Tai Chi Baguazhang and The Golden Elixir

Tai Chi, Baguazhang
and
The Golden Elixir
Internal Martial Arts
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Before the Boxer Uprising 

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Also by Scott Park Phillips:
Possible Origins
A Cultural History of Chinese Martial Arts,
Theater, and Religion
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Tai Chi, Baguazhang
and
The Golden Elixir
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Internal Martial Arts

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Before the Boxer Uprising

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Scott Park Phillips 

Angry Baby Books
400 W South Boulder Rd. Lot 63
Louisville, CO 80027, USA
Copyright © 2019 Scott Park Phillips

All rights reserved.
For permission, contact: [email protected]
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NorthStarMartialArts.com
Youtube Channel: Youtube.com/c/NorthStarMartialArtsUSA
First Print Edition May 2019

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Also available as an ebook
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019904365

ISBN-13: 978-0-578-49562-0
ISBN-10: 0-578-49562-7
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Every effort has been made to insure that the images in this book are in the pub-
lic domain. If you have a copyright claim to an image in this book please notify
us and we will remove the image immediately.
Cover: Haining shadow puppet; Nezha riding wind-fire wheels, Wiki CC 4.0
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Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Phillips, Scott Park, author.

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Title: Tai Chi , Baguazhang and the Golden Elixir : internal martial arts before
the Boxer Uprising / Scott Park Phillips.
Description: Includes bibliographical references and index. | Louisville, CO:
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Angry Baby Books, 2019.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019904365 | ISBN 978-0-578-49562-0
Subjects: LCSH Martial arts—China—History. | Tai chi—China—History. |
Martial arts—Religious aspects. | Theater—China—History. | Operas, Chi-
nese. | Hand-to-hand fighting, Oriental—History. | China—Social life and cus-
toms. | Taoism—China—History. | BISAC SPORTS & RECREATION /
Martial Arts & Self-Defense | HISTORY / Asia / China
Classification: LCC GV1100.7.A2 P45 2019 | DDC 796.80951—dc23
Dedication
For my wife, whose love is my inspiration.  
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Contents
Chinese Martial Arts: an Introduction ................2

What is Tai Chi? 2
We Begin in Darkness 4
What Is Chinese Religion? 9
Theater as a Source 13
The YMCA Conquers China 32
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Tai Chi .........................................................40

Fighting without Fighting: How to Beat Up Twenty-Four
Guards in Thirty-Two Moves 42
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Admirals, Pirates, Sages, Generals and Immortals 49

Zhang Sanfeng is an Immortal,
But what is an Immortal? 64
The Story of Zhang Sanfeng 76
The Golden Elixir in Theater, Tai Chi Texts,
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and Beyond 90
Resisting Disenchantment in the Twentieth Century 100
Making Tai Chi Weird Again 112
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Appendix: San Bao Taijian Xia Xiyangji 117

Baguazhang .................................................122
The Dance of an Angry Baby God 122
Who Was the Best Fighter in China? 132
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Mud-Walking Wind-Fire Wheels 136

Indian Origins 138
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Weird Weapons 146

Alternative Theories 159
The Ritual Origins of Baguazhang 166
The Nezha Rebellion 182
Creating a New Mythology 188
Baguazhang After the Boxers 198
The Golden Elixir .........................................212
Acknowledgements 244
Bibliography 248 
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Notes on Transliteration 
I use Tai Chi instead of the more cumbersome and less familiar T’ai
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Chi Ch’uan or taijiquan. I use Baguazhang rather than Pa Kua Chang or

the italicized lowercase baguazhang. I use Daoism rather than Taoism. I
have tried to avoid using Chinese terms in the main text whenever possi-
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ble to make the book accessible to a broader audience. Otherwise, when I

use Chinese terms they are transliterated using pinyin in italics, for ex-
ample qi instead of chi. Chinese characters are sometimes included for
easy reference. 
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Chinese Martial Arts:
an Introduction
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What is Tai Chi?
On the face of it, Tai Chi is a slow-motion movement art, a dance. A

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sequence of postures strung together by flowing, silk-like movement. It

comes from China and is associated with Chinese identity. Practiced by
millions of people around the world, it is an expression of what is some-
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times called soft-power, a source of Chinese cultural pride and influence.

Most people will agree it is a martial art. Some Tai Chi schools prac-
tice combat testing, competitive bouts, and techniques for dispatching a
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threat, including weapons training.

The expression meditation-in-motion was coined to describe the posi-
tive effects Tai Chi has on the mind. Phrases like “inner-stillness” and
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“mind-body-integration” are commonly used to describe Tai Chi. Under

the guise of stress-reduction, Tai Chi has a cure-all reputation for the
hazards of modern life.
Its association with health and healing does not stop there. Tai Chi is
widely reported to be good for improving circulation and balance. Anec-
dotally, it can cure disease, extend one’s lifespan, and make us limber in
old age.
3# Introduction
Although it is controversial, Tai Chi is said to be powered by qi, a

term mysterious enough to have been translated as an invisible force which is
the source of all life in the universe.
Anyone picking up this book has probably already heard all this.
As someone who has practiced Tai Chi every day for thirty years, I
find the simplicity of this surface gloss a bit embarrassing. My enthusiasm
for Tai Chi is huge, and there are millions of us out there. So what is Tai
Chi really?
Tai Chi comes from a tradition of theatrical-religious martial skills
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that use the imagination to create a more animated self, capable of

fighting, and of fighting without fighting. It is a ritual. It is a form of
body-awareness-renewal that nourishes our interactions with other
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people and the world. It is a form of whole body storytelling, that comes
with its own story. It is a pre-modern form of exercise. Its origins are
deep, accessible, and worth investigating.
Baguazhang, Tai Chi’s lesser known cousin, comes from a similar the-
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atrical-religious tradition, but its story is different. Baguazhang is a ritual

of the spirit of rebellion. It embodies the contradiction of self-sacrifice
and invulnerability. It is the embodiment of the greatest fighter, alternat-
ing between playful and sadistic, a whirlwind of conflicting emotions,
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and a dark path to enlightenment.

This book is an investigation of the mythology embedded in the martial arts. We
are mythological creatures, or rather creatures who create mythology wherever we go and
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whatever we do. Re-connecting the martial arts to their mythology is life-affirming.

Have you wondered why martial arts are done the way they are done, taught the way
they are taught? Not only will this book satisfy your curiosity, whole new worlds open
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up when we re-vivify Baguazhang and Tai Chi with their original mythologies.
Knowing history unlocks the true content of the art and gives us ac-
cess to new types of fruition. You may want information that will im-
prove your skills. This book is rooted in the idea that grasping the context
these arts were created in is equivalent to having a master key that un-
locks Tai Chi and Baguazhang secrets. But I do not believe in spoon
feeding. This book is for people willing to do the work.  
We Begin in Darkness #4
We Begin in Darkness
I want to write a happy joyful book about Tai Chi and Baguazhang,
because that’s how I feel about the martial arts I have practiced for thirty
years. These arts were created out of joy, not out of darkness and death.
Yes, they come from a time when kidnapping and throat slitting were too
common. But they were positive solutions to this everyday violence.
These arts unleash a comic and playful vision of enchanted discipline. In
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today’s peaceful world, martial arts are an ever growing delight.

But what hangs over this book, and the reason it needs to be written,
is a darkness so bleak it is hard to speak of. There is a reason a non-acad-
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emic American is authoring this book about the history and origins of
Chinese internal martial arts. A dark reason. A hundred-million is the
callous number thrown around for Chinese people murdered in the
Twentieth Century. Twenty-million dead in World War II, millions of
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those swept away in flood waters intentionally released in a failed attempt

by the Nationalists (KMT) to garner a military advantage over the Ja-
panese. Tens of millions intentionally starved by the Communists during
the years of the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962); Purges, public execu-
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tions, mobs, civil war, prison camps, slave labor, street violence, suicide.
From 1899-1901, the Boxer Uprising saw only 100,000 deaths, but the reaction
to it cut at the roots of martial arts. It began a process of destruction which brings us
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to the situation today, where modern martial artists have no solid understanding of
where their arts come from.
Let’s fix that.
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In 1949, at the end of the Chinese Civil War, as the Communists

were taking power, the remnants of the Nationalist forces fled to Taiwan.
They escaped both the mass murder of the Great Leap Forward
(1958-1962) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1977). One would be
forgiven for thinking that the story of the origins of Tai Chi and
Baguazhang would have survived there. But Taiwan was under martial
law until 1987. Martial arts were called Guoshu, National Arts, and
teachers were registered with the authorities. Promoting a non-conform-
5# Introduction
ing history of the martial arts would have been met with repression. But,
as I will show, the damage to historical memory was accomplished much
earlier, between 1902 and 1940.
The Cultural Revolution had a profound psycho-emotional effect on
Chinese martial arts. The fact that millions died does not tell the story of
the cruelty inflicted on hundreds of millions. While it is growing less
taboo, it is still hardly talked about and official figures are false. Much of
what I know is anecdotal. Stories like this one a friend in Beijing told me:
“At one point I got close to my Baguazhang teacher. We were drinking
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late into the night. I asked him some questions about the Cultural Revo-
lution. He cried for hours.” If we could hear them, the most common
stories would be about brutalization, witnessing it and being forced to
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participate in it. Self-Criticism was a practice during the Cultural Revolu-

tion in which each person had to stand up and denounce a comrade in
specific detail as a class enemy. That person would then stand up and
confess, and then accuse someone else. It would go around the circle like
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this, each person shouting accusations and confessions. These “struggle

sessions” happened every day, for ten years. For established martial
artists, actors, and religious people, it was an environment of beatings,
torture, suicide, and murder.
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The Boxer Uprising

The Chinese felt humiliated in the aftermath of the Boxer Uprising
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(1899-1901). The Boxers suffered terrible losses due to the mass delusion
that they were invulnerable to bullets. These rebels fought battles in
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which theatrical martial arts and religious culture were mixed together—
an expression of cultural norms that had been active for centuries. As
time passed, people treated the behavior of martial artists during the Up-
rising as a tragic anomaly, but in fact their behavior was consistent with
martial culture at the time. The Uprising continues to affect the way we
see Tai Chi and Baguazhang.
Those martial artists who fled to Taiwan with the Nationalists in 1949
were part of the Guoshu movement, exemplars of the effort to cut mar-
tial arts off from its roots in theater and religion. Guoshu grew out of
Jingwu, meaning Pure Martial Arts, which expresses the movement’s goal
of purification. They viewed the influence of religion and theater as dis-
eases infecting martial arts. What began as humiliation became inwardly
focused disgust at elements of Chinese culture itself. The Nationalists
sought to overcome the stigmatizing slogan, “The Sick Man of Asia.”
The nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek wrote, “Avenge Humiliation” on
the top of every page of his diary for twenty years.1 Those days are long
gone, but the sense of disgust and indignation from that era still affects
how people understand the arts and clouds their ability to see the origins
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of martial arts. The emotional ghosts of these lingering conflicts inhabits

the thinking of both scholars and practitioners in the West.
We can fix this.
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Seeing into Chinese culture is not as simple as living in China or be-

ing able to speak Chinese. It is Chinese custom to smile at personal
tragedy. It is a way of saying, “You are not close enough to me to share
that pain.” If the authenticity of the smile is challenged, one is likely to
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get shut out. Or yelled at. A cool defensiveness is common too, “Oh, it
wasn’t so bad.” Or “Oh, that was a long time ago.” Or even, “It was bad
for others, but it was not so bad for me.” Add to that, it is considered
rude to ask a direct question of a Chinese teacher because it is seen as an
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attack on their status. Westerners trying to get information about history

might happen upon a generous and open-minded teacher—there are
many—but the likelihood that this teacher’s teacher was also open-mind-
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ed is slim. This has resulted in a loss of continuity that did not just affect
the martial arts. For the last few generations, Chinese Religion has
teetered on the brink of extinction. It happened in traditional theater
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too, where asking a question was answered with a beating.

