Talk:Muslim Chinese martial arts

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Contents 1 Neutrality 2 Significance of Muslim Faith 3 Missing Citations 4 Mistakes 5 Terminology problem

[edit] Neutrality

I like this page a lot! That having been said, it needs some major work. Wikipedia articles are supposed to be written with NPOV, but this page is full of references to the supposed superiority of Muslim martial arts. For instance:

“The Chinese Muslim practioners were so adept at their martial arts, and their styles such as Pu Yi and Bajiquan, were so renowned, that they formed the backbone of the bodyguards of the Chinese Emperors.”

You could instead say, “Many Chinese Muslim practitioners of Pu Yi and Bajiquan were chosen to serve as bodyguards to the Chinese Emperors”. See the difference? Less glorification, same facts.

Plus, there are plenty of weasel words. (!Mi luchador nombre es amoladora de la carne y traigo el dolor! 22:42, 13 November 2006 (UTC))

I changed it today, but the page is still full of POV statements. (Ghostexorcist 07:13, 22 February 2007 (UTC))

Li Shuwen was a Muslim. However there is no documentation that Huo Diange bodyguard to Pu Yi (the last emperor of China), Li Chenwu bodyguard to Mao Zedong and Liu Yunqiao were Muslims, from what I understand they were merely students of Li Shuwen, unless the fact that their teacher was Muslim made them Muslim as well. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ghostridingwhips (talk • contribs) 08:16, 23 February 2007 (UTC).

This section is wrong in fact. The Fisrt Grade Body guards of Qing Emperors were mostly selected from within Shan Pu Ying, and they must be registered within a Banner. There were Han and Hui First Grade bodyguards, but they all registered under a Banner and hence considered as Bannerman. Other First Grade Bodyguards were selected from those who passed Wu Ke Keju (Martial Subject Imperial Examination).

As for the Li Shuwen and his students, they were all Han. We do not considered Liu He Meng or Ba Ji Meng as a Hui styles, as the styles were practised by all ethno-lingual group. We consider Li He Quan more a style from the city of Cangzhou, whereas Baji a style from the south-east side of the Cangzhou County. The most famous Li He Quan masters in last century was Tong Zhongyi, a Manchu from Cangzhou who was famous for Shuaijiao and was head of Shaolin Department in the national Zhongyang Guoshu Guang (Central Martial Academy). He was also known as The King of Shuaijiao. Li He Meng has its origin from Shaolin and hence Tong was named the head of Shaolin Department.

Karolus 2008-01-10 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.190.32.7 (talk) 15:48, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Significance of Muslim Faith

Having a Muslim founder does not make the muslim faith significant in the martial art - if there were principles of the martial art that could be directly attributed to an element of the faith then this page would be significant - or if an art was practiced exclusively by Muslims. Much of this information is already included in the various martial arts articles that already exist - and you could equally claim relevance of a page "Taoist Chinese martial arts" including most of these arts, or even "Martial arts of uncertain origin" though that article would be particularly large. Unless these points can be addressed I shall suggest this as a candidate for deletion. -- Medains 09:23, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

well since most of these martial arts where developed as a response to qing persecution of muslims, then you could be quite certain that the muslim sense of identiy had everything to do with it.81.179.97.172 23:56, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Hard to argue that Tongbai is a Muslim art. The name means white ape, and was practiced by iron monger families with Daoist affiliation.

How could anyone verifiy the creator of Tantui. I've heard claims that it was created by a Sung Emperor. It is very wide spread, did an army use it for basic training?

I've never heard that Tantui was created by Song Taizu. Wikipedia does have an article for Tantui, please read that for more details. However, I cannot speak for its verifiability. I've heard some people say that kicking arts could be used to kick people off of horses, but they would have been useless when wearing heavy armor. Just like kicking and punching on the ground would be nullified by the armor. --Ghostexorcist 20:30, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

The liuhe xingyi, baji, and pigua parts of the article are the strongest, everything else meanders off the subject.

[edit] Missing Citations

I tagged the page as missing citations because most of the material is uncited. Only a handful of citations are given for 90% of the page. The majority of the citations were put on the page by myself when I corrected and expanded the section on Xingyi.

I also deleted a large portion of the incorrectly cited references. I deleted them because of the following:

1. No author given
2. No url link
3. No periodical name/volume number
4. No ISBN

This is just a generalization. Since they were incorrectly cited, I couldn't tell if they were from a book, magazine or internet site. I could tell a couple were from the internet, but the link was never given. In conclusion, a person can't look the info up to verify the references. Bad citations are just like no citations at all. Please fix these before putting them back up.(Ghostexorcist 07:13, 22 February 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Mistakes

Just a quick look - lots of mistakes here. Very one-sided (all bodyguards were students of Liu Yunqiao?), and some large mistakes (for example, xinyiliuhequan IS Henan xingyi; also, liuhequan is NOT xinyiliuhequan; piguazhang is usually called piguaquan, etc)...

