Nordic Bajiquan

[Bob]

As with all stories I don't know the degree of accuracy but buyer beware LOL

General Li Jinglin was looking for an instructor for his division. He wanted Li Shuwen to compete for the position with the current instructor so he ordered a match to see what instructor would prevail. Well, the match began and, as you may guess, Li Shuwen killed the instructor which was not what General Li Jinglin wanted. The family of the dead instructor wanted compensation and justice for the "murder" of their family member. General Li Jinglin made some type of payment and whisked Li Shuwen off to Cangzhou, Hebei - and I think that is when Liu Yunqiao's family hired him to train their relatively well educated son. I believe that is where Li Shuwen spent his last 10 years and the story goes that someone poisoned him. General Zhang Xiangwu, a senior disciple of Li Shuwen and Liu Yunqiao, Li Shuwen's disciple set out to find the assassins but never were successful.

Again don't get too crazy over these stories - Li Shuwen supposedly had a lot of nervous energy and would often chew on chicken bones etc. However, he was associated with the warlords and the military and there were numerous factions so it should come as no surprise that potential assassins were a reasonable explanation for his paranoia. However, I don't think he ran around randomly killing people but if challenged, for him, victory was simply established by killing the opponent.

Sociopath well, lack of empathy, lack of emotional regard for opponents yeah, probably so and he was no Daoist/Buddhist calligraphy loving guy and an interesting contrast to his last student Liu Yunqiao, who was well educated and was a very skilled calligrapher.

I also do not think he was someone to be emulated.

Here is an interesting story for someone else to verify or falsify. When the Guomingdang arrived in Taiwan As with all stories I don't know the degree of accuracy but buyer beware LOL

General Li Jinglin was looking for an instructor for his division. He wanted Li Shuwen compete for the position with the current instructor so he ordered a match to see what instructor would be best. Well, the match began and, as you may guess, Li Shuwen killed the instructor which was not what General Li Jinglin wanted. The family of the dead instructor wanted compensation and justice for the "murder" of their family member. General Li Jinglin made some type of payment and whisked Li Shuwen off to Cangzhou, Hebei - and I think that is when Liu Yunqiao's family hired him to train the relatively well educated son. I believe that is where Li Shuwen spent his last 10 years and the story goes that someone poisoned him. General Zhang Xiangwu, a senior disciple of Li Shuwen and Liu Yunqiao, Li Shuwen's disciple set out to find the assassins but never were successful.

Again don't get too crazy over these stories - Li Shuwen supposedly had a lot of nervous energy and would often chew on chicken bones etc. However, he was associated with the warlords and the military and there were numerous factions so it should come as no surprise that potential assassins were a reasonable explanation for his paranoia. However, I don't think he ran around randomly killing people but if challenged, for him, victory was simply established by killing the opponent.

Sociopath well, lack of empathy, emotional regard for opponents yeah, probably so and he was no Daoist/Buddhist calligraphy loving guy and an interesting contrast to his last student Liu Yunqiao, who was well educated and was a very skilled calligrapher.

I also do not think he was someone to emulated.

Here is an interesting story for someone else to verify or falsify. When the Zheng Manqing arrived members of the party and military was there to greet him and others. Zheng Manqing was associated with Jiang Jieshi's wife (art I believe). Liu Yunqiao went to greet Zheng Manqing and Zheng Manqing completely ignored him - It's also interesting that Robert Smith, being in the CIA, never wrote anything about Liu Yunqiao or bajiquan/pigua zhang even though this is what was taught to Jiang Jieshi's Palace Guards.

Someone may have thoughts about this to share regardless of the interpretation

[everything]

one man

One thing about primates is monkey see monkey do.

Neanderthals had larger brains than sapiens.

Nobody knows why or if they therefore have some intelligence sapiens didn’t have.

Perhaps we learned some fighting from them.

Then (although modern sapiens have some Neanderthal DNA) maybe we killed them.

Whatever it was, fighting wasn’t even invented by Homo sapiens.

