Yang Taiji strike hands (da shou 打手), strike before you push

[neijia_boxer]

According to Louis Swaim a translator of Taiji text says this from http://www.Yangfamilytaichi.com:

The term for striking hands would be da shou 打手, which is in fact the older term for two-person drills. The term push hands, tui shou 推手, is relatively modern. The short taiji classic commonly known as the Song of Pushing Hands is in fact titled Da Shou Ge 打手歌, "The Song of Striking Hands." The word dǎ is actually a very multi-purpose verb, and can mean fighting, playing, doing, making a phone call, etc. Most of the older taiji texts refer to dǎshǒu 打手, or to dāshǒu 搭手, which means something like "joining hands."





enjoy while you can cause i will be making the vid private soon. I just showing for discussion/share the concept.*

*once vid goes private, if you have youtube: login to youtube and contact me and I will put you on viewer list.

[Niall Keane]

Dan Docherty has often written about this too. Da shou = striking hands => Fighter.
So classic should be translated "fighter's song", and the advice therein relates to fighting, not simply a shallow commentry on a training drill, or simply a type of wrestling. (Often far too compliant, making the Classic's advice on leading an Opponent (not a partner) redundant

I wonder who first mistranslated it "song of pushing hands" originally in the West? Im guessing it wasnt a fighter?

Theres also alot of striking drills in TCC but most styles seem to lack them?

[cdobe]

Dashou, as the description of a person, has a very negative connotation. It is a low life criminal. Dan Docherty is simply wrong in translating the
Dashou ge as "The fighter's song". Reading his translations, I often wonder about his knowledge and ability of the Chinese language . As Louis Swaim pointed out, da can be read in numerous different ways. So if you translate tuishou as pushing hands, you should translate dashou as *ing hands. For instance, in the west it has become very popular to say "play Taijiquan". It is a direct translation of the Chinese da taijiquan, just as you would say play table tennis - da pingpangqiu- or play Mahjong - da majiang. Although I personally don't like this translation, because when you da dianhua you don't "play telephone" either ,but it is absolutely justifiable to translate dashou as "playing hands". Here are some of the possible translations of the verb da from an online dictionary and it is a non-exhaustive list:

1. hit
2. beat
3. break
4. send
5. play
6. build
7. polish
8. deal with
9. make
10. beat
11. knit
12. catch
13. draw
14. hold
15. get rid of
16. buy
17. open
18. dig
19. issue
20. spoon out
21. gather
22. do
23. make
24. convict
25. pack
26. calculate
27. flick

[GrahamB]

Sounds like you might as well call it "verb-ing hands" since any verb will do!

b.t.w - when you wrote "*ing hands" I thought you'd written f**king hands and the forum software had filtered it. That would be an awesome description.

[Doc Stier]

My teacher never liked the English translation of tui-shou as "push hands", primarily because the word "push" seems to raise images of forceful pushing and shoving in the minds of most people, and thus creates an overly competitive 'win or lose' view of the practice.

We consider such a perspective contrary to the desired development of relaxed adherence skills and tactile sensitivity skills intended in the training. So instead, his preference has always been to translate 'tui-shou' as 'joined hands', or what others call 'sticky hands', either of which generate a more accurate and appropriate visualization of the training agenda priorities.

[Niall Keane]

Well i always found Dan's translations apt and clear and useful to fighters unlike the wishy-washy new age crap so abundant elsewhere. The man has qualifications in the language, lived and worked in HK for 10 years, got a zhen chuan from Cheng Tin Hung, becoming his top student, and has demostrated ability to use the art and pass it down to others to do likewise. Mao said "no evidence, no right to speak", and in this case I would agree, it would take someone of equal experience and achievement to make me contemplate questioning the man's study of his art! I dont see many around!

And as for "play" TCC, there are no words for my contempt at this phrase! "Play" is synomous in the English language with pleasurable and trivial persuits, training through exhaustion and injury, honing those skills in full contact competition where one can be legally killed, and finally using such acquired skills to overcome situations where your life is threatened with weapons or at the very least your physical welfare disregarded to the point where there is no qualms from your opponents about permanently damaging you, well such experience does not equate with tiddlywinks, it is not a "game".

Also its always the tree-huggers whonise this phrase, as if to atempt to sterilise TCC, excercise the demon of martial art that haunts their chi-dance.

[cdobe]

Well i always found Dan's translations apt and clear and useful to fighters unlike the wishy-washy new age crap so abundant elsewhere. The man has qualifications in the language, lived and worked in HK for 10 years, got a zhen chuan from Cheng Tin Hung, becoming his top student, and has demostrated ability to use the art and pass it down to others to do likewise. Mao said "no evidence, no right to speak", and in this case I would agree, it would take someone of equal experience and achievement to make me contemplate questioning the man's study of his art! I dont see many around!

