Disclaimer: yes, there is some annoying, borderline clickbait-y language in this article, including in the title. And yes, it is badly overstating things to claim, as the author does, that the Roman empire was not a "dim backwater by comparison" to Asia. That said, lots of interesting information and imagery here that seemed worth a share.
> a philosopher and statesman known as Kung Fuzi (“Master Kung,” known in the West as “Confucius”) codified the heavenly rules into a series of texts that would form the backbone of Chinese culture for the next two thousand years. Master Kung’s intricate philosophy, known as kung fu, utterly permeated every area of Chinese existence, from statecraft to family life, from etiquette to martial arts.
(emphasis mine, obscuring emphasis present in original)
This doesn't inspire much confidence. I can't read it except as trying to suggest that the english word "kung fu" (modern chinese: 功夫 gongfu, meaning skill, labor, or martial arts) is derived from the name of Confucius (modern Chinese: 孔夫子 kong fuzi, meaning, as advertised, "master Kong"). I am not aware of any support for that claim -- you'll note that the "kung" of "kung fu" is the character 功, and the "k'ung" of k'ung fu-tsu, Confucius, is 孔. There was (and of course still is) a word for Confucian philosophy: it is 儒 ru, not "kung fu".
That is actually another debate in itself. One origin story is that kungfu was taught to the chinese by Bodhidharma an indian who is also taken as the first patriarch of Zen. This claim is of course rubbished by many.
So Kung Fu isn't from Kong Fuzi (WP has no relationship between the two, and since Kung Fu was Gong Fu I guess it's not surprising).
I had to stop reading because I felt something weird in it. Maybe too much hyperbole. Or the non academic sources. But it did make me want to broaden my knowledge of history outside the western nationalized scope we're fed.
