
• Young Caine: "i hear the water, i hear the birds"
• Master Po: "listen for the color of the sky.  look for the sound of the hummingbird's wing. search the air for the perfume of ice on a hot day. if you have found these things, you will know.  do you hear your own heartbeat?"
• Young Caine: "no"

• Master Po: "do you hear the grasshopper at your feet?"
• Young Caine: "old man, how is it that you hear these things?"
• Master Po: "young man, how is it that you do not?"

Episode #60 (Prod #166270) "FLIGHT TO ORION"
     Teleplay By:: Stephen & Elinor Karpf (#59-62)
     Directed By:: Marc Daniels (also #49, 53, 59 & 62)
     First Broadcast: ABC, FEBRUARY 22, 1975 (SATURDAY)
     Guest Stars: Lois Nettleton, John Blyth Barrymore (#59-62 as Zeke Caine) Special Guest Star: Leslie Nielsen (#59-62)
     Caine, Zeke and Zeke's mother try to find Danny before the search party which plans to find/kill him for a $10,000 reward
    (strange how both brothers turn out to have the same price on their heads).

Lines:

• "'What about the Chinaman?' 'Yeah, that's the danger.'" - on Caine
• "'We're safe.' 'For the moment.'" - Caine
• "You must see through my eyes." - Caine (pointing out food around)
• "Who can say?" - Caine, when asked if they'd ever be back
• "I hope we never have to." - Caine, on fighting alongside his nephew
• "Your son will be as my son." - Caine to Zeke's mother as she dies
• "'Breath for men to draw from as they will. And the more they take of it the more remains.' - Caine 'Is that from the bible?' - Zeke 'It is The Way.' - Caine 'What do you mean?' - Zeke 'The Way of Life. The teachings that I follow.'" - Caine (the first sentence may relate to Chapter 6 of the TAO TE CHING
• "You will have her always in your heart." - Caine to his nephew whose mother has died
• "I did not come to steal. I left something for what I took." - Caine
• "I could not wait. There was no time." - Caine
• "Is there no way in your laws by which I may seek justice for myself?" - Caine
• "Soon they will come to take me to whatever I must do." - Caine, preparing to face his trial/punishment
• "That is as it will be." - Caine, when it is suggested he will be killed
• "Wherever you are, I will be with you. Wherever I am, you will be with me." - Caine to his nephew when sending him away

Information: Herein Caine gives away the flute he received as a gift in #55 "Battle Hymn"

Forget about the _Mod Squad_—the only field-day the hippies got on TV was _Kung Fu_. Not only was Kwai Chang Caine a dangerous Shaolin freak with bare feet, mystical powers, and a Billy Jack hat, but he was played by David Carradine, a dangerous Hollywood freak with Aquarian babes, prodigious appetites, and a hut in the Hollywood hills. Kung Fu's vibe was scruffy and occult, and its formal effects memorable—all those flashbacks, slo-mo kicks, and overexposed shots of sunlight demonstrated that longhairs saw things differently because they saw things differently.   As much a part of early '70s culture as blaxploitation films or really, really wide bell-bottoms, Kung Fu was as simultaneously silly and noble as the counterculture itself.

More importantly, Kung Fu interjected its transmuted hippie code into TV's most sacred and conservative space: the western. While it essentially capped the western's domination of TV dramas (Gunsmoke and Kung Fu were both canceled in '75) and portrayed many stock western characters as racist and arrogant thugs, the show praised the genre as much as burying it. Caine refigured the cowboy's solitude, reticence, and spiritual homelessness into a nomadic wisdom, while his special-effects feet punctuated the fact that the violence of the western approaches, at its allegorical extreme, total hallucination.

After years of I Ching addiction and T'ai Chi dabbling, I can still trace everything I love about the Taoto the pearls blind Master Po dropped on the puzzled Grasshopper in those priceless flashbacks to Caine's Shaolin temple. But the Tao that Kung Fu emulated was not Lao Tzu's Way but the American Way, a flux of hobos and beatniks, of Captain Ahab and Clint Eastwood and Kesey's merry pranksters. What unites all these wandering  figures is violence: violence against the self, against convention, against other bodies. Caine's reason for fleeing China for America—his impulsive murder of a member of royalty—made him American. And in the early '70s, he briefly unified the counterculture's split desires, both their cultic quest for inner peace and their lingering urge to put a foot up the Man's ass.

