160 Fist Fighting and Self-Cultivation
the teeth and swallowing the saliva, breathing and directing the qi to the “Lower
Cinnabar Field.” Furthermore, the manual Wang had obtained at the Shaolin
Temple expounds Daoist meditation techniques: the “obscure mind” (mingxin)
method of clearing the mind of all thoughts; the technique of clenching the
fists, that is, unwrapping the thumbs in imitation of a newborn baby (thereby
expelling the demons); and, most noticeably, the meditation of “actualizing the
divinities” (cunshen), namely, visualizing the body’s corporal deities.
It is not surprising therefore that the “Twelve-Section Brocade” can be
traced back to earlier daoyin manuals. “The method’s original name,” the text
notes, “ w a s ‘Eight- S ect ion Broc ade’ (B adu a n ji n).”^71 T he latter i s f a m i l ia r to u s i n
Daoist literature dating all the way back to the Song period. A twelfth-century
encyclopedia of inner alchemy, The Pivot of the Way (Dao shu) (ca. 1150), outlines
an early version of the exercise.^72 That the technique was already ridiculed in
Song times is likely the best indication of its popularity. Hong Mai’s (1123–
1202) collection of popular lore Stories Heard by Yijian (Yijian zhi) tells of an
adept who learns to his dismay that the “Eight-Sections Brocade” may lead to
premature death. The troubling news is brought to him by his servant, who
turns out to be a Daoist sage in disguise.^73
Despite Hong Mai’s twelfth-century warning, in both China and in the West
the “Eight-Section Brocade” is still widely practiced. The gymnastic set exists in
several varieties, standing and sitting.^74 The seated version that Wang Zuyuan
described in his nineteenth-century manual can be traced back through an ear-
lier Qing manual, Immortality Teachings to Benefit the World (Shou shi chuan zhen)
(1771), and two late Ming ones, Eight Treatises on Guarding Life (Zunsheng bajian)
(1592) and Red Phoenix’s Marrow (Chifeng sui) (1578), all the way to a twelfth-cen-
tury Daoist encyclopedia, Ten Compilations on Cultivating Perfection (Xiuzhen shi-
shu) (completed ca. 1300), in which the exercises are accompanied by drawings.^75
The Song encyclopedia attributed the “Eight-Section Brocade” to the semidi-
vine pair of immortals Zhongli Quan and Lü Dongbin, whom Daoist mythology
had credited with an entire corpus of alchemical and physiological writings.^76
Thus, Wang Zuyuan’s manual illustrates the depth of Daoist influence
on the late imperial martial arts. By the nineteenth century, Buddhist monks
at the Shaolin Temple were practicing gymnastic methods that had been re-
corded in Daoist scriptures, that had evolved in Daoist circles, and that had
been attributed to Daoist immortals.
The Sinews Transformation Classic
One section of the Illustrated Exposition of Internal Techniques is titled “The Sinews
Transformation Classic’s Twelve Illustrations.”^77 It includes twelve exercises that
are conducted in a standing posture. The first form, which is called “Weituo
Offering his [Vajra]-Club” (Weituo xian chu), has been fashioned after the de-
ity’s iconography (compare figures 33 and 34). Weituo has been among the