"Baguazhang was originally called chuanzhang [Zhuǎnzhǎng, 轉掌]. When I was a child, I had opportunity to meet Cheng Tinghua. I remember that he was like a dragon flying in air, his changes in movement were innumerable and unpredictable. It is difficult to reach this level. If you think about Dong Haichuan, it is difficult to imagine his skill. Liu Fengchun is my good friend. His basics are deep, b[ut] he lacks higher achievement. But those who practice 64 palm methods and 72 kicks are far behind him. I hope that baguazhang practitioners will concentrate on studying double and single palm change, focus on experiencing each movement, working hard and studying theory. If they do this for long time, many can approach essence."
-Wáng Xiāngzhāi (founder of Yiquan), “Essence of Combat Science”1
Part 2: Comparison of the Old Three Palms - The Core of Cheng-Style Baguazhang
Lǎo Sān Zhǎng 老三掌
The three common components of all the branches of Cheng Baguazhang are the Single Exchange Palm, Double Exchange Palm and the Smooth Posture Palm. It has been written that both Dong Haichuan and his student, Cheng Tinghua2, taught only three palm changes: the Single Exchange Palm, the Double Exchange Palm and the Smooth Posture Palm. Indeed, in an interview with Jarek Szymanski in 2001, Liu Jingru said that the Cheng-style Baguazhang originally had only these three palm changes, called Lao San Zhang (Old Three Palms)3. And in his second volume of work on the Cheng Baguazhang of Beijing’s South District, Zhang Jie also points out that the fundamentals of Cheng Baguazhang are these three palm changes.
While all of the different schools of Cheng-style Baguazhang vary in their presentation of the Eight Palms form, these three palm changes are universally represented. The Lao San Zhang might be compared to Wang Xiangzhai’s various combat stances in his Yiquan (AKA Dachengquan): they form the intentional basis of all improvisational fighting techniques and help to strengthen instinct. And while they differ slightly in their executions of Lao San Zhang, the differences between the schools are minor and stylistic. However, the differences are worthy of attention and exploration.
Besides these “Old Three Palm” changes, the old masters also taught, in common, circle walking and possibly Rou Shou, the Baguazhang-version of push hands. In terms of the Eight Palms form, the typical explanation is that all five other palm changes are expansions on those three basic palm changes. It appears that those expansions had become personal expressions of wrestling applications learned from Cheng Tinghua. Hence, the vast differences among them. We will explore those differences in the next part. For now, let us compare the expressions of the many branches of Cheng Tinghua's Lao San Zhang.
Single Exchange Palm 單換掌
The characters for this movement literally mean big or single (單, Dān) exchange (換, Huàn) palm (掌, Zhǎng). It is the most basic palm change - the core martial movement of Baguazhang found among not only all branches of Cheng-style, but across all styles of Baguazhang. The basic purpose of the move is to respond to an attack and switch the guard hand and direction of walking. The simplicity of the Single Exchange Palm provides broad interpretation for martial applications, including several palm strikes, joint locks, and take-downs, with or without sweep kicks.
In terms of the Single Exchange Palm of Cheng Tinghua, there is some slight variance. That of Sun Zhijun and Liu Jingru are nearly identical, with only one difference: Sun Zhijun performs the opening move, “Raise the Clothes,” in a low “prone” stance or half-squat stance whereas Liu Jingru performs it in a high ready stance.
Li Tianji’s students perform it similar to Liu Jingru. But other inheritors of Sun Lutang’s school, like Liang Shouyu and Ji Jiancheng, begin with an upward sweeping “Lion Palm”4,5, and lack an articulate “Raise the Clothes” maneuver. All the Sun-style practitioners’ Single Exchange Palm ends with Sun Lutang’s trademark xingyiquan influence of rise, drill, overturn, settle.
Luo Dexiu of the Gao school also performs the Single Exchange Palm similarly to that of Liu Jingru. However, the cover move with the guard hand is far more subtle. Also, rather than closing tightly with the "Hide the Flower Under the Leaves" movement, the closing is looser, more like "Holding Qi Ball" from Yang-style Taijiquan. The ending outward thrust begins with the rear hand, then the lower palm finds itself under the armpit, as in "Hide the Flower," finally exchanging guard hands with the centrifugal turn.
Like Luo Dexiu and the Gao school in general, Zhang Jie separates the Single Exchange Palm (SEP) from the rest of the eight palms form. Additionally, he provides a deeper exploration of the SEP. In his first volume of work, he illustrates that this palm change is really more of a principle than a specific sequence of movements. In fact, he demonstrates eight variations of the SEP. Some of the variations reflect the variations described above. In any case, the SEP provides the core movement to all Baguazhang fighting techniques.
Double Exchange Palm 雙換掌
The meaning of the characters are also quite literal, providing “double (雙, Shuāng = “two birds in the hand”) exchange palm.” The purpose of the Double Exchange Palm is to add even more possibility through a series of movements added to the Single Exchange Palm. These movements theoretically are responses to two attackers or, at least, two attacks. Indeed there are two changes.
The Double Exchange Palm varies only a little more than SEP among the branches. After the initial SEP opening block, all branches begin some version of the “Point to Heaven, Dig the Earth.” The way that I learned this move from Wu Wen-Ching was to bend the upper elbow at a 90-degree angle, thereby making the “Point to Heaven” arm a solid inward block. Otherwise, all the branches seem to have a very similar execution of the move in which the “Point to Heaven” arm reaches nearly straight upward.