In Taiwan and Hong Kong people have become more open about
discussing these things, but the continuity of enchanted mythology is still
blocked by the filters of Twentieth Century trauma and conceit. Mo Yan,
who won the Nobel Prize for literature, poetically embodies this frozen
ethos— his pen name means, “Don’t Speak.”
1 Platt 2017.
7# Introduction
The story of the Twentieth Century is not all bleak. While the origin
mythologies were lost, the arts themselves survived because people pro-
tected and preserved them. That is amazing, and the mythology is recov-
erable because Chinese culture is resilient. The basis for trust has been
lost, but the real stories pop up all the time. Reliable sources float around
disconnected from other reliable sources, waiting to be assembled and
made coherent. This book will provide you with the basis for identifying
reliable sources.
While the stated goal of the Communists was to eliminate human
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nature, they were piggy-backing on the modernist-Nationalist project to

break from the past and create a superficial world where only those ele-
ments of Chinese culture which were rationally suited to progress could
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survive. Each of us has something in our pasts which we wish to disasso-

ciate ourselves from. We all have moments when we wish we were not so
prone to human nature. But in China this desire to disassociate with the
past grew into a succession of mass movements, which manifested in hys-
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teria, fear, shame, and disgust. For Tai Chi and Baguazhang to survive,
their origins had to be hidden. Like a child not allowed to scream in the
dark for fear of discovery by soldiers.
While you read through this book, keep in mind that the beautiful arts
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we have today have passed through a filter of unimaginable horror. Also

keep in mind that secrets were our friends. Keeping secrets and hiding
treasures was the smart move. As it turned out, some body-knowledge
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integrated with enchanted mythology survived in odd pockets of rural

China, and we can expect to find more in the future.
This book came about because I followed the advice from my first
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book, Possible Origins. I looked for the sources of Tai Chi and Baguazhang
in theater and religion. Theater and religion were inseparable from mar-
tial arts in historic China. Finding the answers turned out to be easy. Yes,
I have forty years of martial arts practice. Thirty years of world dance-
theater training. Twenty years of Daoist studies. A grandfather who was
an anthropologist that visited every country on earth and lived naked on
an island off the coast of Singapore, sure. But the sources I used to write
this book were neither hidden nor hard to find. I simply asked a few
questions that no one else had thought to ask.
This book has four voices

One is enthusiastically in love with movement, meditation, martial
arts, games, kung-fu movies, magic tricks, vibrant vigorous flying fabulous
action-packed fighting displays. The doer. The improviser. The dancer.
The voice that squeezes every drop of the nectar of life out of every
martial arts movement.
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Another voice is concerned with asking the right questions; with the
accuracy of historical statements, and getting the right language to artic-
ulate precise understandings.
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A third voice is concerned with the real consequences of violence and

the moral value of self-defense.
And still another voice is that of a student of Daoism, who tries to live
by the Daodejing, Daoism’s most sacred text. In 1995 I began a nine-year
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intensive study with a Daoist teacher in Santa Cruz California named

Liu Ming. This entailed a great deal of reading and practice, which I
have written about elsewhere. 2 I practice four Daoist lineage teachings
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daily. The first two are forms of meditation called Sitting-and-Forgetting

(Zuowang) and the Golden Elixir (Jindan); the third is a form of move-
ment with visualization called Refining-and-Hollowing-Out (Daoyin), the
fourth is a dream practice called Day-and-Night-the-Same. It is my intention
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that these Daoist commitments infuse everything I write, teach, and per-
form.
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2 Phillips 2008, 161-176.

What Is Chinese Religion?
When large numbers of Christian missionaries started arriving in

China in the 1800s they thought, “The Chinese are extremely supersti-
tious, but they have no religion.” The Chinese Religion, of which martial
arts was an important part, was structured on a completely different set
of assumptions from Christianity. From the point of view of Chinese Re-
ligion, Christianity was not a religion either.
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To a Christian, religion is a matter of conscience and a set of beliefs.

In contrast, there are four main components of Chinese Religion: the
state, theatrical-rituals, text, and the body. I will go through them one by
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one and show how they each incorporate martial arts. My point is not to
show how one type of religion is superior to another, but simply to help
readers see the filters and biases both types of religion take for granted.
The State
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A major function of ritual is to establish order. Before law was invent-

ed, everyone used rituals to create order.
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China was a multilingual society and the majority of people were illit-
erate. Yet a small percentage of scholars were highly literate, and a basic
level of literacy was widespread enough to support a dynamic publishing
industry and a system of written law. Because of this mix of literacy and
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illiteracy, successive Chinese dynasties governed using a combination of

written laws and official rituals. Both big and small rituals were under-
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stood to be part of a giant ritual network that created order and connect-
ed everyone together.
The concept of governance in China was called “the mandate of
heaven.” It was a collective maintained by the ritual rectification of dif-
ferences. Enormous religious diversity was possible because people par-
ticipated in rituals which integrated their local traditions into a large flex-
ible cosmology. Whether you were practicing ritual at a home altar with
your family, or out in the woods with a bandit army, you understood your
ritual actions to be a part of this vast ritual network. This ritual network
What is Chinese Religion? #10
was a pantheon of deities. Deities were installed locally and managed by

independent ritual groups. Yet they were part of one big imagined net-
work. The Chinese thought of this network as an invisible parallel realm
occupied by gods, ghosts, ancestors, demons, buddhas, and immortals.
The two realms, the seen and the unseen, overlapped spatially. The world
we live in—the visible world of forces, influences, and icons—occupied
the same space as the invisible world of gods and ghosts. The idea of a
separation of Church and State was entirely foreign because religious
ritual was a function of the state even at the most intimate levels.
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Daoist, Buddhist and Confucian ritual experts all saw their rituals as
part of the same imagined network of family, local, regional, and nation-
al rituals. Personal prayers, talismans, meditation, oaths, healing, death,
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and martial arts practices were understood to be forms of ritual conduct

that connected one’s actions to the functioning of the whole nation.
Chaos in heaven and chaos on earth were brought together in harmo-
nious order by these same rituals.
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This is not just a theory. The first large group of Chinese to adopt
Christianity set off straight away to create a new state. They called their
Christian-inspired rebellion Tai Ping (Great Peace) and set up a “New
Kingdom of Heaven on Earth.” The idea that a religion could be sepa-
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rate from the process of governance did not occur to them. (The Tai
Ping civil war lasted from 1863-1878 and claimed twenty-million lives.)
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Ritual-Theater
The second component of Chinese Religion was ritual-theater. People
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understood the ritual elements of performance as effective tools for man-

aging order and chaos. Theater was physical. The basic training was
martial arts. Most staged plays had extended fight scenes which were
imagined to be taking place within this cosmic network of invisible forces.
This imagined realm overlapped spatially with the visible world. A stage
was like a window into the unseen world of ghosts and gods. Even the
most hilarious comedies were a kind of exorcism in which the audience’s
uncontrollable laughter was thought to have the power to swallow
# 11 Introduction
demons.3 Chinese Religion birthed as many types of ritual-performance

as there are stars in the sky. While Christians thought of religion primari-
ly as a matter of conscience and belief, Chinese saw religion as a ritual
performance.
Text
The third component of Chinese Religion is text. Christians have one
sacred text, the Bible. China had more than ten thousand. In Chinese
Religion, text is capable of invoking the gods. The gods also write new
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texts through spirit-mediums. The texts of major plays were sacred be-
cause they were invocations of the gods. Before a sacred text could be
opened and read, one had to perform a ritual. The bare minimum ritual
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was burning incense while imagining one’s intentions being carried on

the smoke. Even the texts of Confucian scholars, which sometimes ap-
pear secular to modern readers, dealt directly with the practical mecha-
nisms of governance; and the most important mechanism of governance
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was ritual conduct, a religious act.

The first large group of Chinese Christians, the Tai Ping rebels, con-
tacted the authors of the Bible directly through spirit-mediums. They
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enacted performances in which characters from the Bible would possess

spirit-mediums, bringing the voices of the Bible to life. When the newly
established Kingdom issued edicts, they were announced as texts pro-
duced from direct consultations with the family of Jesus, Moses, Mary,
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Noah, and others from the Bible. Hong Xiuquan, the leader of the Tai
Ping rebels, learned in one of these spirit-consultations that he was in fact
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the younger brother of Jesus Christ.4

This basic orientation towards Chinese religion is important because
physical and aesthetic elements of Baguazhang and Tai Chi come from
theatrical-rituals and their sacred texts. These martial arts were part of
Chinese religion.
3 Plowright 2002, 47-59.
4 Spence 1996.
What is Chinese Religion? #12
The Body
The fourth component of Chinese Religion is the body. Christians
(and Westerners in general) view individual conscience as the battle-
ground of righteous action. We contrast this with the body, which we see
as impure. 5 In Chinese Religion the body is a site of ritual action. The-
ater, martial arts, meditation, spells, and talismans are all ritual actions
that transform the body. These actions connect the adept to the vast net-
work of everyone else practicing rituals. The physical body is in a dy-
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namic and reciprocal relationship with the imagined, unseen world.

