154 Fist Fighting and Self-Cultivation
(Bengquan), Exploding Fist (Paoquan), and Shearing Fist (Hengquan) with
the five elements of metal, water, wood, fire, and earth respectively; and, as indi-
cated by its name, the Eight Trigrams Palm (Bagua zhang) revolves in a concen-
tric movement around the eight configurations that are described in the Classic
of Changes (Yijing).^54
The identity of microcosm and macrocosm that characterizes much of
Chinese thought permitted martial artists to re-enact within their own bodies
the process of cosmic evolution. Beginning with the first centuries BCE Classic
of Changes and culminating with Zhou Dunyi’s (1017–1073) Diagram of the Su-
preme Ultimate (Taiji tu), Chinese philosophy usually described the history of
the universe in terms of differentiation from a primordial unity called taiji (su-
preme ultimate). In this creation process, several stages, or forces, were discern-
ible, including the yin and the yang, the five elements, and the eight trigrams. In
such Qing fighting styles as Taiji Quan—which is consciously named after the
cosmology—the practitioner repeats the process of universal evolution by a
prescribed set of movements. The training routine opens in the quiescence of
the primordial taiji and proceeds through the interplay of yin and yang, five ele-
ments, and eight trigrams, to the profusion of the myriad phenomena. Rather
than ending in this state of multiplicity, the martial artist then heads back in
time to the origins of the universe, receding from the myriad things to the
eight trigrams, contracting further to the two cosmic principles yin and yang,
and culminating in the tranquility of taiji.
As early as the Ming period, the concept of five elements was incorporated
into martial arts literature. It appeared, for example, in Tang Shunzhi’s (1507–
1560) discussion of spear fighting.^55 However, the complete re-enactment of
cosmic evolution within the martial arts likely appeared no earlier than the
Qing. Among its earliest textual records is Yang Bing’s Plum Fist manual Intro-
duction to Martial Practice (1742), in which he quotes verbatim from the Classic of
Changes: “In the Changes there is the supreme ultimate (taiji), which produced
the two forms. These two forms produced the four emblems, and these four
emblems produced the eight trigrams.”^56 Several decades later Wang Zongyue
(fl. 1780) repeated in his Taiji Quan essays the fuller version of cosmic creation
as it had been formulated by the Song thinker Zhou Dunyi. Wang identifies
specific Taiji Quan postures with the evolutionary stages the yin and the yang,
the five elements, and the eight trigrams.^57
Thus, Chinese cosmology enriched the martial arts with the vocabulary of
a mystical union. Practitioners re-enacted the process of cosmic differentia-
tion, then reversed it to achieve oneness with the primordial unity of taiji. Their
spiritual goal was explicitly stated in late Qing manuals, such as the following
Taiji Quan classic in Douglas Wile’s translation:
The ears and eyes, hands and feet, being divided into pairs are like yin
and yang, and their uniting into one is like taiji. Thus the external
becomes concentrated in the internal, and the internal expresses itself