Talk:Baguazhang

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This is a very narrow view (only Xie Peiqi's version). The translations 'Pakua Hand Movements' and 'Pakua Circular Dance' are also pretty strange.

Also, should this be Bagua? Bagua zhang? Baguazhang? How do we separate this?

Finally, dragons, phoenixes, and especially unicorns seem out of place here. While 'dragon' and 'phoenix' are often (mis)translated from 'long' and 'fenghuang,' unicorn is not often used as a translation of qilin (kirin) anymore. Edededed 06:53, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I agree, some of those alternate translations just seem confusing to me.
I prefer the spelling "Baguazhang" instead of "Bagua zhang", as I believe this is the most correct Pinyin form, and according to Google, this also seems to be the most popular of the two. Just "Bagua" could be confusing as that could also refer to the theory of the eight trigrams itself (as described in I Ching). I think, however that all the others should redirect to the same place.
I don't know enough about the style to comment on the animal translations, but I have never heard of the unicorn in any other Chinese martial arts. Feel free to change this if you have time, and it would be great if the animal names in Chinese and Pinyin could be included too.
-Wintran 18:00, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Yes, this is the Xie Peiqi version mainly. I understand other bagua systems do not contain all of these eight animals. I think it could be wise to mention those "wrong" translations of the animal names, since people use them, and point out that it is not so correct. Since the page long only contains other meanings of the word, I'll point the link back to Chinese dragon. Don't think the link to Snake kung fu has much to do with the snake in bagua? Habj 02:01, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I made some corrections/deletions today, mainly:

1. Yin style is not the only style that has large weapons 2. Guo Yunshen did NOT practice Baguazhang, so I deleted that paragraph 3. Toned down the writing a bit to make it sound more serious (i.e., 'ridiculously large', etc. expressions changed, discussion board mention deleted, etc.)

Sorry, I didn't log in, but it was me... Edededed 02:48, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)


Nice article, folks! Just wanted to drop a note and put my name on that anonymous edit, which I made before getting a username. Apologies if I stepped on any toes, as I'm new here; not quite sure what the ettiquette on prose style editing is, but from the articles I've read I've gotten the impression it's "jump right in" so I did. I tried to stick to rephrasing the prose and avoid changing the content much, being a wikipedia newbie and only a bagua dabbler... jes37226 12:00, 28 Sep 2004

The rephrasing is an improvement, thanks. Welcome to Wikipedia. Fire Star 14:03, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

How technical should this article be? For example, I could say that Crossing from Hsing I is closely related to the Single Palm Change in Ba Gua, but would that be too technical?

Pess

Contents

[edit] Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_martial_art add yourself!

Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_martial_art

[edit] This is quite different from what I'm learning...

Well, my subject says it all, really. I am certainly no expert, but what I read here seems quite different from what I've been taught.

I'd like to provide a couple of links for your viewing pleasure:
Pa-Kua International
Pa-Kua USA
Pa-Kua Arizona (This is specifically where I'm training.. and I also maintain the webpage, so if you see any errors, please let me know!)

I'm not going to do any editing of this topic, because I don't want to do any toe stepping, and it sounds like these are simply different lineages with different stories of how it was passed down, and obviously very different modern day styles.

I think I am in part guilty to the bias in the article, since I early on added external links to Xie Peiqi Yin Style pages. Later I noticed lots of info kept coming from those pages to the article. Currently I actually don't know how large part of the article is Xie Peiqi Yin Style... but the eight animal thing is specific to him, right? The problem is, so few people have an overall picture of all variants of bagua! and when ten people of different lineages writes bits here and there, the result is often disastrous. Take a look at karate for example. Lots of people have written "facts" about karate that are true onely in their styles or schools, later corrected to "in some schools" leaving the article as a mess of "in some karate styles" etc.
I do think though that it would be valuable if you tried to add your version. Then we can hopefully merge it in some way. It is not so easy to clean it up, but we could try... /Habj 23:25, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm a member of Pa Kua International, but we consider Pa Kua to be a more complete martial art than Pa Kua Chuan.. I, however, am not familiar enough with Chuan to say with great accuracy that the difference would be. Oh, and to my knowledge, in China, the Pa Kua martial art(Pa Kua is the correct spelling; bagua is a phonetic equivelent. Like Peking and Beijing) regarded as somewhat mysterious.--Vercalos 08:17, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Baguazhang is the correct spelling, as per Pinyin romanization; Wade-Giles romanization spells the same thing Pa-Kua-Chang. Neither will produce the correct sounds when given to a typical English speaker to read without teaching them the respective romanization. Bagua = Pa-Kua = 八卦. The Zhang/Chang (掌) or Quan/Ch'uan (拳) at the end of the name signifies that it is a martial art; without that suffix, Bagua/Pakua is a name of a certain philosophical idea (see the respective article) and not the name of a separate martial art. However, English-speakers often feel that Zhang or Quan makes the word too long, and thus chop it off - thus we have "Tai-Chi" and so forth, when the original word is Taijiquan/Tai-Chi-Ch'uan.
The difference in spelling in Peking and Beijing is more complex; Beijing is Pinyin; Pei-Ching is Wade-Giles. Hundreds of years ago, however, they really called the capital something like "Peking" or "Beiking" - thus the old name. However, pronunciations change, and thus we have the new spelling and the new name.

