113
Chapter 5
Hand Combat
M arti al techniques m ay require centuries to evolve. Shaolin monks had
been practicing the staff for several hundred years before it was lauded in late
Ming literature as an outstanding fighting method. Similarly, their bare-
handed techniques—now famous the world over—have been unfolding for
some four hundred years. As early as the sixteenth century, some Shaolin
monks practiced unarmed fighting; in the course of the seventeenth, they de-
veloped sophisticated empty-handed techniques, and by the mid-Qing period
(the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries), hand combat (quan) had
eclipsed the staff as the dominant form of Shaolin martial training.
The term quan, which I render “hand combat,” means literally “fist.” Dur-
ing the late imperial period it designated unarmed fighting techniques, all of
which made use of legs in addition to arms; kicking figures prominently in all
quan styles, in which sense “hand combat” is misleading. “Boxing,” which has
a l so been u sed a s a rend it ion of quan, suffers from the added disadvantage that
it connotes a specific Western sport. I have opted therefore for “hand combat,”
but where it sounds too awkward—especially in the names of individual styles
—I have resorted to the literal “fist.”
The earliest reference I am aware of to Shaolin hand combat occurs in
Tang Shunzhi’s (1507–1560) poem “Song of the Emei Monk’s Fist,” which ex-
tols not only the Emei monasteries’ empty-handed fighting, but also the
Shaolin’s.^1 However, in his comprehensive Treatise on Military Affairs (Wu bian),
where he lists contemporary bare-handed styles such as “[Song Emperor]
Zhao Taizu’s Long-Range Fist” (Zhao Taizu changquan) and “Wen Family
Fist” (Wenjia quan), the same author does not allude to Shaolin, indicating
that the monastery had not developed as yet a recognized empty-handed
style. In the military encyclopedia, Tang, like other sixteenth-century mili-
tary experts, alludes to the Shaolin staff instead.^2
Several decades later, allusions to hand combat began to appear in the