Qian Zhaohong

There hasn't been that much press in English about one of my teachers Qian Zhaohong, to my knowledge. I was his simultaneous Chinese/English interpreter at a number of his USA west coast seminars, and I've also visited him for training at his home territory in Shanghai. I totally love the guy, what an amazing kickass fighter he is, yet utterly dedicated to the internal ideal that also obsesses me. But this guy is maybe the greatest at pure hand to hand combat of all Chinese masters I have ever known. Nice guy too.

Anyway, maybe I've missed coverage of him in the big MA mags, but as far as I know the main article on him is the long cover piece that appeared in Tai Chi magazine a few years back.

But he is sometimes covered in other language media, for example, there was a piece on him just a few months back in a Japanese martial arts magazine. They did a feature piece on the great Chinese combat masters in Shanghai, and he was the first and headline master they covered.

So again as yet another benefit of your Tabbulous Premium Blog Membership Bonus Plan (our motto: Worth Every Penny You Paid!) I present below shots of the article showing sequences of Master Qian in action, and as well as my translation (Japanese to English) of the core text of the piece. I didn't bother translating the part where they give all Master Qian's training background and stuff about the XinYi LiuHe Quan style, you can just grab all that generic info from other websites. And I dispensed with the travel atmospherics of how the Japanese reporting team arrived in Shanghai, and it was hot, and they found the Zhongshan Park and so on. Click on the article page scans below to view enlargement.

Enjoy or Begone! (it won't matter in the slightest, either way)

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(translation of a fragment, from around the middle of the article)

Three Level Training Sequence

I arrived with the presupposition that  the Xinyi LiuHe method relies on extreme speed and physical force, but I found that Master Qian's approach is extremely soft and consists of entirely natural movement. This is because Master Qian's combat is based on "transformative energy", "adhering energy" and relaxation. His teaching method consists of three stages.

The first stage is that of outer form. In the beginning the student learns the basics of physical posture and motion. At this stage ordinary physical strength is harnessed to support the fundamentals of outer form. In the second stage, internal energy is introduced. This involves moving the body in accordance with the rotation of the tanden (Chinese: dantian energy center), and also infusing the motion with spiral energy.

We should note in passing that while various teachers may have small disagreements about the exact size of the tanden energy center point, conceived of as a ball, in the lower abdomen, Master Qian has a different concpet of it altogether. He uses the image of not one point but three mutually adhering balls in the lower abdomen.

At the third stage, the student is to rely on "empty energy" (Chinese: kongjing) which is compared to a needle wrapped in cotton.

These three stages roughly correspond to the three levels identified by Master Sun Lutang as: 'obvious energy', 'hidden energy', and 'transformed' or mysterious energy.

I experienced the reality of the third level of transformed energy in my own body at Master Qian's hands. I stood facing Master Qian and attempted to hit him. I swear I had every intention to really nail him, but for some reason as the attack began, I suddenly felt unsteady and my attack slipped away from him before it ever arrived. It isn't that Master Qian parried or blocked my strike, but rather that I just that my balance was suddenly destroyed just as I attacked - a truly weird feeling.

He also did something similar when I attempted to grab his arms. Master Qian is extremely skilled at Chinese locking arts (Chinese: qinna) and is able to take away an assailant's balance immediately. When he's grabbed, it isn't that he follows up a wrist grab with elbow and should locks or strikes. It's rather that as soon as he's grabbed, he immediately sense the attackers power and center of balance and dominates the assailant instantly and completely. The attacker feels completely controlled from  fingers, up through hands, elbows, shoulders, and all other joints, but not by any precise technical lock or hold technique, rather it's by having his center completely dominated.

The concept of three tanden balls come into play when neutralizing an attacker's energy. If you work from a single point or ball of tanden central energy, it is easy to be caught or blocked in that central spot by a skilled attacker. However, with the the image of three simultaneously revolving balls, the attacker finds no key point to catch and he quickly falls victim to Master Qian's own neutralization and counter attack. Furthermore, Master Qian's energy is not limited to accumulation in the tanden, rather, he can extend and project it outside his body to directly affect any opponent.

This projection of energy is really hard to understand, but not because Master Qian is deliberately obfuscating. On the contrary he's taking exceptional pains to explain it. But no matter how you talk about it, if you are still using words it remains abstract.