Edededed 03:09, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Orphan paragraph

About 1796: Shang ch’uan, or "Turning Palms," is created in Anwei Province, perhaps by a man named Tung Meng-lin. Although often said to be a Taoist movement art, shang ch’uan was widely practiced by Chinese Muslims during the 1850s. It gained its modern name of pa kua ch’uan, or "Eight Trigrams Palms," during the 1870s. A boxer from Hopei Province named Tung Hai-ch’uan may have been responsible for the latter name change. (He was not Muslim, but Taoist.) Be that as it may, the pa kua ch’uan practiced by the White Lotus rebel Wang Lun in Shantung Province from 1751 to 1774 is an unrelated martial art.[1]

This, while interesting, has some problems. For starters, ch'uan or quan means fist, not palm. It has good info, but needs to be edited into the article more harmoniously. Fire Star 20:37, 23 May 2005 (UTC)


Bagua was developed by Dong Haichuan (董海川) in the early 19th century, who apparently learnt from Taoist and Buddhist masters in the mountains of rural China. There is evidence to suggest a synthesis of several pre-existing martial arts taught and practiced in the region he lived in, combined with Taoist circle walking.
Perhaps the orphan paragraph could be edited in right about here?
Dong Haichuan taught for many years in Beijing, eventually earning patronage by the Imperial court. Famous disciples of Dong to become teachers were Yin Fu (尹福), Cheng Tinghua (程廷華), Song Changrong (宋長榮), Liu Fengchun (劉鳳春) and Ma Weiqi (馬維棋). Although they were all students of the same teacher, their methods of training and expressions of palm techniques differed. The Cheng and Liu styles are said to specialize in "Pushing" the palms, Yin style is known for "Threading" the palms, Song's followers practice "Plum Flower" (梅花 Mei Hua) palm technique and Ma style palms are known as "Hammers." Some of Dong Haichuan's students, including Cheng Tinghua (who was killed), participated in the Boxer Rebellion.
Comments? Fire Star 21:16, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Requested move

Typically transliterated as a single word using standard pinyin transliteration system

Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~
  • Support I've seen the transliterations "Baguazhang," "Pa Kua Chang" and even "Ba Gua Chang," but I've never seen "Bagua zhang."JFD 18:32, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. I have been in the martial arts for many years, and haven't seen this idiosyncratic division anywhere else, either. I much prefer Baguazhang. Fire Star 20:16, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Support While there might be other opinions for Southern arts (where Cantonese is the way of things), Baguazhang is also centered in Beijing - to that note, we might as well write up the others to follow suit, i.e. Taijiquan, Xingyiquan, etc. Edededed 00:58, 30 August 2005 (UTC)
I think Xingyiquan has been. Since so much of the Western literature on T'ai Chi uses Wade-Giles I'd prefer to keep the W-G, but we've ended up with the broken down Tai Chi Chuan, for some reason. Fire Star 01:34, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

This article has been renamed after the result of a move request. Dragons flight 19:37, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Add any additional comments

I hope this comment will show up in the appropriate place -- I'm not quite familiar with the Wikipedia system.

In any case, I seem to be running into either a display or detail issue with how the table with the eight trigrams is showing up; while the trigram names match the "animal" forms (qian trigram corresponds to lion form, kan to snake and so on), the trigram images appearing -- at least on my browser (Firefox 1.0) -- do not match either the trigram names or the associated forms. The equivalent tablee on the Bagua_(concept) page does not seem to have this problem, so I doubt that my browser is the issue here.

[edit] Removing Biases

The "title" column in the Table is somewhat biased in that not all (and probably only one) systems of Baguazhang use these forces/movements as each of the trigrams. The animals themselves, however, are not biased, in that the animals are already defined in terms of Bagua philosophy, even though they are not used to name forms or movements in each baguazhang style (however, more than one style makes use of them, including Xie Peiqi's version, Sun Lutang's version, and others). In a rut, I think that perhaps this column should be either removed or removed and moved to another section of the article to either more generalize this article, or if everyone wants to make it more specific, add sections for each baguazhang style with specifics included in those sections.