Roughly speaking, Chinese Religion thought of our body as having
two overlapping aspects, a physical body and a ritual body. A ritual body
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was a collective body. It was shared with the other people we did ritual
with. Rituals harmonized, ordered, and aligned groups of people who
saw themselves as sharing collective bodies. Practicing martial arts was a
way of sharing a ritual body with all those who practiced the same art.
The basic unit of a ritual body was a temple.
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The average person thought that the actions of a god (or ghost) could
affect our physical bodies through a ritual body we shared with them;
and vise versa, our physical actions could affect the gods through the
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same shared ritual body. This reciprocal relationship to the unseen world
—through the body—is one of the foundations of martial arts culture. It
is also apparent in the family rituals everyone did for their ancestors,
which we will discuss shortly.
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Having established the four main components of Chinese Religion,

the state, theatrical-rituals, text, and the body; it is easy to see how each
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incorporates martial arts. Now we can build on this basic understanding

of Chinese Religion to reveal the context of martial arts in practice. 
5 There is an ever widening array of Christian views about the body, such that almost any
generalization can be contested. During the period of missionary adventure in China
(1870-1940), maintaining a healthy body became ever more important in the definition
of Christianity. Still, the dominant Christian view is that the body is the place where un-
holy desires stir, and thus, needs salvation in order for transcendence to take place.
Theater as a Source
Historically, in China, theater was everywhere. There were hundreds

of different types of theater that people interacted with every day. Like
computers or televisions today, theater manifested in innumerable
contexts with a wide variety of purposes. China was a large country, with
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multiple languages, ethnicities, customs, climates, diets, gods, and heroes

—and theater was everywhere.
In Shanxi, for example, a typical peasant could watch theater
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performed by a fifty-person professional troupe thirty times a year. 6

Professionals were hired to perform for every special occasion and for
religious festivals throughout the year. A professional actor was trained
from a young age in virtuoso kung fu with splits and flips like modern
circus acrobats. Either by birth or adoption, actors were in a permanent
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under-caste, called mean people. They could not marry-out, nor were they
allowed to do any other work, and they were not legally allowed to live
within city walls. 7 They were considered below prostitutes and thieves.
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Professional actors could be bought, owned, leased, or hired by those

who could afford it.8 And it was a powerful symbol of status to own a
whole troupe, or even an individual actor, for home entertainment and to
impress guests. The child of a wealthy theater patron might even be
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given an acting troupe as a plaything. Actors were hired as instructors for

martial arts and music.9
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6 Johnson 2009.
7Enforcement of this law varied, but it remained the law of the land until after the Boxer
Uprising (1902). See Ye 2003, for a history of the laws, also Johnson 2009, 230.
8 Food scarcity made long-term or indefinite leases and even bonded servitude viable
arrangements. There were also territorial agreements for troupes to serve a region—sug-
gesting that the origins of the mean people jianmin caste may have been punishment for
serving a previous dynasty. Johnson 2009, 219-234 ; Hansson, 1996; Riley, 1997; Scott
1982; Mackerras 1997.
9Volpp 2011; Lei 2006. They were also generally understood to be available for sex.
Sommer 2002.
Theater as a Source #14
Some theater groups were the residents of a pleasure quarters just

outside a big city, called “scholar towns,” others travelled the dangerous
rivers and roads going from village to village. Villages had their own am-
ateur troupes too, sometimes hundreds of them.10 Standalone stages
were everywhere, and most temples had a stage. The courtyards of tem-
ples were designated performing spaces for theater. Traveling troupes
could set up massive elaborate theaters made from bamboo and rope in a
couple of days, smaller stages went up in hours. Street theater was
everywhere too. Participation in theater was the most common thing
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people did in their free time.

Professional theater was considered an essential part of most local
religious events, but communities who could not afford actors could hire
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puppet troupes instead.11 Villages also used puppets in religious festivals

because they were the most powerful exorcists.12 The widespread use of
puppets had an important effect on the development of the aesthetics
used in martial arts. Someone who could move like a puppet, with a
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mask-like face, was revered as having extraordinary skills. 13 There are

elements of puppet theater in all Chinese martial arts. The extreme pop-
ularity of onstage fights owes something to the Punch-n-Judy-like antics
of puppeteers.
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Theatrical processions were a major part of Chinese culture. For ex-

ample, some processions were led by local toughs with martial skills who
would dress up as demon generals, wearing costumes and makeup and
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carrying theatrical torture implements. Theatrical festivals throughout

China were called “putting on a show for the gods” because they would take
the statues of the gods out of the temples and parade them around the
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village before taking the statues to the theater and placing them in the
10 Johnson 2009, 145-149.
11 On ritual importance of opera see Lagerway 2010; on puppets as substitutes see Chen 2007.
12 Schipper 1994.
13 Plowright 2002, chapters 2, 3, and especially 5, explain the specific connections be -

tween Tai Chi and puppets.
Suggested video: Jiaqi Huang. “Nezha Conquers the Dragon King” (a shadow-puppet-
inspired animation): https://vimeo.com/101789329
# 15 Introduction
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Figure 1. Procession. The Illustrated Australian News, May 26, 1886, cover.
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audience. One of these processions could take several days, with dance
groups of 8-10 demon generals stopping to perform exorcisms in homes
and businesses along the way. Bigger processions would travel from vil-
lage to village. If they met another group of demon generals carrying a
different god, they would have to fight them. There were countless local
martial-dance-theater traditions like this, and each village had its own
unique traditions. They used masks, makeup, and costumes to invoke the
gods and demons, expressing their religious investments with the full
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Figure 2. Chinese Theater 1908. (German Federal Archive: Bild 137-004763.)

ee
range of commitment from silent, slow-moving, narrated tableaux on the

one hand, to ecstatic, barefoot dances with self-mortification, bloodlet-
ting, fire, and explosions on the other. 14 Villagers infused the religious
Pr
calendar with theatrical events that wove people’s lives together. Profes-
sional theater performed by a degraded caste was everywhere, but locally
diverse lineages and amateur experts were everywhere too. Tai Chi and
Baguazhang were part of the theatrical culture of martial prowess that
ev
circled around temples and festivals. As I will show, both professional and
amateur theater are sources for the physicality and aesthetics of Tai Chi
and Baguazhang.
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Ubiquitous Violence
Sometimes I hear it argued that theater and martial skills developed
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out of separate considerations, and are therefore different. In theory per-

haps, but in practice they developed in the same bodies because violence,
like theater, was everywhere.
War, rebellions, famines, and floods were always happening some-
where in China. Tit-for-tat village wars were so common they rarely
made it into the history books. China was a relatively wealthy country for
most of its history, and robbery and kidnapping were part of everyday
14 Boretz 2011, 472-484; Boretz 2010; Sutton 2003. Suggested video search: “Bajiajiang.”
# 17 Introduction
life. 15 In every era before the Twentieth Century there were bandit
armies prowling around, contesting territory, and recruiting loose men.
There was a whole legal category of men called “bare-sticks,” meaning
unmarried, on the loose, and dangerous. By some estimates “bare-sticks”
made up 25% of the male population.16 When bandit armies joined rev-
olutionaries or became religious fanatics, potential for violence increased.
Because violence was everywhere, people had to have ways of defend-
ing their bodies, their families, and their property. Everyone was orga-
nized into patronage networks of one sort or another. These were large
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lineage clans or alliances between families, led by a headman or a village

council. A patronage network protected the people in it, giving them sta-
tus within a hierarchy along with duties and obligations. Money collected
ee
for seasonal theater performances was also used by patronage networks

to repair bridges and fix roads; it was like a local tax. Patronage networks
ensured the food supply, kept track of favors, and managed the distribu-
tion of labor. If one needed to build a home, their patronage network
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helped with that. When men-at-arms were needed, the patronage net-
work organized a militia. Martial arts were an integral part of patronage
networks. In China, theater, martial skills, and religion were woven to-
gether and functioned as a platform for organizing, training, and com-
ev
manding men-at-arms. Regular experiences with horrific violence spon-

taneously integrated martial and theatrical skills in the bodies that prac-
ticed them. These theatrical-ritual militias have been called “red spears”
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by scholars, but in practice they had unique local names based in the
specific theater-mythology they used during ritual combat.17 These
groups were a relentless source of rural combat resistance throughout the
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first half of the Twentieth Century until the Communists finally rooted
them out by executing their gentry leadership.
15 Robinson 2001; Eshrick 1988.
16 Ownby 2002, 226-251.
17 Perry 1980, 269-273.

Fighting as Spirit Possession

A spirit-medium is a person who is possessed by a god, a demon, a
ghost, an animal spirit, a legendary hero, a Buddha, or an Immortal.
This concept is important for us to understand because it was a key part
of the Boxer Uprising (1898-1901) which led to profound changes in the
way martial arts were understood and practiced. One characteristic of
Chinese spirit-mediums is that they do not remember the experience of
being possessed. So, in theory, no one who participated in the Boxer Up-
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rising would remember it. In China there were amateur spirit-mediums,

who were possessed only once, and professionals, who were possessed
regularly. Literary elite types of spirit-medium would pick up brush and
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paper and write down the words of a god who possessed the writing
brush, not the person. Alternately, a possessed child would write the god’s
words in sand while a scholar stood by to interpret and write them down.
Lowly mediums channelled the recently dead for distraught relatives,
allowing the dead to speak through their mouths. Spirit-mediums healed
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with magic, talismans, or herbs. Others gave entertaining lectures or per-

formed dance. Some chastised and cajoled witnesses to discard their sin-
ful ways and live honest upright lives. Enlightenment practices, sex edu-
ev
cation, fighting skills, poems, songs, secret histories, games, jokes, and
prophecies were all subjects taught by spirit-mediums. 18
At festivals it was common to play spirit medium games. Here is a
description of one from the early Twentieth Century:
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The “Descent of the Eight Immortals” is an invitation of one

of the Eight Immortals to descend and to take possession of a man.
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The man must wash himself and lie on the ground under the moon.
Fragrant water is sprinkled around him on the ground; an incense
burner with incense, tea, wine and fruits are put beside his head as of-
ferings to the immortal, and a bowl of cold water is placed at his feet.
Another recites the “Incantation to the Immortal to Descend” walks
around him and burns some paper money on each round. When he has
repeated the sentences about three hundred times, the man lying on the
ground falls asleep. Then he asks the man: “Master, are you a literary
18Chan, Margaret 2014, 25-46; Amos 1999; Clart 2003, 1-38; Paper 1995; Seaman
1988, introduction.
# 19 Introduction
or a military immortal?” The man in sleep answers. If he is a literary

