Year of the Snake

Chinese Association of Woking Tai Chi students (in red, the author in black) and Kung Fu teachers and students (back row) for the Lunar New Celebration at St John the Baptist School, Woking, UK.

Introduction

To celebrate the new year, the Chinese Association of Woking organises end of term performances at the school and in the local town centre.

This year the Wutan Kung Fu Sifus, Jim and Frank, kindly allowed the Taiji class to slide into one of their set pieces.

Taiji forms can be quite long (our short form is 5 minutes if you do it quick!) and don’t always lend themselves to a snappy demo, so we decided to do something aligned to Taiji, but different.

We settled on a very short ‘linking set’ of another ‘internal’ traditional Chinese martial art - Xingyiquan.

Xingyiquan

The author (in black) with a student and another teacher performing the Xingi Linking Set, Woking Town Centre, 08-Feb-2025. Organised by the Chinese Association of Woking. Video content by 雅雅Sarah.

What is Xingyiquan?

Xing Yi Quan is classified as one of the internal styles of Chinese martial arts. The name of the art translates approximately to "Form-Intention Fist", or "Shape-Will Fist.

Xing Yi is characterized by aggressive, seemingly linear movements and explosive power that's most often applied from a short range. A practitioner of Xing Yi uses coordinated movements to generate bursts of power intended to overwhelm the opponent, simultaneously attacking and defending. Methods vary from school to school, but always include bare-handed fighting training (mostly in single movements/combinations and sometimes in forms) and the training of weapons usage with similar or identical body mechanics to that used for bare-handed intense fighting.

— Wikipedia

You may notice from the video that we were not using much in the way of ‘explosive power’ (fa jin), but performing at more of a 'Taiji speed’. Still takes a bit of work to do it right and gets the heart pumping a little faster, so good exercise!

I am a terrible performer and take credit for any mistakes, both mine and my colleagues.

For the devotee, there are additional links here…

• https://www.blackwatertaichi.com/blog/xing-yi-five-element-fists

• https://www.blackwatertaichi.com/blog/xingyi-quan-book-roundup

• https://www.blackwatertaichi.com/blog/traditional-chinese-martial-arts

The set is described here (link).

🐍 Happy new year!