And as for "play" TCC, there are no words for my contempt at this phrase! "Play" is synomous in the English language with pleasurable and trivial persuits, training through exhaustion and injury, honing those skills in full contact competition where one can be legally killed, and finally using such acquired skills to overcome situations where your life is threatened with weapons or at the very least your physical welfare disregarded to the point where there is no qualms from your opponents about permanently damaging you, well such experience does not equate with tiddlywinks, it is not a "game".

Also its always the tree-huggers whonise this phrase, as if to atempt to sterilise TCC, excercise the demon of martial art that haunts their chi-dance.

His translations and interpretations may be useful to you as a student of his, but they are demonstrably wrong in many instances and they show his ignorance about the classical references the taiji classics are full of.
As I have written before, I agree with the dislike of the translation "play". It is however perfectly legitimate to interpret it this way, as are other interpretations and that's the whole point. His idea of using dashou as a noun is wrong however.

[neijia_boxer]

I learned "Da" as "Attack" in regards to Chinese martial arts. First time I heard it was in a conversation on Tui Shou that you have to: Stick " Zhan", adhere "Lian", neutralize "Nian", follow "Sui", attack "Da", and emit "Fa".

I also heard Da used as "Attack" in Chanquan class. for instance Da as in "throw your punch".

[Bao]

Dashou or striking hands is imho better than tuishou just because it has more implications. "Pushing" is a bit too limited for my own taste.

Well i always found Dan's translations apt and clear and useful to fighters unlike the wishy-washy new age crap so abundant elsewhere. ... it would take someone of equal experience and achievement to make me contemplate questioning the man's study of his art!

Don't confuse skill and knowledge with teaching capacity or with general intelligence. You don't need to be "equal" to question what a man writes and how. Some of the very best practitioners I have met are also the worst bullshitters and the worst kind of arrogant sob teachers I have met. I have a tremendous respect for their skills, but sometimes I have very little respect for them as human beings.

I like much of what Dan writes and his attitude to his art. He has a tendency to generalize about history and about Daoism. And there are also some things in the PTTC teaching curriculum that I really don't like. But everyone has his own taste and his own limitations, that goes for scholars, teachers and fighters as well. This has very little to do with skill, experience and achievement.

And as for "play" TCC, there are no words for my contempt at this phrase!

I on the other hand like the word "play" very much. Humor and playfullness is a great part of both Daoism and Zen, which are building blocks of the Art of Taijiquan.

One of the great assets with taiji practice is to get passed of aggressiveness, combativeness and competition to focus on what is important: Learning how to deal with forces. Good taiji practice embodies it's attitude toward figthing and application: Getting rid of what is not important and with everything which interfere with the perfection of execution. It strives to do only exactly what is necessary and not more.

The soul of any great Taiji teaching system or teacher has an attitude of playfullness and also an abstraction towards violence and threat. "Play" is not about not taking violence or threat seriously, but to keep a bit distance to it and not taking yourself too seriously.

[D_Glenn]

In 打手 Dǎ​shou - meaning thug/ government's enforcer/ executioner, the shou is a neutral tone. Where in this 打手 Dǎshǒu the tone is pronounced.

打拳 Dǎ​quán - is 'Practice Martial Arts' (shadowboxing/ fighting) but in martial arts there are hand/arm attacks, grappling, kicking, and weapons so in training you practice stuff against an imaginary opponent at full speed and power but then only practice certain things with a training partner. The only reasonable thing to practice safely with another person is the hand techniques because using hands plus leg attacks is too easy to accidentally damage and really hurt your partner because it's hard to pull back or stop a kick to their knee if he doesn't see it. Plus it's all about practicing to learn better ways of fighting which is for both people to learn and gain from, so 打手 Dǎshǒu is just using arm techniques and stepping.

If you know and have practiced alongside the other person/ training partner for some time and you both know your strengths and have good control of speed and power then it can be done as 散手 Sǎnshǒu (free hands) meaning anything goes instead of prearranged attacks or one person attacks, the other defends, which falls under another category called 'Contract Hands' where the rules of what techniques are agreed upon and accepted by both parties before starting.

'Tuishou' (fixed-step, moving-step, one arm, two arms) is a type of contract hands where the rule is only 'pushing' techniques will be used, and it became the standard form of 'Dashou' and the easiest way to go about testing skills but now it's been taken to a ridiculous extreme and the original intention of it has kind of been lost.

Doing 'Dashou' with a stranger can quickly turn into just a fight (打架 Dajia) when one person takes a cheap shot and the other retaliates.