[D_Glenn]

Bob, you were one of the ‘some people’

One of the stories I heard was that Li Shuwen and his friend were at a restaurant he liked to go to. Someone recognized him and came up to challenge him. Li just kept eating and didn’t acknowledge him. His friend intervened and was trying to convince this guy that under no circumstances would he ever want to challenge Li. He pleaded with him to give up and go away. But he kept insisting. Okay if then if you really want to then. Do it. Without saying a word. Li jumped up and using his Pi strike, crushed his forearm through collarbone and most of ribs on his left side and then pulled his hand out and they left. Li was more upset about the fact that he could never go to his favorite restaurant again.

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[Bob]

Heard something similar - Li Shuwen would often exit through the restaurant window after finishing a meal so as to avoid a sneak attack

I try to avoid making him larger than life LOL

[D_Glenn]

Now that I think about it, I just realized why he told me that story. At a seminar, Kurt actually came up to me because he saw that I could FaLi. He helped translate some of the stuff that Dr. Xie was trying to tell me, but he said that Dr. Xie used a lot of old terminology and he could only understand about 70% of what he was saying, and roughly 90% of what Jinbao was saying. Later on, throughout the rest of the seminar is when I learned what Bajiquan was. And one of the things that he was emphasizing to me is that all his life, he thought the stories of great Gong Fu masters was just a myth. But after seeing Dr. Xie and Jinbao, that he realized it was all true. And that he felt like he’d been lied to. And now he was too old to start over. Him telling me the story about Li Shuwen was because now he realized that the sort of power that could break through multiple rib bones, actually does exist. I had already dedicated my life to studying ysb. But he solidified that decision because he told me I will never find anyone better.

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[Bob]

Kurt Wong and his students are a great bunch of people - they came to our tournaments and I always liked them.

To me Liu Yunqiao was a real treasure of knowledge - I once saw the notes that my teacher had of Liu's bagua - he had mapped all of his bagua onto the Yi Jing

I was particularly interested in his Yang style taji and sword which he got from Zhang Xiangwu but I also fell in love with his Liuhe tanglang

[twocircles13]

Two Circles, I met Kurt Wong, a wutan baji teacher in Canada. He was telling me stories about Li Shuwen. Some think he was a sociopath. And he did have handlers, so to speak, who escorted him around the towns. So it might be a case, where students know he’s a sociopath, but he’s really good at martial arts, so they want to extract all of his teachings. And ignoring incidents where he kills people for essentially no reason, other than to test him, and then hide him from the authorities.

Have you heard stories of Li Shuwen?

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If there were Li Shuwen stories, I do not remember them. My Wutan teachers, while I think they would not misrepresent the truth, would not have said anything to dishonor the art's progenitors. Stories like these would have been told only in confidence behind closed doors. Of course, when you exited, you were to forget all that you heard.

[twocircles13]

Bob, you were one of the ‘some people’

One of the stories I heard was that Li Shuwen and his friend were at a restaurant he liked to go to. Someone recognized him and came up to challenge him. Li just kept eating and didn’t acknowledge him. His friend intervened and was trying to convince this guy that under no circumstances would he ever want to challenge Li. He pleaded with him to give up and go away. But he kept insisting. Okay if then if you really want to then. Do it. Without saying a word. Li jumped up and using his Pi strike, crushed his forearm through collarbone and most of ribs on his left side and then pulled his hand out and they left. Li was more upset about the fact that he could never go to his favorite restaurant again.

There are places in the world today, such as parts of Indonesia and many other places, where a challenge is likely to get you killed. Shoot your mouth off or display too much bravado and someone will walk up and stick a knife in your chest.

China used to be one of those places.

[Bob]

One would not even have to go to Indonesia to find that type of behavior.

Road rage is all around these days - a significant number of martial artists I know pack a gun with them just about every where they go - doesn't take much to set things off. The consequences are horrible.

[twocircles13]

One would not even have to go to Indonesia to find that type of behavior.