Edededed 05:31, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Associated correct Yi Jing trigram with each Bāguà

In the table of Yi Jing trigrams, I associated the correct Yi Jing trigram with each Bāguà. Refer to [Yi Jing]. CraigLeger 15:15, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

On this point; the Yijing is actually not considered by most modern Sinologists to be a "Daoist" text (I'll find evidence of this, naturally - but when I learnt Chinese, my Chinese civilisation lecturer made a point of calling the Yijing a Confucian text, rather than a Daoist one). Of course, it predates both Daoism and Confucianism, but it is most often considered to have semi-Confucian overtones. In any case, it is never defined, when one is talking of so-called "Daoist" martial arts, what kind of Daoism they are supposed to reflect - philosophical Daoism never seems to be part of it, and it is only the religious/degenerate Daoism that is supposed to be represented in Baguazhang/Xingyiquan/Taijiquan. I think we have to bear in mind that the founders of these styles were illiterate, and since Daojia Daoism (philosophical Daoism) is associated with the intelligentsia, it is only to be expected that the martial artists would base any philosophical/scientific foundation on the populist forms of Chinese religion. Actually, most martial philosophy and science strikes me as reasonably Neo-Confucian (Lixue). It is important, I think, not to isolate martial arts in China from Chinese culture, which is something that happens too often; if martial artists bandy around the terms "Daoist", "Buddhist", "Confucian", "Yijing" etc, without proper definition as accepted by most sinologists, then martial arts might not be seen as the dignified representations of Chinese culture that they are.Blackjamm 11:00, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Selecting Links

We should probably cull the links that are on the page - I think that only links that provide a good source of historical and/or technical information about baguazhang should be included; perhaps it would be good to leave only those sites that are considered good, accurate sources by the majority of practitioners as well.

Edededed 05:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

IMO I found that only one or two of the links seemed to offer any real content. The rest of the websites seem to promote their own schools, and I think a bias should be avoided. (If there is a really good source on a particular school's website, could we link to the particular article and not the main site?) Perhaps I'm somewhat stubborn, but I think we should go down to 1-3 links for the time being.
Agree. Remove all links that have only commercial value. Only link to pages that really add value to subject. If major information is found in a link, consider adding the essence of that to the article and remove link. JohJak2 11:38, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] References in fiction?

I can think of two references in fiction to the martial art off the top of my head; The One, the good Jet Li uses Pa Kua, while the evil one uses Hsing Yi, and Avatar, the Last Airbender, as Airbender movements are based on Pa Kua.--Vercalos 06:40, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I can't think of the name of it for the life of me, but wasn't there briefly a show on the WB some years back about a guy who taught Baguazhang to inner-city youth?--MythicFox 11:43, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I remember that show. It was one of those show where they cast 30-year-olds as teenagers...just like every other show on the WB.
JFD 13:05, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Found it.
JFD 13:29, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] External Links

Please do not include links to schools, excepting those that can be qualified as an unbiased resource for general practitioners of the art. Neither the Tai Chi nor Xinyiquan articles have such a slew of personal sites. I can only attribute this to the general lack of information about Bagua in America and Europe, but it doesnt exempt this article from rules governing Wikipedia External Links. Thank you VanTucky 21:42, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with Baguazhang in pop culture Section

I am writing to contest the entry of:

• In the video game Dead or alive, the character Helena uses Baguazhang.

As well as:

• In the video game Tekken 3, the character Ling Xiaoyu uses Baguazhang.

A brief lookup in the manuals or even the offical sites for the games on the web Helena's style has always been called "Pi Qua Quan". Ling Xiaoyu's, the exact wording is "Hakke Ken, Hike Ken & Various Chinese Martial Arts" They have never been described by the games creator's as having Baguazhang style of fighting.

I feel that these entries and related links need to be removed as they are not correct, as for the others I don't know but perhaps they need checked as well.

Unless I am missing something that their styles are related or were once mentioned being Baguazhang style. Altherix 20:48, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

i'm removing the mention of Helena and Ling XiaoYu as using baguazhang. Thanks. Xah Lee 12:21, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, I checked the Japanese site (http://www.tekken-official.jp/tkdrpsp/character/xiaoyu.html) and it says that Xiaoyu practices "Piguaquan, Baguazhang, and other Chinese martial arts." (Also note that Pi Qua Quan is a misspelling of Piguaquan, as "qua" is simply not standard romanization of Chinese (yes, Helena practices Piguaquan).)

Edededed 14:40, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Naming of the article

should the article be named Bāguàzhǎng or without the accent marks Baguazhang? this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(Chinese) doesn't seem to be clear on the issue. Xah Lee 12:21, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Geographical Distribution Paragraph

Regarding Tanemura Shoto:

What is this "grandmaster" nonsense? Also, as it is highly unlikely that a student's teacher AND his teacher's teacher will both grant discipleship to him, so perhaps sources would be nice? (I.e. Sato Kinbei AND Li Ziming (not "Li Zu Ming") cannot both take Tanemura as a disciple.)

Also, as Tanemura seems to be either teaching only ninjutsu and not baguazhang or at least ninjutsu as his main specialty, mentioning him seems hardly relevant in regard to the main distribution of baguazhang practitioners. (Also note that the paragraph relates to geographical distribution of baguazhang in China.)

The blurb about He Kecai (Ho Ho Choy) also seems rather long compared to the short phrases given to most lineages; seems a bit strange to give a large blurb for everybody (should we also add one for Sun Lutang, Gong Baotian, etc.?). These should probably be added to their respective pages instead.

Edededed 14:54, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

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