'Pushing' is just one of many different attacking methods, so to really practice and become comfortable in the other striking methods there needs to be more variety of techniques. The most prevalent strike in Chinese martial arts is using the bones of forearms to attack and defend because they can cover such a large area from the below the wrist down to the tip of your elbow. But the ability to use them requires Standing (zhan zhuang) practice in order to condition them (just like how the fists first need conditioning that comes from holding a tight fist), and your training partners need to have done an equal amount of Standing Strengthening in so that you're both at roughly the same level and won't cringe with every arm on arm contact.

The saying 'The opponent attacks but I arrive first' means that the opponent launches an attack at your head but you can get your forearm up to strike his arm before it lands. With practice and trained power this can cause 打斷 Daduan (a break) or at least cause enough pain to disrupt his plan and you then have the initiative.

'Inside the school', with training partners that you know, you can do 打手 Dǎshǒu at a fast speed and only slightly pull the power on forearm contact and fully pull the strike when it's going to land on their head or other vital area. You don't want to cause an accidental 打斷 Daduan on your training partner but if you're both at a relatively equal level it's not really an issue. And even though it's an ideal occurrence in actual combat you would still be continuing to attack in order to get to the opponent's head or other 'finishing' technique. So the practice fighting (Dashou) is also looking to achieve these other goals to finish the fight because really 打斷 Daduan is not considered a 'finishing' move, even though technically it probably would be. So this method of practicing fighting makes for the closest approximation for fighting with the arms and working on stepping and mobility. Finding ways to safely train leg attacks is a whole other issue.

Really though all these ways of training and practicing are kind of just 'playing at fighting' because in a real fight anything could happen but even though it's a type of playing around (玩 Wán), in actual fighting you are 玩儿命 Wánr​mìng (playing with your life). So every practice/ exercise / training should be taken and done very seriously.




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[GrahamB]

The saying 'The opponent attacks but I arrive first' means that the opponent launches an attack at your head but you can get your forearm up to strike his arm before it lands. With practice and trained power this can cause 打斷 Daduan (a break) or at least cause enough pain to disrupt his plan and you then have the initiative.

Interesting, but I'd just call that blocking well and nothing more fancy or exotic.

[D_Glenn]

The saying 'The opponent attacks but I arrive first' means that the opponent launches an attack at your head but you can get your forearm up to strike his arm before it lands. With practice and trained power this can cause 打斷 Daduan (a break) or at least cause enough pain to disrupt his plan and you then have the initiative.

Interesting, but I'd just call that blocking well and nothing more fancy or exotic.

It's also referred to as 'attacking the opponent's attack'. So it could be any technique or movement really. I think that Taijiquan people use 'cloud hands' primarily but really anything could work it just depends on the situation and [sarcasm] Taijiquan people also don't like to 'Block' so...[/sarcasm]

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[GrahamB]

Blocking belongs to low level external arts and is to be disparaged - obviously.

(Am I reading right from the IMA marketing pamphlet?)

[neijia_boxer]

thanks D_Glenn- spoken like a true scholar warrior!

[Steve James]

Blocking belongs to low level external arts

Well, I wouldn't call it low level, but it is obviously limited. If you get out of the way, you don't have to block. One very traditional TCC expression of the order of response is "hua, na, da, fa." Hua --though I speak/write 0 Chinese was translated as "neutralize." So, technically, a "block" --or what could be called a block-- if it broke the opponent's arm, eg., would be a "da." The na (grab) could be there or not; but, to be a TCC technique, one would need the hua before anything. There are a lot of ways to neutralize.

Now, on the real side, sometimes blocking comes in handy. Won't work against a stick or sword, but taking a blow to the arm is better than to the head if it can be avoided. Staying alive is never "low level." Just sayin', ymmv.

Re: translations in general, I was reminded of an essay on Joseph Conrad.

JOSEPH CONRAD WAS SCEPTICAL about translations of his work into another language.
Such scepticism is not unusual among writers, but, in Conrad’s case, this questioning was
rooted in his sense of personal identity and nationality. In a letter to his French
translator, Henry-Durand Davray, quoted in this study, Conrad offers some insight into
how his consciousness of difference impacted on his sense of the difficulty of translating
his work:

But do not forget that it is written for the English – from the point of view of
the effect it will have on an English reader. That is always my object. That’s why
I am so much an English writer who lends himself so little to translation. A
national writer like Kipling, for example, translates easily. His interest is in the
subject: the interest of my work is in the effect it produces. He talks about his
compatriots. I write for them. Thus he can interest foreigners very well – for me
it is more difficult indeed – perhaps impossible. (15)

Although he identifies himself as “an English writer,” Conrad also positions himself
apart from “the English.” For him, the difficulty about translation into another language
is not merely a concern for the literal accuracy, the correct choice of word or phrase, or
even the rendering of thought and meaning into another culture, but also a concern for
the effect on the reader.