Much of the text is also very one-sided from the point of view of Liu Yunqiao's bajiquan.

Edededed 08:26, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I've seen the numerous mistakes and "one-sided" point of view that you speak of. That's why I put up the neutrality tag. From what I've seen, with the exceptions of corrections and later additions from other editors, the entire article was ripped from Muslim Wikipedia (or whatever it's called). (Ghostexorcist 10:00, 26 February 2007 (UTC))

I second that opinion. I'm not an expert on the subject matter by any means however much of the "article" in question appears very suspect as if the original author of the Muslimwikipedia "article", which this page is more or less a mirror off, was merely constructed out of various links he/she found off of the internet. Reading further I propose that the "Tongbeiquan" section be removed entirely as it meanders away from the original topic, the author mentions of a Muslim fellow by the name of Ma Menta who teaches this form, however that is the only significance of Tongbeiquan and Islam, that there is a teacher of Tongbeiquan who is Muslim. There is no documentation that Tongbeiquan was founded by Muslims. That is just like as if someone were to make a statement such as "there is a teacher of that form who is a Christian, therefore it is a Christian martial arts form". Now that would be bloody ridiculous, would it not?

Also of note is the Xingyi section, it is merely repeating what is essentially found in the Liuhequan section, that Liuhequan is a form of Xingyi, I also propose removing this section as the information was already stated earlier making it redundant. Another section I would like to bring up is the section on "Chāquán", I have looked on its page and it is pronounced "Zhāquán", perhaps this should be moved to "Zhāquán"? Again, I'm not one of the experts on the subject matter, and I believe that you two gentlemen perhaps have more of an expertise with the subject matter, so do go ahead and revamp this article up to standard! Watch out though when you're deleting the false information, user:7day for some reason is rather stubborn with any editting of this article and has been known to childish revert in the past. Cheers!

In Chinese, Cha and Zha are the same thing. It is just a difference in spelling between Wade-Giles (Cha) and Pinyin (Zha). (See here for more details) If anything, the Liuhe section should merged with the Xingyi section. Xingyi and Xinyi Liuhe have the same origins. Xinyi Liu He is "Henan style" Xingyi.(Ghostexorcist 01:30, 27 February 2007 (UTC))

Thank you for the link, I did a little search myself and came across this on wiktionary: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%9F%A5, this character "查" is transliterated as chá (cha2) and zhā (zha1) in pinyin and ch'a2 and cha1 in Wade-Giles, I did not see a pinyin transliteration as "chā" that is why I brought up the spelling issue with you. Just a quick little observation I have made, Tongbeiquan from what I have read was developed in the Song Dynasty although the article is quite misleading in implying that the style was developed by a Muslim family after the Communist takeover of China in 1949. cheers! Ghostridingwhipz

The "查" character can be pronounced as both Cha and Zha (using pinyin); however, many practitioners of the style insist that the correct pronunciation is Zhaquan, not Chaquan. On the other hand, it is a fact that many people do pronounce it as "Chaquan," anyway... Also, although most of these styles are not exclusively practiced by Hui anymore, there are still many notable Hui practitioners for them, like: Ma Xianda, Ma Mingda (probably the real spelling of "Ma Menta" above), Mai Xishan, etc... I am also not sure, but I think that Baiyuan Tongbeiquan, Shuaijiao, and other styles may have a Hui connection, but I will have to check on it... A bit unwilling to make big edits if someone (i.e. user:7day) is making random reverts for no apparent reasons, though... Edededed 06:38, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, edited some things on the page. I want to delete most of the baji and tongbei sections (the first 3/4 or so for each), but is that okay with you guys? I also think the xingyi section should go (completely). (Also, I deleted a note about Zhamir not being pinyin; that is technically true, but basically Zhamier is being truncated to Zhamir (and I think that's okay, like nali (哪裏) vs. nar (哪兒)).) Edededed 05:00, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't mind if you delete all of that stuff. One problem I do have is your addition of Chinese characters in the sub-header for each style. The Chinese Manual of Style says that the Chinese characters are not to be given if they appear on the subject’s main article. (See the header box at the top of the talk page for more details) Most of these have adjoining main articles, so this is unnecessary. This needs to be fixed. Other than that, the rest of it looks great. (Ghostexorcist 05:12, 28 February 2007 (UTC))

Well I do not mind the deletion of information that can not be verified. As for the section on Xingyi, I do not mind its deletion. cheers! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.244.187.43 (talk) 06:42, 28 February 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Terminology problem

"Muslim" is a person. The adjective is "Islamic". 88.212.120.232 16:40, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

"Islamic" denotes relation to theological and textual aspects of the faith, "Muslim" denotes relation to followers of Islam. These forms of martial arts were created by followers of Islam, but don't relate to Islamic theology.--Kitrus 06:16, 20 June 2007 (UTC)