Road rage is all around these days - a significant number of martial artists I know pack a gun with them just about every where they go - doesn't take much to set things off. The consequences are horrible.

Yeah, I mentioned Indonesia just because there is an active MA community there, if the attacker is part of the right group no-one will know or have seen anything. But, you are right, there are a lot of unsafe places all around us these days.

[D_Glenn]

I don’t think stories about Li Shuwen are disrespectful at all.
***
Here about a month ago, two Tesla drivers got into a squabble over a single Tesla charging station. One guy shot the other guy and killed him. Then drove to a police station and turned himself in.

***
Beijing still has a triad problem. I mentioned in another thread that they use Nailing elbow so my teacher has a some defensive strategies. There’s actually still a challenge fight system in place. That might be disappearing though. Jinbao retired his open challenge to anyone, several years back.


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[Bob]

Sometimes I don't write as clear as I want to - although if true, I would not personally condone Li Shuwen's behavior but it does not seem to out of line for that time period - bagua journal had an article written about General Zhang Xiangwu "skin scraper" and how he dealt with opium dealers yet they supposedly paid Gong Baotian with opium for undertaking Liu's bagua training.

There were a lot of cruel things occurring during that time just as there are now and even if the Li Shuwen stories are true I don't think it was exceptional for that era.

What I personally do is to try to avoid falling into the trap of hero worshipping and that might be because I'm one of "old ones" now LOL

In my younger days I felt differently and was fascinated by the power and the "invincibility syndrome" of the martial arts. LOL

[GrahamB]

Thanks - it was interesting to dive into Bajiquan for a bit, there's a lot of depth there

I finally made time to listen to both of these podcasts.

Well done on both counts.

I’ve not had a lot of exposure to Bajiquan outside of my own tradition, so it was nice to hear the perspective of Miika and Rikard. Everything that was said was right inline with what I was taught by my Wutan teachers. It was a fun renewal of the art for me.

I thought the second interview was with Rikard and Miika again, until I started looking for it and was directed to the Heretics podcasts.

I have to say that this was my favorite Heretics podcast. I thought you both were spot on with your observations and information.

I loved your discussion of the origins of Bajiquan. I don’t remember the exact wording. I’ll have to go find it. But, we should treat the origins of all martial arts that way. With very few, mostly modern, exceptions, no one man created a martial art, and those that did stood on the shoulders of giants.

The only thing that I was taught concerning the origins was that Bajiquan was likely Baziquan and staff (巴子拳棍) mentioned as being famous in his day by Qi Jiguang in his 1560 manual.

Damon also mentioned the Hui people. It’s not a popular view today, but I think there is evidence the influence of the Hui was a catalyst that invigorated CMA in the Ming Dynasty and may have given birth to CIMA. The Khans of the Yuan Dynasty imported conquered educated of Indo-Persian lands and others as engineers, scholars, and even elite soldiers. With the collapse of Yuan, for the most part, the Ming Dynasty embraced these peoples. Many were integrated into Chinese society and others maintained an Islamic (Hui) community.

Their influence on weaponry is blatant. The talwar had a strong influence on dao development. Middle Eastern bows and archery revolutionized both Mongolian then Chinese archery. Chinese military strategy was forever changed. But, these were evolutions of technologies of cultures that dated back to the Parthians and ancient Scythians.

I’m a bit of a heretic myself, I guess.

Thanks, I don't know enough about Chinese history to say comment, but it sounds reasonable.

[Appledog]

And one of the things that he was emphasizing to me is that all his life, he thought the stories of great Gong Fu masters was just a myth. But after seeing Dr. Xie and Jinbao, that he realized it was all true. And that he felt like he’d been lied to. And now he was too old to start over. Him telling me the story about Li Shuwen was because now he realized that the sort of power that could break through multiple rib bones, actually does exist. I had already dedicated my life to studying ysb. But he solidified that decision because he told me I will never find anyone better.

Just for clarification, what's YSB? Secondly, do you think he was (actually) lied to, or is this just one of those things (ex. in our day and age...)

[GrahamB]

Yin style bagua