Kung Fu's "contradiction" between meditation and bone-crunching melees—besides already existing to some degree in the martial arts themselves—served up a freak form of an old American dream: violence at once spiritual and righteous. Caine fights without rancor or sweat, not producing violence as much as reflecting it back to its source. And since he's in America, the flow is endless.

- Erik Davis - _Now And Zen Kung Fu: The Legend Continues_

• techno track _Dig On My Kung Fu_ MP3 (192k) by Samuel L. Session off of _Wigged Out_ 12" on Cycle #004 (1999)
• lo fi garage rock track _Jackie Chan Does Kung Fu_ MP3 (192k) by Thee Headcoatees off of _The Sisters Of Suave_ on Damaged Goods (2000)
• ambient electro track _Kung Funk_ MP3 by Nothingface off of s/t CD on Harvest (1999)
  • entity name is in reference to a release by progressive metal entity Voivod
• downtempo breakbeat release _Funkungfusion 12" by Kid Koala & Money Mark on Ninja Tune #033 (1998)
  • b2 _Carpal Tunnel Syndrome_ MP3
• drum & bass track _Kung Fu Zombie_ MP3 by Makai off of _Stealth_ CD on Precision Breakbeat Research (2000)
• Harrison Ford  playing "Mr. Harrison" in _Kung Fu_ episode: "Cross-ties" (episode # 2.18) 2/21/1974
• "whoa... i know kung fu..." - Neo from the film _The Matrix_  (vhs/ntsc) (1999)

film _Pulp Fiction_ (vhs/ntsc)(1994)

JULES - "That's what I've been sitting here contemplating.  First, I'm gonna deliver this case to Marsellus.  Then, basically, I'm gonna walk the earth."

VINCENT -  "What do you mean, walk the earth?"

JULES -  "You know, like Caine in _KUNG FU_.  Just walk from town to town, meet people, get in adventures."
 
  

dub release _Kung Fu Meets The Dragon_ by Lee Scratch Perry

• _Enter the Dragon_
• _Theme from Hong Kong_
• _Heart of the Dragon_
• _Hold them Kung Fu_
• _Flames of the Dragon_
• _Scorching Iron_
• _Black Belt Jones_
• _Skango_
• _Funga_
• _Black Belt_
• _Iron Fist_
• _Kung Fu Man_ MP3 (160k)

Chinese and Japanese martial arts hav appealed particularly to the young and/or dispossessed of Western countries since the 1960s, when judo and, to a lesser extent, karate were popular youth-club hobbies (karate also enjoyed a brief vogue around 1970 among both skinheads and members of the counterculture). In the early 1970s, however, attention shifted to kung fu. The name is from the Mandarin Chinese and denotes a balletic and acrobatic form of unarmed combat said to have been developed in the 6th century at Shaolin Temple in the Hunan Province of southern China. Kung Fu movies exported from Hong Kong created a worlwide craze for the activity, particularly among ethnic minority communities, and made an international superstar of the act and instructure Bruce Lee. From about 1972 there was a crossover: the Hong Kong films used black American soul and funk music in their soundtracks, while American film-makers created a new genre, the so-called 'blaxploitation' movies, which featured black heroes punishing enemies using martial-arts techniques as well as weapons. Both types of film were regularly shown on double bills to young audiences, and martial arts continued to form aprt of ghetto subculture until the 1990s, by which time the musical accompaniment was rap and hip hop. A passing interest in kung fu among middle-class hippies and self-improvers led to other disciplines such as Kendo, Tai Chi and Thai boxing being tkane up.

first mention of Kung Fu in Usenet:

From: G:cnrdean (G:cnrdean)
Subject: Keye Luke Answers
Newsgroups: net.trivia
Date: 1982-11-02 00:08:26 PST

Keye Luke (you had the name spelled wrong.  (excuse me for being TRIVIAL))

1.  Master Po in 'Kung Fu'
2.  Charlie Chan's #1 son

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