TAI-CHI (taiji) WEAPONS: SPEAR

DESCRIPTION

The use of the spear as a weapon in taiji quan is named (in pinyin) taiji qiang. It belongs to what are known as long weapons.

Its length varies as a function of your height. Its length is determined by, standing, holding the spear vertical: if you raise your arm and stretch your hand, one should be able to touch the tassel.

It has 3 parts:

a) the tip, that is made of stainless steel

b) the tassel, which is always red (this way blood did not splashed around when piercing, and the red color of blood was concealed – sorry if I hurt anybody’s feelings). Nowadays it is simply a decorative item, of course.

The stick, made out of wood
As a curiosity it is worth mentioning that there is a kind of spear, about 5 m long, whose stick is hollow and made out of iron, and can be filled with iron filings. At the beginning the practice starts with a weight of ca. 30 kg and can go up to 50 kg. This spear is used in the Zi Ran School (school of nature).

CHARACTERISTICS

The spear is the queen among all military weapons. It is a weapon with numerous techniques and that allows for a lot of ruse, that is why it is also named the astute spear.

The use of the spear in taijji is also named Wudang Taiji Shi San Qian (the 13 spears of the Wudang Taiji). The number 13 comes from the eight gates and the five steps, that is the movement of the spear in the four cardinal points plus the directions in between (the 8 gates), and the five steps are the positions of the legs.

It is said that these 13 techniques originate from Zhang San Feng.

The skill required for the practice of the spear is one of the highest, since one must have increased at maximum the gong fu and refined the nei gong.

It is considered that a minimum practice of ten years is required for a good performance of the spear in taiji (the stick requires about three months, and the broadsword about 1 year).

MOVEMENTS

Overall there are 384 movements, since each change in the spear is related to the hexagrams of the I Ching (Zhou Yi). Due to this large quantity of movements, I will not include the name of each of them.

Regarding the eight gates, each of them has three targets where to aim the spear (24 targets in total). For each of these 24 targets there are 8 possible movements (which sums 192 movements). Then if we take into account the division between previous heaven and posterior heaven for each movement, we get the amount of 384 movements.