Animal styles in Chinese martial arts

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In Chinese martial arts, there are fighting styles that are modeled after animals. In Southern styles, especially those associated with Guangdong and Fujian provinces, there are five traditional animal styles known as Ng Ying Kung Fu ("Five Forms")—Tiger, Crane, Leopard, Snake, and Dragon. The five animal martial arts styles supposedly originated from the Henan Shaolin Temple, which is north of the Yangtze River, even though imagery of these particular five animals as a distinct set (i.e. in the absence of other animals such as the horse or the monkey as in tai chi or xingyiquan) is either rare in Northern Shaolin martial arts—and Northern Chinese martial arts in general—or recent ("Five Form Eight Method Fist"). An alternate selection which is also widely used is the crane, the tiger, the monkey, the snake, and the mantis. In Mandarin, "wuxing" is the pronunciation not only of "five animals", but also of "five elements", the core techniques of xing wu quan martial arts, which also features...

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