immortal, pen, brush, ink, paper, a plate with sand and a chi-pen must
be prepared. Then the man stands up and writes with the brush on
paper or with the chi-pen in a plate full of sand. If he is a military im-
mortal, then sword, spear, steel fork and some other weapons are pre-
pared, and he is carried in a chair to a large open space. He chooses a
weapon and brandishes it in the air. When he becomes tired, others
may ask him whether he will have a pupil or not. If he gives a positive
answer, a boy of twelve or thirteen years becomes his pupil. He then
continues to brandish the weapon. Finally he is awakened by sprinkling
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water on his face. It is said that after his awakening he cannot remem-
ber anything of what he has done. This game as described above is
played in Dongguan.19
ee
Actors called the entrance to a stage the “ghost gate” because charac-
ters on the stage were dead. 20 The act of putting long dead heroes on the
stage brought them back to life. Chinese culture conceptualizes most
gods and demons as real people who, long ago, were transformed into
deities by extreme actions or circumstances.21 They are also ghosts. This
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is obvious in Chinese language where the term gui means ghost, the term
shen means god—and the characters who perform on the stage are called
guishen.
ev
From a religious point of view, fighting itself was a form of spirit pos-
session. To understand why, it will help to understand what a home altar
is. Every Chinese home had two tables in the dining room (and most still
do). One table was large enough for the family to eat together. The other
ie
table was a small altar positioned against a wall with the names of ances-
tors written on wooden slats. They used this altar to feed their ancestors.
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Every day, small food offerings were left on the ancestor-table, along with
candles, flowers and incense. This was a symbolic reciprocal relationship
with the ancestors. The altar was a way to thank the ancestors, and to
remember and receive the fruits of their hard work and upright conduct.
19Wei-pang, Chao. "Games at the Mid-autumn festival in Kuangtung." Folklore Studies

(1944): 1-16.
20 “Ghost portal” guimen ⿁⾨
21 Kleeman 1994; and Shahar, 1996.

It was a symbolic stage viewed by an imagined audience. The ancestors

were observing their own legacy through the conduct of their descen-
dants, as if looking through a window. Ancestors who died with a list of
unfulfilled desires could find peace “watching” their descendants achieve
their dreams. Ancestors, who suffered and sacrificed so that their descen-
dants would have a better life, could find pride and joy “seeing” the fami-
ly table full of happy people eating. At the same time, Chinese families
expected their ancestors to continue doing the hard work of providing
good fortune, from behind the “window” in the invisible world.
Fr
However, a person who died on a battlefield, or from suicide, could

not be placed on the family altar. They were thought to be so consumed
by conflicting emotions like anger and regret that they could cause harm
ee
to the family. This sad fate meant that they would not be fed, and they
were in danger of becoming homeless, hungry, wandering ghosts. Home-
less ghosts would linger in grasses and possess snakes and other things
that were close to the ground. From there they could jump to humans
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and cause them to act violently. In the popular imagination, homeless

ghosts were the major cause of violence. 22 This is why Chinese Religion
considered fighting a type of spirit-possession. Many Chinese rituals, in-
cluding Kung Fu, have origins in practices to clear away, or protect
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against, the influence of homeless ghosts.23

To mitigate the violence caused by homeless ghosts, people built
shrines to feed them collectively. Seasonal rituals were performed by both
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Buddhists and Daoists for the same purpose. Both were experts on the
processes of death and dying and performed these rituals on behalf of
local communities and the state. The purpose of these rituals was to mit-
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igate the potential negative influences of the dead. Over the last thou-
sand years, the integration of such rituals into government protocols and
local temple customs created countless Buddhist-Daoist hybrids.
I am doing my best to make this introduction to the religious and the-
atrical origins of Chinese martial arts accessible to readers who are hear-
22 Meulenbeld 2015.
23 Phillips 2016.
# 21 Introduction
ing about Chinese religious culture for the first time. It is complex. It took
me years to get just this basic understanding. So please bear with me as I
make another leap.
In Chinese culture shrines are sites of spiritual power (ling). Shrines
for feeding homeless ghosts are just one type among many. For example,
there are shrines for famous leaders and for local animal spirits. Over
time, some shrines gain reputations for being efficacious in granting peo-
ple’s wishes and other types of empowerment. The occupant or occu-
pants of a shrine are all made of the same stuff. Perhaps we could call it
Fr
the consolidated essence of human memory and dreams. This is a kind

of translation, not the thing itself. But in a sense, all shrines are places for
feeding these memories. It is through feeding-rituals, over generations,
ee
that the occupants of these shrines become deified.

These feeding rituals are performances. But I must stop myself here
and explain, “feeding” is not the right word, only lesser gods receive food
offerings. Offerings and symbolic sacrifices are what the gods “eat.” Pro-
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fessional opera was used as an offering to thank or appease the gods.24

Opera storylines were picked based on what people assumed a particular
god would like to see. Opera was just one of many types of offerings that
were made. The choice and type of ritual offerings in general was impor-
ev
tant because deities were categorized by the types of offerings they re-
ceived. For example, demons receive blood offerings, most gods receive
incense and flowers, whereas immortals do not require offerings at all but
ie
may respond to sincere practice or heartfelt commitments.25 Both Bud-

dhists and Daoists, in their roles as certified ritual experts, limited and
regulated the types of offerings that could be made. Daoist ritual experts,
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called Daoshi, sometimes called “priests” in English, did not make or

participate directly in blood sacrifice, but in other ways they were close to
the local ritual traditions of exorcism, healing, and spirit-mediums be-
cause they had the power to issue certificates of ritual orthodoxy. A cer-
24 Lagerway, 2010.
25 The more lively and gritty gods received hard liquor and (probably) pornography.
tificate meant that the cult in question was deemed harmless to the estab-
lished order.26
By precept, Daoist priests did not become possessed. Instead, they
used emptiness and quietude to contact and control spirits, ghosts, and
gods. That is why meditation was so important, it established emptiness
in the ritual expert which gave him or her the power to affect entities in
the spirit world. Puppets, which are naturally empty, were used by Daoist
exorcists for the same reason. A puppet, especially a marionette, could
perform an exorcism while maintaining its emptiness and thereby avoid
Fr
being possessed. It is because of this capacity that puppet-like movement

was treasured by martial artists. The puppet aesthetic is associated with
being able to avoid spirit-possession, to, in a sense, fight without fighting.
ee
Emptiness was considered the most powerful protector against possession

by evil forces. 27 That is a profound difference between Chinese and
Western religious traditions.
Given this context it is hard to miss that Tai Chi movement is puppet-
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like. Because martial performances implicitly threaten to spill blood, and

demons are attracted to blood, martial performances functioned within
exorcisms as a kind of bait for attracting demons and ghosts so that they
could be captured and either killed, imprisoned, or enlisted in service of
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the good. Being empty like a puppet was both protective and a position
of potency for commanding, controlling, subduing, or calming tortured
and lost entities in the invisible world. Both Tai Chi and Baguazhang
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were part of theatrical rituals in this imagined world of chaotic forces—

where offerings and deity invocations were integrated into daily life. Ac-
tor martial-artists were a type of ritual expert who cultivated the ability
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to maintain emptiness in motion. The integration of emptiness-in-mo-

tion is called the Golden Elixir (jindan). Combined with martial skills, it is
what defines the internal martial arts. This idea and the Golden Elixir
26 Schipper 2012, x.
27 Schipper, 1993. It should be noted that the image of a puppet coming to life is a horror
story in many different cultures, including China. The possessed puppet and the puppet
which cannot become possessed are paired opposites in the unconscious mind. Also see
Chan, Margaret 2012.
# 23 Introduction
itself are the subject of the final section of this book. This is not just a
general theory of internal martial arts; the specific detailed origins of Tai
Chi and Baguazhang fit this cosmology.
Demonic Warfare
Imagine what it was like to lose a small war and have a shrine where
your people, who died fighting, were ritually fed. In peacetime, the hope
was that these rituals would calm the spirits of the dead so that they
would not cause future violence. When another war came along, the
Fr
meaning of these rituals would shift. They were used to rile up memories
of the dead, to motivate people for battle and vengeance, in effect, to
enlist the spirits of the dead for warfare.
ee
Because warfare was a regular feature of Chinese life, over the cen-
turies this mechanism became systematized. When homeless ghosts were
enlisted for battle, they were called ghost-soldiers. In pre-battle rituals,
ghost-soldiers were commanded by demon generals who were themselves
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ritually conscripted to serve righteousness. These demons were called

thunder gods and could be invoked and commanded by Daoist priests
and other ritual experts.28 Over centuries, these rituals became complex
ev
seasonal theatrical events where a demonic character went through a

series of transformations over several days, passing from demonic to
heroic. In Catholicism, the term for transforming a pagan god into a
Christian saint is called canonization.29 Chinese culture was doing some-
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thing similar in this type of theater, so scholars call it a canonization ritu-

al. 30 This is important because both Tai Chi and Baguazhang are closely
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connected to the texts of canonization rituals.

Canonization and thunder rituals are important because they explain
a number of things which might not be obvious. They explain why
28Some early versions of this ritual used explosives to reify the awesome power of these
gods. If we ever get a cultural history of firecrackers, I suspect we will see a connection to
thunder gods.
Canonization by the Catholic Church is a recognition of sainthood; however, the

29
Catholic State, with military power, converted pagan gods into saints via canonization.
30 Meulenbeld, 2015. The Chinese word for canonization is feng 封.

