Highland Taijiquan

Respond in the same direction, in the same plane.

The majority of the weekend was spent looking at the way that the straight sword has been used in Chinese history, especially in the Taiji tradition.This is largely down to the nature of the sword itself. Long and narrow with an edge on both sides, the weapon is not able to sustain impacts. It is therefore necessary to look at the use of the sword to prevent any impacts, and still use the force of an opponent, rather than our own energy.

As an interesting side-note to this, one of the outcomes of a tradition of sword use that requires skill rather than physical strength is that gender is no longer an issue. The commander of King Yue’s army in the Spring and Autumn Period (770 – 475BC) was Yue Nu, a woman who allegedly not only taught the army the ‘soft’ use of swords, but also developed the metallurgy required to vary the tin content of bronze in the swords to achieve a hard and brittle edge with a flexible core. The swords of King Yue were discovered in his tomb in the 20th century and were still capable of slicing a coin. Likewise in the Tang dynasty, the jian was now very much the shape we would recognise today, and the greatest practitioner was considered to be Gongsun Danjiang, of whom statues, paintings and poems were made to celebrate her ‘sword dance’.

In many ways the straight sword became obsolete a long time ago as a battlefield weapon, but its role in Chinese culture has grown from a simple weapon to a symbol of nobility and artistic development.

It is this relatively modern concept of the sword that we are interested in with our taiji training. It’s use is not simply a way of defeating an opponent, but more a way of demonstrating a level of skill, control and pureness of heart.

The weekend was split between working with a partner to understand the dynamics of how to respond to attacks in such a controlled and accurate way, and more formal form-work to look at the structures necessary to use the sword.

The phrase “Respond in the same direction, in the same plane” came close to being overused, but the plan was to learn to respond to a wide variety of attacks in such a way that the defence and counter would be effective regardless of the intrinsic strength of the sword. The same response should work with a willow twig, and as we looked at late on the Sunday afternoon, using simply the ‘secret sword’ hand position.The points to note for the partner-work were:

• Respond in the same direction, in the same plane.
• Contact between swords should always be flat on flat, never using the edge.
• The cutting edge (the edge of the blade on the knuckle side of the sword) always  leads.
• Maintaining the correct distance between you and your partner is vital.
• The base of the blade is for safe parrying, the centre section for chopping and manipulating your partner’s blade and the tip is only for slicing, and careful thrusts.

The partner sequence can be summarised as the following:

Side A

Straight Thrust to base of sternum

Circular parryCircular rising cut to thigh with step inStep back and cloud sword parryHorizontal thrust to side

Side B

Vertical parry with base

Tap to wrist

Circular parry and step to side

Flat cut to neck

Withdraw to side

Straight thrust to base of sternum

Taijijian routine