ching dynasty

Gong Li Quan, “power-building boxing”, and the truth about Ching dynasty martial arts

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Randy and Graham in Cardiff, 2024

At the recent 2024 Martial Arts Studies conference in Wales I had the good fortune to meet Randy Brown of Mantis Boxing and Brazilian JiuJitsu in Massachusetts, USA. We had a blast at the conference discussing martial history, theory and even demonstrating a few techniques on each other into the small hours in a pub in Cardiff city center! Not only is Randy highly skilled in mantis boxing, but he’s also a black belt in Brazilian Jiujitsu, so we had a lot in common.

When I was exchanging techniques with Randy he noticed that the Choy Li Fut I was showing was identical to moves from a form he knew called gong li quan, which translates as “power-building boxing”. It was a form he had learned that was used as foundational training for various Ching dynasty martial arts, like long fist, eagle claw boxing and praying mantis boxing.

On gong li quan, Randy writes:

Gōng Lì Quán, or Power Building Boxing, is a unique boxing set from northern China, and is included as a training routine amongst a variety of boxing styles in the north to include: long fist, eagle claw boxing, and praying mantis boxing. This form likely intermixed with the latter two styles when it was included as part of the Jīngwǔ Athletic Association’s fundamental wu shu curriculum. At Jīngwǔ, gōng lì quán was one of the mandatory six empty hand and four weapons sets taught to kung fu practitioners. These ten sets were required as a prerequisite to the study of: xingyiquan, bagua, taijiquan, eagle claw, or mantis boxing; considered by Jīngwǔ founders to be more ‘advanced’ styles.

Our meeting seems to have sparked a desire in Randy to delve further into gong li quan and resurrect this old form he’d forgotten about and try to bring the movement to life with grappling applications. He’s been kind enough to share video of his research.

3 Rings Trap the Moon

This was the original move we discussed in Cardiff, 3 Rings Trap the Moon, which in Choy Li Fut would be a gwa choy (back fist) followed by a sau choy (sweeping fist) followed by a biu choy (an outward forearm strike). Randy shows the original move from gong li quan, then his grappling applications. It’s pretty cool!

Twining Silk Legs

Randy has been updating his blog post with new applications as he goes, so keep checking back. One of his latest is the move Twining Silk Legs:

Twining Silk Legs is two upper cuts followed by two kicks. Again, Randy shows the move and then his grappling interpretation of the applications. What’s really interesting to me is that, once again, there’s a parallel in Choy Li Fut with this move. If you look at the move starting at 1.22 in the following Choy Li Fut video you’ll see what is essentially the same move as Twining Silk Legs – two upwards strikes followed by a kick. (Ok, just the one kick here, not two, but still…)

You could look at this as further proof that gong li quan and Choy Li Fut share a common ancestor back in the mists of time, but since I’d be willing to bet that other Chinese martial arts practitioners would also recognise these moves from their own systems, I’d venture to say that is is further evidence for Randy’s theory that the explosion of different martial styles during the end of the Ching dynasty (which is where we get Choy Li Fut, mantis, Wing Chun and the other well-known styles) was more about branding the martial arts, for commercial reasons, and that they actually shared a common pool of knowledge.

An extract from the abstract of Randy’s excellent presentation reads:

“A question needs to be asked, did ‘Chinese boxing’ of the era, have a similar common pool of knowledge? Qī Jì guāng’s manual would hint at such. Within ‘Chinese Boxing’, attributes, feats, or skills defining one fighter over another became definitive styles of their own right due to events of the time”.

(The Qi Ji Guang he’s referring to is the Ming dynasty general who fought off Japanese pirates and because a hero to the people. He wrote a famous manual which documented the martial arts of the time. The techniques in the manual seem to crop up in all sorts of Ching dynasty martial arts.)

You can learn more about the the tumultuous events of the Ching dynasty and the explosion of martial arts styles that happened during it in Randy’s video of his presentation from the 2019 Martial Arts Studies Conference:

2025 Martial Arts Studies Conference

Today I heard the exciting news that next year’s 2025 Martial Arts Studies Conference will also be held in Cardiff, Wales. This will be the 10th anniversary of the original 2015 conference, which was held on the 10th-12th June in Cardiff, and will be held on exactly the same dates. It’s almost too perfect. See you there?

The Martial Arts Studies Network has also released a new (and free as always) issue 15 – check it out, it’s full of top-quality articles on martial arts. Oh, and don’t forget, I also recorded a podcast with Randy while we were at the conference – here it is:

Where were the Wu brothers during the creation of Tai Chi Chuan?