Fr
ee
Figure 3. Thunder Gods. Cleveland Museum of Art. (Album of Daoist and Buddhist
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Themes: Procession of Daoist Deities: Leaf 19) 1200s. Creative Commons 1.0
ev
ie
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Figure 4. Garuda, on the entrance to the Porcelain Tower in Nanjing, marking

it as a shrine to the battlefield dead. (Excavated). 1500s. Photo: Prof. Gary Lee
Todd, Nanjing Museum. Creative Commons 4.0.
# 25 Introduction
Fr
ee
Figure 5. Porcelain Tower in Nanjing, "Temple of Repaid Gratitude,” constructed during the
early-1500s as a war memorial. Destroyed during the Taiping Rebellion. This was a shrine to
the battlefield dead. Johan Nieuhof, Het Gezandtschap der Neêrlandtsche Oost-Indische
Pr
Compagnie, 1665. Maastricht University Library.
theater was taken seriously as a source of martial prowess. They also give
ev
us background to understand Daoist rituals that invoked ghost-soldiers as

a source of unseen power, as well as rituals for pacifying homeless ghosts
as sources of disease and violence. Daoists used emptiness to command
ghost-soldiers to serve the community in acts of merit, as did other ritual
ie
traditions. The extent to which Daoist ritual was incorporated into

warfare is controversial because the lines between what is and is not
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Daoist are contested. But as we shall see, these rituals connect with the
earliest form of Tai Chi.
The major Chinese epics were constructed from canonization rituals.
For example, the epic Journey to the West— the story of the monkey Sun
Wukong traveling to India with his demon buddy Pigsy and the Buddhist
monk Xuanzang in search of Buddhist Scriptures to bring back to Chi-
na— is built around canonization rituals. They fight in nearly every
Fr
ee
Pr
ev
Figure 6. Zhenwu, Black Flag, painting, source unknown.
episode, and gradually accumulate merit. 31 Indeed, when people went

into battle they might do a ritual to become possessed by one of these
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reformed demons like Sun Wukong or Pigsy, in order to make themselves

better fighters. Numerous remote northern villages were using these
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methods right up to the Communist takeover in 1949.32 Bottom rung

Hong Kong gangsters were still using a small-scale version of deity-pos-
sessed fight rituals to develop martial skills in the 1970s. 33 Canonization
31The meaning of Kung Fu or gongfu is somewhat contested outside of Daoist circles.

Inside of Daoism, especially in Fujian, it means "accumulated merit," the basic training
for becoming a Daoshi (priest). See Schipper 2000.
32 Perry 1980, 224-237.
33 Amos 1983, dissertation.

# 27 Introduction
rituals were sources of martial

prowess for both combat troops
and individuals.
Most of the major Chinese
epics developed over several hun-
dred years using improvisation
and were codified, compiled, and
published in their present forms
during a short period called the
Fr
Wanli era (1573-1620).34

Canonization of the Gods (Feng-
shenyanyi) is a collection of canon-
ee
ization rituals assembled in a sto-

ryline about the transition be-
tween the ancient Shang Dy-
nasty and the Zhou Dynasty. It
Pr
contains the origin story of the

god Nezha, China’s greatest
human fighter. Later in the book
I show how Nezha is the aesthet-
ev
Figure 7. Stealing the Black Flag. From

ic basis for Baguazhang. This Xiyangji, 1597. (Staatsbibliothek, Berlin).
collection of rituals was used to
organize militias and played a
ie
major role in the Boxer Uprising.

Journey to the North is a collection of canonization rituals for numerous
demons and thunder gods subsumed inside the bigger story of the god
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Xuanwu’s (the Mysterious Warrior) thirty-six rebirths before being can-

onized as the god Zhenwu (the Perfected Warrior).35 As I will show, the
34 Carlitz 2005, 267-303.
35See “Illustrating Grootaers, or, the Principle Gods of Rural Xuan-Da and their Icono-
graphies” http://twosmall.ipower.com/blog/?p=3876 A Guardhouse Temple to the
Perfected Warrior was often constructed on the North Wall of Chinese Villages across
northern China.
Chao 2011, is a thorough exploration of Xuanwu. Seaman 1980, is a translation of Jour-
ney to the North.
Fr
ee
Pr
Figure 8. Black Flags, Contemporary Taiwan.

ev
beginning of the Tai Chi form tells the story of Zhang Sanfeng learning
Tai Chi from Xuanwu in a dream. However, that story is not in the stan-
ie
dard edition of Journey to the North.

There is, however, an epic play called Journey to the West in a Boat in
which Zhang Sanfeng demonstrates his exceptional fighting skills. In the
w
play, the Emperor of China is an incarnation of Xuanwu but does not

know it. Zhang Sanfeng helps to recover Xuanwu’s stolen seven-star
black flag, which is a symbol of the god’s true-form (zhenxing) and of his
power to unleash thunder and lighting. 36 The seven-star black flag was,
and still is, a magical weapon used in Chinese religious communities. It
has the power to hold possessing deities down on earth during spirit-
36On contemporary uses of the Black Flag see, Chan, Margaret 2016. On true-form,
zhenxing, see, Verellen 1970, 174.
# 29 Introduction
medium rituals like the ones described earlier. The flag is also used to
invoke thunder gods. These plays and the Black Flag are important
pieces of the Tai Chi puzzle we will return to shortly.
Keep in mind that these plays or “canonization rituals” were as
common as the story of Cinderella is in the West. More than just
fairytales, they were the myths and cosmology that local institutions were
built on. As we shall see, Tai Chi and Baguazhang come from these
myths.
Now that you have this basic background in the religious-theatrical
Fr
culture of China I can begin to paint for you a detailed picture of the
origins of Tai Chi and Baguazhang. But before I do that, it will help to
understand the massive changes that Chinese culture went through after
ee
the Boxer Uprising. Nearly everyone, including scholars, and educated

people raised in China, sees the origins of martial arts through a biased
filter. I call this filter the YMCA Consensus.
Pr
ev
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Pr
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Introduction
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# 31
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Figure 9. YMCA in China, 1900. Underwood & Underwood 1902.
The YMCA Conquers China
Christian missionaries vastly increased their influence and numbers in

China in the second half of the 1800s. These missionaries had expertise
in medicine and education. The Young Mens Christian Association
(YMCA) was just one of many successful missionary groups; it is a good
example because it is well known in the United States for its secular
openness and its athletic programs. The YMCA went to China to con-
Fr
vert people to Christianity. Their main strategies were to build hospitals

and schools, to liberate women, advance ethnic equality, and promote
prosperity. About half the missionaries were female and often unmarried.
ee
The Western idea that moral fortitude was akin to clean living with
regular exercise got its start in the second half of the 1800s and gained
momentum throughout the early Twentieth Century. Scholars call this
“Muscular Christianity.’ 37 By the 1920s it was so successful that the pro-
Pr
motion of exercise and displays of robust health became a hallmark of

nationalist movements worldwide. As we shall see, in China it took on
some unique characteristics.
Originally the YMCA was an urban version of a secret society or
ev
gentlemen’s club like the Freemasons or the Knights of Columbus. These

institutions helped fuel manifest destiny in the American west because a
man could come into town, join the Freemasons and instantly have a
ie
network of support for finding work and making a life. The YMCA’s ur-
ban mission was to create network-hubs for class integration where recent
arrivals could connect socially with middle class professionals and the
w
creators of industry. 38 The YMCA’s success in this project spurred them

to integrate this powerful vision into their missionary work in China.
Groups such as the YMCA saw themselves as having a universal vi-
sion of redemption without dogma. Like most Protestant sects, they were
reflexively antagonistic to rituals which they saw as repetitive, dogmatic,
37 Miracle 2016, 17-43.
38 Miracle 2016, 17-43.

# 33 Introduction
and superstitious. Since nearly everything in Chinese culture was built

around rituals of social organization, groups like the YMCA organized
and converted people by offering alternative ways to raise money, orga-
nize mutual-aid, and resolve conflicts. Drawing on international connec-
tions, they were a counterforce to local patronage networks. They op-
posed Chinese opera because it put gods on the stage, and they worked
to disrupt opera’s connection to festival-temple-militia-organizing. They
sought to undermine Buddhist and Daoist sources of expertise in healing,
funerals, and communal harmony.39
Fr
Recall that Chinese theater is a ritual tradition in which gods and

ghosts perform on the stage using explosive martial prowess. Chinese
theater was a major source of conflict with missionaries. Missionary
ee
groups forbade Chinese Christian converts from attending theater.40
Drought Dragons
The Boxer Uprising (1898-1901) was complex. There are excellent
Pr
books on the subject already and I do not intend to duplicate them. I

have two reasons for discussing it. The first is to explain the role martial
arts played in the Uprising. The second is to explain the powerful role the
ev
Uprising had in creating Chinese people’s modern view of martial arts.

One of the causes of the Boxer Uprising was the conflict between the
institution of Chinese theater and groups like the YMCA. In 1898, after
widespread crop failures, which were blamed on missionaries whom Chi-
ie
nese labelled “drought-dragons,” peasants began training martial arts in

groups that swelled into the hundreds.41 They performed theatrical ritu-
w
als in which they became possessed by various gods of the theater. The
purpose of these rituals was to make them great fighters with magical
39This issue is complex and is a hot topic of scholarly investigation at the time of this
writing. New, indigenously inspired, “Redemptive Societies” modeled on the YMCA
found ingenious ways to integrate diverse religious appetites. They created new ways to
be Daoist and Buddhist as the old ways were dying. See the three collections of essays
edited by David Palmer 2011, 2011, 2012.
40 In retaliation, village communities banned Christians from attending the theater too.
41 Clark 2017, 47.

The YMCA Conquers China #34
powers, including invulnerability to Western bullets and cannons. They

believed their gods were already fighting foreign gods up in the skies and
in foreign lands. They set about killing Chinese Christians and foreigners,
while destroying infrastructure, especially trains, telegraph lines, church-
es, hospitals, and schools. Destruction was often indiscriminate because
they used fire as a weapon.
The Boxer Rebels were not a cultural anomaly. What they practiced
was right in line with a form of martial-religious-theater familiar to all in
northern China. However, the particular triggers for the Uprising were
Fr
unique to the moment, and the government was poorly prepared and
split on how to respond.
Initially, Chinese government intentions swung back and forth, alter-
ee
nately opposing and then supporting the Boxers. Large numbers of Chi-
nese Christians flooded into Beijing for protection in the foreign em-
bassies. Thousands were housed next door to the British embassy in the
Prince Su Palace after the prince, who opposed the Boxers, agreed to
Pr
vacate it. Because the Palace was fortified, it soon became a major line of
defense. Under the sway of princes who supported the Boxers, the Chi-
nese government made the decision to attack the foreign embassies.42
That decision triggered an invasion by eight foreign countries, all of
ev
which were Christian-identified except Japan. The Eight Nation Alliance

wreaked havoc on the port city of Tianjin and looted the Imperial Palace
in occupied Beijing. About 100,000 Chinese perished.
ie
The eventual result was the collapse of the last Chinese dynasty ten
years later. The Chinese leaders who emerged to replace it had come up
through organizations like the YMCA. The founder of the first Chinese
w
Republic, Sun Yat-sen, was a Western-trained doctor who graduated

