Category: 文章/Article

Image and action are two separate things

When in earlier times I studied ‘Later stage Bagua Quan’ my master often said “Image and action are two separate things ”. For a long time I didn’t understand. Afterwards I gradually caught some of the meaning and then passed over the threshold of ‘Later stage Bagua Quan’.

Chinese martial arts: an investigation into how they developed from hard to soft and into their current status

The Chinese martial arts are not for creating fighters but for training human ability (human potential) in the abstract. Actually the character wu is inaccurately translated as “martial.” The word “martial” in English has to do with war, but the word “wu” in Chinese is one part of the wen/wu dichotomy. This wu means the basic ability of the person. Then wen is the biaoxian, the “demonstration” of this basic ability.

A posture is like a battle formation

Postures are an important part of Chinese martial arts. They are an indispensable part of the training in every school. In particular every school’s ‘basic form’ will contain the basic postures which are the ‘mother posture’ (also known as ‘original posture’) followed by several ‘son postures’ (also known as ‘variation postures’). As regards Bagua Quan every posture has the dual connotation of internally nourishing the body and externally dealing with the opponent. Here I will only touch upon the aspect of ‘dealing with the opponent’.