The next move is where things begin to diverge. Sun Zhijun, Liang Shouyu, Li Tianji all perform slightly varied versions of “White Snake Hides in the Grass,” while Liu Jingru uses “Swallow Skims the Water” to continue the second change. Sun Zhijun articulates a transition from half-squat stance to a bow stance before closing the DEP. Liu Jingru follows the half-squat stance directly with the close. Both close with “Ride the Horse and Grasp Freely.” Neither Liang or Li of the Sun Lutang tradition go into the half-squat. Rather they open the “White Snake Hides in the Grass” as a half-horse or bow stance.
Luo Dexiu, from the school of Gao Yisheng, performs Double Exchange Palm in essentially the same way as the others with stronger twisting movements from left to right and vice versa for all the movement transitions. However, the Gao tradition has named the palm change 龍形穿手掌 or “Dragon Shape Boring Hand Palm.” Like most of the other traditions, he follows the “Point to Heaven, Dig the Earth” position with a combination of "Swallow Skims the Water" and “White Snake Hides in the Grass" where the lower hand pierces down along the outstretched leg and the upper hand sweeps in a large circular motion with a deep forward bend.
Smooth Posture Palm 順勢掌
There are a few different translations of this concept. Some translate it as “Follow Through Palm.” Others as “Yielding Palm,” “Flowing Posture Palm,” “Advantageous Palm,” “Push Palm with Momentum” and “Smooth Posture Palm.” The first character, 順 (Shùn), has two parts: “head” + “flowing like a stream.” This can mean “smooth, flowing or hitchless.” The second character, 勢 (Shì), is complicated. The top part means “mound being worked” or “to cultivate.” The bottom part means “strength.” Altogether, the character means to cultivate strength and is usually used in context to mean “influence” or “situation,” and sometimes “posture.” Incidentally, the two characters together are used to represent Homeopathy. Chinese-English dictionaries also translate the two characters together to mean “to take advantage of or sieze an opportunity,” “convenient,” and “without taking extra trouble.” Read “eeeaasy.” For the purposes of this article, I will use “Smooth Posture Palm” only because it is the most common translation. However, I would prefer something like, “Accepting the Opportunity Palm.”
In any case, the concept contained in the combination of the two characters may capture the essence of Baguazhang. Perhaps it can be thought of as flowing with the situation or winning with smooth influence to allude to the Art of War, “winning without conflict” per the line, “supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.” Liu Jingru says that the purpose of the Smooth Posture Palm “is to follow the same direction of the opponent’s thrusting force and apply the force back to strike the opponent.” It is a palm change in which there are two changes along with two changes in direction, leaving the practitioner walking in the same direction in which they started.
Of the Lao San Zhang, this one varies the most among the different branches of Cheng-style Baguazhang. All branches step away from the center of the circle and use the guard hand to press or push forward in the new direction. A rough simplification of the application would be to say the body momentarily switches direction with the forearm of the guard hand pressing down on the opponent’s chest.
Sun Zhijun steps out with the outer foot, perpendicular to the circle. The rear hand tucks under the rib cage and the guard hand follows the outward movement, executing the press. The rear hand then leads toward the back to change direction again, similar to an abbreviated execution of “Swallow Skims the Water.” He finishes with “Ride the Horse and Grasp Freely.” Zhang Jie’s execution of this palm change is nearly identical, though he brings the guard hand up high over-head before pressing down.
Liu Jingru is very careful to keep the line of the palm change with the line of the circle. The guard hand moves into the “press” with a move called “Steal the Helmet from the Back.” This is actually a very common move in many other Swimming Body and Swimming Dragon form variants and may be a relic of the original Cheng Smooth Posture Palm. Liu opens from the press with a very deep and low “White Snake Hides in the Grass” move. He also finishes with “Ride the Horse and Grasp Freely.”
While Li Tianji’s version is similar to that of Liang Shouyu, Liang adds a slight but important movement. Both resemble that of Liu Jingru more than that of Sun Zhijun. Both tend to use the “Steal the Helmet” move, though not always. Both open from the press with “White Snake Hides in the Grass.” Where they are different is in the beginning. When Liang Shouyu steps out of the circle, he leads with the rear hand in a curling blocking motion. This move is meant to intercept a strike and place this hand at the small of the back of the opponent, creating a fulcrum while the guard hand presses down on the opponent’s chest.
The Gao tradition has linked the Smooth Posture Palm to the Snake Shape (as did Sun Lutang in his book) and named the sequence Snake Shape Smooth Posture Palm (蛇形順势掌). Luo Dexiu changes direction on the circle in an outward manner and moves into an execution of “Swallow Skims the Water.” Then, with the rear hand, he executes "White Snake Hides in the Grass" more deeply than others and as if to respond to a second attack from the rear. The "White Snake" move finishes as "Ride the Horse" but ends in a bow stance before returning to circle walking.
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In order to truly appreciate the intentionality of the Old Three Palms, it is probably useful to understand the various expressions that all of these masters provide. It is likely unproductive to follow the mold of any one, since all of our bodies are a little different. Indeed, if a one-size fits all approach really worked, then the expressions of the Old Three Palms by all these masters would be identical. A student of Baguazhang should train each of these three palm changes and as Wang Xiangzhai suggests, “focus on experiencing each movement” and their possibilities. Eventually, the practitioner will have their own expression.