from a Christian missionary hospital school in Hong Kong. Both Sun
and Chiang Kai-shek, his eventual successor, were married to the Me-
thodist, Wesleyan University-trained Soong Sisters. They were daughters
of Vanderbilt University-trained Methodist missionary turned successful
42 Prince Duan was identified by the foreign armies as the leader of the pro-Boxer
princes. Prince Zhuang’s Palace was the headquarters of Boxers in Beijing, an altar was
set up there as the first place Boxers were to report when they arrive in the city.
# 35 Introduction
business man, Charlie Soong, who was a close friend and advisor to Sun
Yat-sen. Another daughter of Charlie Soong married H.H. Kung, who
was born to a prominent Shanxi banking family and attended missionary
schools. H.H. Kung designed the economic policies of the Nationalist
government. Kung and Sun had met in the late 1800s in church and
soon realized they both belonged to secret societies which sought the
overthrow of the Qing Dynasty.
The influence of Western culture was profound and disruptive but it
would be a mistake to think that these changes were simply imposed on
Fr
China from the outside. During the second half of the 1800s, China was
awash with religious strife, secret societies, rebellion, and civil war; China
was motivated by lively intellectual debates and experiments to improve
ee
society. It was common for Chinese elites to express the view that tradi-
tional society was crippling innovations in technology, commerce, the
emancipation of women, education, science, and medicine. The Chinese
people were looking for change.
Pr
In 1898 the Emperor issued an edict declaring that all temples be

turned into schools. The idea came from a prominent scholar named
Kang Youwei, who hoped to transform China into a single state religion
modeled on Christianity in which everyone attended a weekly mass based
ev
on the Five Confucian Classics. While enforcement of the edict was ini-
tially limited, it was adopted by successive governments as the “Destroy
temples to build schools” movement. Half a million temples were confis-
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cated or destroyed by government, local power brokers, and mobs over

the next four decades.43
In the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion, the traditional combination
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of theater, religion, and martial arts were widely and directly blamed for
the humiliations China suffered. Suppression campaigns followed. Reli-
gious culture that did not conform to Protestant standards was labelled
superstition. Religious institutions were pressured to codify doctrine and
reform their organizational frameworks to align with Protestant sensibili-
ties. As temples were forcibly confiscated or destroyed, Daoists and Bud-
dhists began devising new individualistic forms of practice and participa-
43Nedostup 2009; Goossaert 2006, 307-35.

tion. The YMCA and the Red Cross became models for Chinese Reli-
gion to re-make itself. Religious organizations had to have outreach,
charity, a membership, a regular constituency, a popular moral code for
upright living, and other elements of evangelical Protestantism. That
which was not “organized” was labeled superstition (mixin 迷信). I call
this the YMCA Consensus.
From the beginning of the Republic (1912), the YMCA Consensus
was the official policy of all political factions. The YMCA Consensus was
Fr
shared by government supporters and detractors amongst the intelli-

gentsia. In other words, the diverse debates about how to modernize
China took place within the YMCA Consensus.
Many forms of local theater went extinct during this period. The sur-
ee
vival of local theater was increasingly dependent on severing its connec-

tion to the divine—and to the spontaneous—which had long been taken
as proof that the gods were present. The YMCA Consensus blamed the
culture of traditional theater for bringing catastrophe down on China
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and holding back progress. The Consensus saw theater as the heart of
Chinese resistance to “the good news” modern Western institutions were
bringing. Chinese theater put unruly gods and demons on the stage as
ev
sources of history, social organization, moral order, and inspiration. The

YMCA Consensus saw traditional theater as the enemy. The new gov-
ernment saw festivals which sponsored local ritual-theater as backwards
and superstitious, or worse, as an entrenched form of resistance to na-
ie
tional unity that had to be crushed. Incidentally, in 1904, the first person
to call for the drastic separation of theater from its roots in martial prow-
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ess and religious purpose was Chen Duxiu, the eventual founder of the
Chinese Communist Party.44
The invulnerability practices of the martial arts were an integral part
of temple, street, and village theater, and took the brunt of anti-supersti-
tion ire. The targeting of theatrical culture began as ridicule and pro-
gressed to the fierce anti-superstition campaigns the Nationalists carried
44 Li 1996, dissertation 60-77.

# 37 Introduction
out from 1926 to 1937 with the goal of eradicating temple and festival
centered theater.
On the upside, the changes in theater led to women becoming per-
formers in numbers not seen since the end of the Ming Dynasty (1644).
Actors were now free to escape their degraded status as it was no longer
imposed by the government or society at large. “Talking theater” was
imported and promoted by students returning from Japan.45
In the 1920s and 30s new types of theater and new plays were used in
“model village” projects. These projects were YMCA funded and they
Fr
attempted to use the Chinese love of theater as a vehicle for promoting

literacy and agricultural reform. These plays also promoted a vision of
self-governance and national unity (which in hindsight was rather con-
ee
flicted).46 This strategy of using theater was then adopted by the Com-
munists to mobilize against class enemies. 47
Because the Boxer Uprising was seen as a profound failure of tradi-
tional martial prowess, martial arts initially took the brunt of criticism
Pr
aimed at religion in general. The YMCA Consensus offered a path of

survival for martial arts. The Nationalists, who wanted desperately to
negate the label “the sick man of Asia,” saw exercise and sports as a way
to achieve a healthy nation. They thought martial arts might also be
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leveraged as a source of national pride. Nationalist movements around

the world valorized folk dance as a tool for infusing their populations
with patriotism. Could martial arts fulfill that role for China? For that to
ie
happen, martial arts had to be purified of superstitious and backwards

elements. At first this movement was called jingwu, pure martial arts, and
tiyu, physical culture.48 In 1928 it became known as Guoshu (National
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45Counterintuitively, Beijing Opera rose in popularity during this period because, 1) It

was able to weed its repertoire of offending content, 2) The patronage and temple based
sources of funding were cut off causing actors to flee to urban areas of the South where
they were able to re-establish themselves in a more secular mode. But overall, and over
time, the trend was downward.
46 Merkel-Hess 2016, 89-101; Gamble 1954, 329-407.
47 Li 1996, 329-377.
48 Morris 2004, 185-289.

Arts) and was promoted to establish nationalist body discipline. After the
Communist revolution in 1949 it was called Wushu.
In a sense, the creation of pure martial arts is inseparable from the
tempest of mass killings that ripped through China during the first eighty
years of the Twentieth Century. From its inception it was an act of sur-
vival partially motivated by hysteria, humiliation, and self-contempt. On
the other hand it came out of a desire to preserve some essential part of
a great treasure, to create a vision of martial arts within modernity. On
one side of this tragedy we have insanity and evil, on the other, strategic
Fr
attempts to protect beauty. The more complete the picture you and I
have of the martial arts before the Boxer Uprising, and the events that
changed martial arts throughout the Twentieth Century, the more
ee
equipped we will be to distinguish between these two trends.

As I have learned about the mythological content of the martial arts I
practice, it has become a map to discovering hidden treasures in every
part of my being. Whatever small merit there was in abandoning this
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content after the Boxer Uprising, it is thoroughly worth re-claiming now.

Humor was, up until the 1930s and even into the 1940s, a central and
glorious part of Chinese culture. 49 Humor was also an important part of
Chinese martial arts. But Chinese traditions of humor were tortured and
ev
crushed in mainland China, beginning in the 1930s before the Commu-

nists took power, and after 1949 China became a humorless desert. Of
course, humor is part of human nature, and it keeps popping up no mat-
ie
ter how many times it gets pounded down. But the story is a bleak one.
One reason to know the mythic and cosmological origins of Tai Chi and
Baguazhang is so that we can recover the glorious and powerful jester-
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like energy that they intrinsically embody.

We will return to the Boxer Uprising and look more closely at a few
strong and creative voices within the YMCA Consensus when we explore
the specifics of Baguazhang’s transformation from a theatrical-ritual into
a pure martial art. But now we are ready to dive into the history of Tai
Chi. 
49 Rea 2015.
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ie
ev
Pr
ee
Fr
Tai Chi
Fr
ee
The first half of the Twentieth Century saw a fight over the origins of
Tai Chi. Initially, everyone said that it came from the Immortal Zhang
Pr
Sanfeng. The dispute over Tai Chi’s origins was not rational. It was an
attempt to disenchant Tai Chi from its origins. Readers may or may not
be familiar with all the debates, but for now, I will stick with the facts, and
ev
later we will return to politics.

My own experience with Tai Chi told me that it must have some roots
in the theater. I intuited this because Chen style Tai Chi felt like a per-
forming art. My years of studying Indian dance, mime, theater, and oth-
ie
er forms of dance made the theatrical elements of Tai Chi obvious to

me, especially the mimed gestures in the Tai Chi form, but to convince
w
anyone else, I would need some evidence. What kind of evidence would
be good enough? How about a four-hundred year old play that has
Zhang Sanfeng fighting with the named movements from the Tai Chi
form?
It was not hard to find this play. It is not an obscure play. There are
almost certainly others. I am simply the first person to ask, what are the
theatrical origins of Tai Chi?
# 41 Introduction
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Pr
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Figure 10. Zhang Sanfeng.

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ee
 
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The Immortal and the Angry Baby...
General Qi Jiguang was coughing up
TAI CHI, BAGUAZHANG blood, near death in a field hospital, when
he received a visit from the Sage Lin
and Zhao'en. The Sage performed a martial
exorcism with explosions and a talisman to
THE GOLDEN ELIXIR capture pirate ghosts who blamed General
Qi for their deaths. General Qi was
Internal Martial Arts completely healed. The Sage then taught
Before the Boxer Uprising General Qi the Golden Elixir, cementing a
lifelong bond.
Sage Lin claimed that he learned the
Golden Elixir in secret night-visits from
the Immortal Zhang Sanfeng. The
Immortal was a theatrical character,
known for defeating twenty-four palace
Fr
guards with thirty-two moves while

snoring like an earthquake and smelling of
booze and vomit-thirty-two moves that
General Qi wrote about and later
ee
became known as Tai Chi!
The dragon-killer Nezha cut his flesh

from his bones and returned it to his
parents. He was done. Or so it seemed,
until Nezha's secret father Taiyi descended
Pr
from the sky and gave him a new body

made of lotus flowers and the Golden Elixir
-making him invincible.
Nezha was China's most important hero
Scott Park Phillips god-so important that caravan guards
and rebels nicknamed Beijing "Nezha
ev
City." In 1900 thousands of Boxers

Completely new and meticulously researched, possessed by Nezha died fighting foreign
guns. Blamed and ridiculed for this failure,
erasing a hundred and twenty years of confusion martial artists who practiced the dance of
and error to reveal the specific theatrical and Nezha hid their history and gave their
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religious origins of Chinese Internal Martial Arts. art a new name-Baguazhang!