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Here’s an interesting criticism of the Heretics Hypothesis from blog reader Tom:

“I’ve enjoyed Damon’s monologues in this series on taiji. I think people understand the history given is just Damon’s interpretation, unsourced. The unfortunate part of the narrative is that some key assertions are made that are not true. Wu Yuxiang met Yang Luchan in Yongnian County before Yang went to Beijing. We actually don’t know whether WYX ever went to Beijing. WYX’s older brother did have a position of some importance in the Qing imperial administration, but it was at the county level as a magistrate. There is no extant written record, in a bureaucracy of exhaustive written records, of any of the Wu brothers in Beijing during this time. By contrast, we do have references for YLC appearing in Beijing and being called in to demonstrate at a banquet being held at the mansion of the wealthy Zhang family, purveyors of pickles to the Imperial court (and connected to the Wu brothers …. Damon should look at the sources available for this connection, because it helps support his thesis more clearly than what he’s established only by inference so far).”

There’s a lot to unpack there. So let’s start at the top:

“Wu Yuxiang met Yang Luchan in Yongnian County before Yang went to Beijing.”

This could very well be true. It’s a reasonable point – Wu Yuxiang and Yang could have met in Yongnian, and the Heretical Hypothesis plan (of using Tai Chi to bind together the fractured Imperial Court over something essentially ancient, Chinese and unifying in the face of the world-shaking contact with foreign aggression, which the Ching seem utterly unprepared for) could have been hatched earlier, with Wu Yuxiang and his brothers, who then, using the Ching patronage system, fund the introduction of Yang LuChan to Beijing elites.

Wu’s brothers both wrote texts on Tai Chi Chuan that only surfaced in the 1930s – see Lost Classics from the Late Ching Dynasty’s by Douglas Wile – so they are both implicated in the invention of Tai Chi Chuan myth, as well as their more famous brother Wu Yuxiang.

It’s ironic that Wu YuXiang is the famous brother by today’s standards, but at the time it was Wu ChengChing who was the famous one, having passed the very highest Civil Examinations. This is why there is no official record of Wu Yuxiang anywhere (as Wile notes on page 16) – he was simply not important enough. And if even he is not important enough, then there is zero chance of Yang LuChan – a low-class person ever being mentioned in an official record. Which brings us to Tom’s line:

“There is no extant written record, in a bureaucracy of exhaustive written records, of any of the Wu brothers in Beijing during this time.”

So, that’s not surprising for Wu YuXiang, since there are no written records of him anywhere – “to official historians he does not exist” – as Wile says. 

However, that doesn’t mean he wasn’t in Beijing at some points. Here’s something to consider. A lot of people attribute the “small frame” of Wu (Hao) style Tai Chi to the limited movement available in Court Dress.

e.g. https://www.itcca.it/peterlim/historg5.htm

A quote from that article: “The Yang Small Frame which comes down to us from Wu Chien Quan has little resemblance to Wu Yu Xiang’s small frame and the primary reason for the origin of that form was the Imperial Court Dress which hampered movement.” 

Royal Court Dress, Ching Dynasty.

If Wu Yu Xiang wasn’t in Beijing he wouldn’t have been wearing Court Dress. 

Regarding his brothers we can be more sure: 

The Jinshi (highest Confucian) exam that Wu Chengching passed could only be taken in Beijing if you were from Hebei Province – it wasn’t held in any other location, and final preparation for it wasn’t done in any other location. Wu Chengching records in his chronological autobiography that he passed that exam in 1852, after Yang LuChan moved to Beijing. He was then assigned to be a district magistrate. (Wile, Tai Chi Touchstones, page 180).

Wu Chengching wasn’t just any old magistrate – he was one of a small handful of elite magistrates ruling the counties of China’s heartland, and based in an area of huge strategic importance militarily speaking. I can’t see any way he would get into that position without strong/long-standing links to the Imperial Court in Beijing.

I think we can say that the Wu brothers had strong connections in Beijing, and Wu Chengqing couldn’t have got into his elevated position anywhere other than Beijing. When he moved to Wuyang in 1854 (four years after YLC settled in Beijing), there was no one local who outranked him – his immediate superiors were based in Beijing all the time, and he would have been expected to report to them frequently. To pass Jinshi he would have needed the support of his extended family, including Wu Yuxiang – it was a decision you had to make – to become a magistrate you had to go “itinerant” – you go wherever the government sends you.

But even so, I don’t think the physical location of Wu Yuxiang, or his brothers affects the overall Heretics Hypothesis very much – the Confucian officials were moved around a lot.

Key to the argument is the idea that “anything at all like Tai Chi” could not have existed in that region until after 1850 – and it doesn’t matter who was/wasn’t involved, because the kind of thing that Tai Chi is, is a modern idea that arose through China’s contact with the West.