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Scott Park Phillips has a reputation for making his students

stronger, smarter, richer, funnier and better looking. He lives
in Colorado, where he mixes martial arts with improvisational
theater, dance ethnology, and Daoist studies. He is also the
author of Possible Origins: A Cultural History of Chinese
Martial Arts, Theater, and Religion.
Buy this Book
Acknowledgements
The dedication and integrity of a great number of individuals made

this book possible. First I would like to thank Bing Gong, my first
martial arts teacher, who got me started on this journey. Zhang
Fr
Xuexin, Ye Xiaolong, and Bruce Kumar Frantzis challenged me a

great deal. George Xu more than anyone, influenced the way I move,
and the way I think about movement. He is a genius whom I have
ee
been banging heads with for three decades.

I wish to thank all of my Dance teachers, but first of all Chitresh Das,
who taught me what classical learning is, and Malonga Casquelourd,
whose enormous talent and generosity was never contained by limited
Pr
categories like “dance.” Both were exquisite improvisors. Alonzo King

was a great encouragement. CG Seville, Alicia Pierce, Alberta Rose,
Robin Sedgwick, and the whole San Francisco Dance Community in the
ev
late 80s to early 90s, which at the time was the center of the world, I
thank.
I want to thank Rebecca Haseltine, who for twenty years, has carried
on a world class conversation with me about what a body can do. I want
ie
to thank Keith Johnstone for teaching me the skills of improvisation and

for showing me the easy, terrifying, yet exhilarating access we all have to
w
our collective unconscious. Thanks to Liu Ming, who for ten years, was a
constant mentor in the study of Daoism.
Thanks to all my teachers, and to thousands of students over the years
for inspiring me.
The martial arts studies community has been outstanding, gratitude
to all. Daniel Mroz read an early draft and has long been a supportive
collaborator. Ben Judkins has been a foil for ideas, and a continuous
source of sources. Paul Bowman for his audacity in putting on the Mar-
tial Arts Studies Conferences and its publications. And there are many
# 245 Acknowledgements
more people, too many to name, who participated in those conferences

and gave me ideas and encouragement.
Throughout this project, Rory Miller and Maija Söderholm were on
speed dial and shared their genius and insight. I want to thank the SOJA
crew (in Oakland) and Portland Shaolin for giving me a creative outlet to
push the boundaries of what can be taught. Thanks to Michael DeAgro
for being an awesome collaborator, and to Marnix Wells for being a
charming host in London and translating the key Xiyangji text for me.
I wish to thank Livia Kohn, who gave me superb and detailed advice
Fr
about my writing, and published my academic articles in the Journal of

Daoist Studies. Sabina Knight turned me on to Mo Yan, and carried on a
great conversation about Chinese literature with me for several months.
ee
Thanks to Katherine Alexander for teaching me about baojuan. Georges

Favraud and Adeline Herrou for their big hearts, hospitality, and con-
stant encouragement. Dorothy Ko for her thoughts on Tai Chi and the
YMCA. Christopher Hamm for his insights into Xiang Kairan and for
Pr
pointing out that worship and incense burning during the first ever
Nezha film was used to justify destroying the martial arts film industry. I
want to thank Paul Katz, Chang Hsun, and especially Yeh Chuen-rong,
for their help with my research in Taiwan.
ev
Mark Meulenbeld’s book Demonic Warfare was a watershed event; it

gave me great confidence that what I see about the culture and history of
Chinese martial arts can be seen by others too. Meir Shahar’s book, Oedi-
ie
pal God (about Nezha), was a huge inspiration. He kindly invited me into
his Journey to the West class in Tel Aviv, and listened with great encourage-
ment to an outline of this book. His students Israel Kanner and Eric
w
Kozen (and Eric’s puppet-master wife Gili) offered wonderful insights

and encouragement.
I’d like to thank Greg Moonie and Patrick Bath, my two favorite peo-
ple to perform with. Chris Pearce for his incredible video and animation
work. Nam Singh for modeling the perfect gentleman and teaching me to
cook all the weird stuff. Paulie Zink for embodying the Dao, and Damon
Honeycutt for opening a door into Paulie’s world. And Joan Mankin,
master of physical theater, for being such an inspiring student. Also to
Acknowledgements #246
Joseph Svinth, who is the world’s leading expert on historical marital arts
images, is relentlessly open minded, and regularly sent me awesome im-
ages for the book.
Thanks to all the people who read or edited a draft of the book, Mike
Sutherland, Paul Menair, Brian Buttrick, Chris Hellman, Rob Schaecter,
Bogdan Heretoiu, Shawn Hickey, and Chad Eisner.
Thanks to all the people who were attracted to my blog and took the
extra step of starting up a conversation. To my wife Sarah Halverstadt
for editing, encouragement, support, and her immortal patience. And
Fr
finally to my mom and dad. 

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Additional References:
Nezha Song 1: ⼼壇敬 2010, https://youtu.be/mdFr-Qv16Jw
Fr
Nezha Song 2: ⼩法咒-請神-13-哪吒三太⼦ https://youtu.be/

3RmeFMOV8pQ
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ee
(Introductory text by The China Institute in NY): Between

1924-1927, Sidney D. Gamble made three trips to Miao Feng Shan
(Marvelous Peak Mountain), a popular Daoist pilgrimage site. Film
https://youtu.be/RFtpjR6uYnI
Chinese Hell Scrolls (Updated 2019): http://people.reed.edu/
Pr
~brashiek/scrolls/index.html
Chiang Mei 2012. 06/19 南嶽宮⼩孩與三太⼦進場. Nezha offering
incense, Taiwan. https://youtu.be/mvIiSO6cig4
ev
Showt1993 2011. 马来西亚-[东⽅花园-佛天公. Nezha’s presenting to

the altar, Taiwan. https://youtu.be/I6m7LjNUerg
Steve Hau 2011. 哪吒三太⼦@港⼜宫. Medium possessed by Nezha,
ie
playing games, Taiwan. https://youtu.be/KAM_qSUBbFc

Kunlun Meditation Hozn 2012. 三太⼦妹妹武藝⾼強 Sister San Taiz.
w
Nezha devoties spinning. https://youtu.be/Q_eQmvNSjOY

Suling Guo 真假哪吒 2011. https://youtu.be/8NgOeyUkrpw Acrobatic
Chinese Opera performance of Nezha.
傳藝⼩. 站民權歌劇團三太⼦李哪吒 2011. https://youtu.be/
y3HC8xHWUDg Amateur Nezha opera performance of self-flaying.
Opera film: ”哪吒出世“ 導演：⿈鶴聲 “Nezha’s Birth,” Directed by
Huang Hesheng 1962. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=J6m6OYfVFro
Bibilography #262
Jiaqi Huang. “Nezha Conquers the Dragon King” (a shadow-puppet-

inspired animation): https://vimeo.com/101789329
Chhandam. “Pandit Chitresh Das’ world-renowned kathak training”
spinning: https://youtu.be/GHU5PZRyaJY
Fr
ee
Pr
ev
ie
w
w
ie
ev
Pr
ee
Fr
Index
Fr
Baguazhang Buddhism
ee
aesthetic elements of 129-130 Chan 163-164

Bagua jiao (teachings, religion, upris- Lin Zhao’en 54, 57-58,
ing) 148-150, 159n208, 179-181, Tibetan 232
184, The Buddha in Theater 43, 45,
114, 172n232
Baguaquan 123, 180n245-246, The Buddah and Yue Fei 97-99
Bagua Symbol 122-123 Third Buddha (Maitreya) 149,
Pr
Yijing as symbol of Golden Elixir 167, 179-180, 180n246,

101, 101n149 Mud-Walking 137-138, 234
See Black Flag
canonization (feng 封) 23-29, 49, 88,
ev
baojuan 148, 179, 238 115, 132, 175-176, 183

Bapanzhang 196, 196n282, 207, Chang Naizhou 93n135, 95-96,
208n309 96n141, 117
ie
black flag (deity Command Cheng Tinghua 147, 194, 204

Flag,)26-29, 43-45, 88, 123
also called Bagua Flag 113-114 Chinese Literature (epic plays) 175
w
Xiyangji (San Bao Taijian Xia

Boxer Uprising 4-6 Xiyangji)(ZhengHe’s Journey to the
possession 18, 196 West in a Boat) 28, 41-63
YMCA 33-38 Translation 117-120
invulnerability 150, 152, 231
rituals used in 27, 171-181 Xiyouji (Journey to the West) 25, 46
Nezha’s role 182-187 Sun Wukong (Monkey) 88, 132,
opposition to from Prince Su 191 175, 183, 212-213, 231-233
Princely support for 103, 196
Baguazhang Lineage stories of Beiyouji (Journey to the North) 27-28,
193-196 88, 234
as justification for anti-supersti-
tion198-207
# 265 Index
Chinese Literature (continued) Door Gods: Xu and Lu 88

Fengshen yanyi (Fengshen Bang)
(Canonization of the Gods) 27, 232, Douglas, Mary 223
152, 164, 172, 175-176
Dragon Kings 88, 131-134, 142, 152-
Christian-Secular Normative Model 154, 177-179, 261
201
(See YMCA) Dudgeon, John 208-209, 211
Chitresh Das 82n125, 125-126, 141, emptiness 22, 24, 91-92, 210, 115,
141n181-182, 145n190 218-219, 223-238

Fr
Crab Generals and Shrimp Soldiers exorcism 10, 15, 21-23, 55, 57, 88,
142-144, 210 105, 115, 164-168
Cultural Revolution 4-5, 109-110, film 107, 202n295, 203, 206n306

188-189, 206-207
ee
Garuda (see Yue Fei)

damaru 156
ghosts gui, mo, shenmo, guishen, guibing
danbian (single whip) (elixir change) 86, 19, 66, 56n79, 88
87n127
Golden Elixir (jindan) 22-23, 112-114,
Pr
dance 124-126 212-241

in Theater 90-99
Daodejing (Laozi) 8, 45, 51, 57, 69-70, in the Nezha story 130-136
116, 192, 218 millennialist uses 148, 164,
179-180
ev
Daoism martial rituals 166-167, 171

vestments 122-123 actors 192
Immortals (xian) 64-74, 231 Sun Lutang 204-205
hermits 71 Healing reputation 105-106
ie
monastic (Quanzhen) 71, 109, separating from Tai Chi 100-103

115, 192, 238 in the Tai Chi form 81-83
Yellow Crowns 192 Zhang Sanfeng story 67-69,
Zhengyi (Orthodox) 115, 238 76-77
w
Kang Gewu on 206, 207 Qi Jiguang 56

Golden Elixir 212-241 Lin Zhao’en 54-58
Daoyin 106, 112, 116, 195n278, 208, Golden Cock 44, 88, 119
214n315
Guoshu (National Art) 4-5, 37,
Dong Haichuan 130, 159n208, 96n142, 105, 106n158, 108, 202,
188-193, 204-209 205
various disciples of 194-196
Ocean-Rivers 190 Henning, Stanley 67n102
Dong family 180n245
eunuch 189-191 hundun (chaos) 78-81, 236
Index #266
improvisation 27, 43-44, 61, 71-73,

89, 125, 130, 144, 166, 175, 228, Naga(s), Nachetaka (Kalya) 138-134,
235 152
Immortals 64-74 neidan (see Golden Elixir)
Jingang Neijia (Inner School) 91-95, 228

pounds the mortar 79, 87
Vajrapani 157n206 Nezha (Third Prince, Marshal of the
Invulnerability 232n334, Central Altar)
234n339 story 131-136
as Krishna 138-141
Fr
jindan (see Golden Elixir) as rebel 142-144

lotus body 144-145
Jingwu Hui (Pure Martial Society) 6, spinning 145
37, 101, 107-108, 201-202, weapons 146-158
206n306,
ee
in Daoist ritual 168-172

videos 173
jiaoben (Prompt Books) 89
Nezha City 132-133, 152
Kang Gewu 206-207
nixing (reverse path) 165, 232
Kenneth Dean 67
Pr
opium 184, 190n267, 199

Krishna 83, 138-145 152
performers
Kathak (Natawari Nritya) 82-85, 125- Mean People 13-16, 174
126, 139-141, 139n180, 145, yuehu 174
ev
145n188-190, 152, 156 imperial eunuch performers

178n243, 190
Li Jing (Nezha’s father) 132-133, 139, during the cultural revolution 5
175n236, women 37
ie
Zhang Sanfeng performance

Lin Zhao’en 48-64, 75, 93-95, 114, types 72
204, 213 Mud-walking 139
envoys 141
w
Long Zixiang 240 solo dance rituals 151-154

armed escorts 173
Lorge, Peter 67n102 Bruce Lee 203
ritual-theater 10-11
Lu Xun 49, 152, 199, 199n285 as a source of prowess 13-29
militia creation 23-29
medicine 105-106, 96n141
missionaries and 23, 35 pirates 46-59
mime 40, 70, 78-89, 114-115, 136, possession 66, 102, 113, 122,
146, 152-157 142-146, 150-153, 167-176, 183-
186, 196, 233, 261
mudra 156-157
# 267 Index
Princes snakes (continued)

Su, 34, 186-187, 191, 195-196, as a symbol of Xuanwu 234
205, 208
Duan, 34n42, 103, 186-187, 196 spirit mediums 21, 28-29, 71-72, 122,
Zhuang 34n42, 186-187, 196, 168-173
207 fighting 18-19
Rui 205 Lin Zhao’en fighting 55
xian’er 69
processions 14-15, 24, 109, 160, 168, spinning 145, 261
173-174 with pacifiers 146-148
self-cutting 150-153
prompt books (jiaoben) 89 Boxers 182-183
Fr

Qi Jiguang 42, 46-73, 114 spirit writing 11, 57-58, 66, 69, 71-72,
Poem 53 97-99, 203
Tang Hao 103
stage combat 53, 63, 94, 235-236
ee
Appendix 117
Qigong Fever 105, 107, 107n159, starvation 153-155

213n314
Strickmann, Michel 127
Red Spears 17, 184, 200
Sun Lutang 204-205
Pr
redemptive societies 33n39, 203-204,

203n300, 206n306 Sun Wukong 25-26, 88, 132, 175,
mutual-aid 33, 176, 183-184, 166 183, 212-213, 231, 233,
Sanyijiao (Three-in-one Religion) 53- synesthesia 219-220

ev
58, 93, 114 also see Lin Zhao’en

Tai Chi (Taijiquan, T’ai Chi Ch’uan)
Schipper, Kristofer 127 form names and meanings 78-89
Tai Chi Classics 90-99
ie
Seidel, Anna 67
Taiyi
Shaolin 62n97, 63, 73, 76, 94, 110, Nezha’s Secret Father 134
124, 214, 236, principle of supreme unity (in
w
reversing 228-231, 240 ritual) 165

sexual anxiety theory 133n174,
shenda (spirit-hitting) 26-27, 150 210
nixing (reverse path) 165, 232
snakes (also see nagas and dragons)
possessed 20, 142, 176 Taiping (Great Peace) Rebellion
snake body 129, 142-144 10-11, 25, 182, 117
snake spear 136n177 146-
killing-subduing 138, 142 Tang Hao (historian) 46-47, 96n142,
with horns 153-154 103
mime 155 and Xu Zhen 67n102
xingyi stamping 162-164 and Gu Liuxin 46-47
Index #268
Taoism see Daoism Wong Shiu-hon 67
theater/opera (see performers, canoniza- Wang Zongyue see Yue Fei

tion, processions, Chinese Literature)
as a source of prowess 13-31 Wudang (mountain)
use of Elixir Pill in 90-91 current issues109-111, 206n306
Zhang Sanfeng and 70, 76-77
Thunder Gods (Lei Gong)  passthrough gate 94, 109-111
Ritual 23-29, 113, 132, 138,
142, 146, 234 Xiang Kairan 202-206
Thunder Palm 156, 163
Garuda 97 Xiao Haibo (also see bapanzhang) 207
Fr
on wind-fire wheels 159-162

Dragon Court 178 Xingyiquan 59-63, 187n240, 204 (also
see Yue Fei)
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) Xinyi (Liuhe) 59-63
106, 220
ee
Xuanwu (See Zhenwu)

Visualization
in Golden Elixir practice 66, 70, Yan Zhiyuan 159
212-238
fire 136n178 Yellow Crown (name for a Daoist)
Chöd 156 192, 206 (also see Daoism)
Pr
guiging (ghost soldiers) 171

Zhenwu (Perfected Warrior) 216 Yin Fu 189, 191-192, 194, 196
cun 存 222
Yiquan 205
ev
Wang Xiangzai 205

YMCA Consensus (Young Men’s
Weapons 146-158 Christian Association)
Deer horns 150-155 conquers China 30-38
wind-fire wheels 133-134, muscular Christianity 102
ie
136-137, 156-163, 142, 156, 177- missionaries 9, 30-33, 183-186

180, 186, 230 footbinding 104
Doulble-ended spear (Two head- resisting 100-111
ed Snake) 146-150 divergent voices 198-208, 239
w
Chakram 156-157
Vajramushti 157 Yue Fei (Garuda) (Wang Zongyue) 97-
Giant Swords 146-168 99, 102, 159-193, 183, 239,
Nezha’s Ring (thunder hoops)
134, 154-158, 163 Yongle (Emperor of the Ming Dy-
nasty) 49-50
Wells, Marnix 45-46, 96, 115-119 sponsor of Wudang 110
Wile, Douglas 45n53, 52 ,67-68, in Xiyangji 43-45
76-77, 93-97 118
Zhang Daoling 65, 69-70
Wokou (Water Lords) 51-52
# 269 Index
Zhang Sanfeng 67-73

in Xiyangji 41-48
origin story 67-69, 76-77
as sexual trickster
in redemptive societies 203-204
Sanyijiao 56-63
as a real person 205
inventing neigong 228-230
invulnerability 234
persistance 239-240
in the Tai Chi Classics 90-99
Appendix 116-120
Fr
Zheng He (Admiral San Bao) 42,

48-51, 58-61, 61n96, 114
Zhenwu (Xuanwu) 43, 76, 81-83, 88,

ee
95, 113-114, 234

Black Flag 26-28,
temple gates 186n263
visualization 216

Zuowang (sitting and forgetting) 70,
Pr
217-218
ev
ie
w
Fr
ee
Pr
ev
ie
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Tai Chi Baguazhang and The Golden Elixir

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What is the book about?

What is the book about?

What are some of the main internal martial arts discussed in the book?

What are some of the main internal martial arts discussed in the book?

Tai Chi, Baguazhang

Before the Boxer Uprising

Also by Scott Park Phillips:

Internal Martial Arts

Before the Boxer Uprising

Scott Park Phillips

Copyright © 2019 Scott Park Phillips

First Print Edition May 2019

Also available as an ebook

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019904365

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Phillips, Scott Park, author.

Angry Baby Books, 2019.

Chinese Martial Arts: an Introduction ................2

Tai Chi .........................................................40

Admirals, Pirates, Sages, Generals and Immortals 49

Appendix: San Bao Taijian Xia Xiyangji 117

Mud-Walking Wind-Fire Wheels 136

Weird Weapons 146

Chi Ch’uan or taijiquan. I use Baguazhang rather than Pa Kua Chang or

ble to make the book accessible to a broader audience. Otherwise, when I

What is Tai Chi?

On the face of it, Tai Chi is a slow-motion movement art, a dance. A

sequence of postures strung together by flowing, silk-like movement. It

times called soft-power, a source of Chinese cultural pride and influence.

threat, including weapons training.

“mind-body-integration” are commonly used to describe Tai Chi. Under

Although it is controversial, Tai Chi is said to be powered by qi, a

that use the imagination to create a more animated self, capable of

atrical-religious tradition, but its story is different. Baguazhang is a ritual

and a dark path to enlightenment.

whatever we do. Re-connecting the martial arts to their mythology is life-affirming.

today’s peaceful world, martial arts are an ever growing delight.

those swept away in flood waters intentionally released in a failed attempt

In 1949, at the end of the Chinese Civil War, as the Communists

participate in it. Self-Criticism was a practice during the Cultural Revolu-

this, each person shouting accusations and confessions. These “struggle

The Boxer Uprising

of martial arts. The emotional ghosts of these lingering conflicts inhabits

Seeing into Chinese culture is not as simple as living in China or be-

attack on their status. Westerners trying to get information about history

too, where asking a question was answered with a beating.

nature, they were piggy-backing on the modernist-Nationalist project to

survive. Each of us has something in our pasts which we wish to disasso-

we have today have passed through a filter of unimaginable horror. Also

integrated with enchanted mythology survived in odd pockets of rural

This book has four voices

A third voice is concerned with the real consequences of violence and

intensive study with a Daoist teacher in Santa Cruz California named

daily. The first two are forms of meditation called Sitting-and-Forgetting

2 Phillips 2008, 161-176.

When large numbers of Christian missionaries started arriving in

To a Christian, religion is a matter of conscience and a set of beliefs.

A major function of ritual is to establish order. Before law was invent-

illiteracy, successive Chinese dynasties governed using a combination of

Before the Boxer Uprising 

Scott Park Phillips 