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49-418: Due to a scarcity of historical sources, it is nearly impossible to point to the time or place of drunken boxing's origin, nor to trace a credible lineage of teachers and students between drunken boxing's earlier documentation and present day practice. Drunken boxing probably appeared and disappeared in different places and at different times, with little more than common cultural and martial arts context to relate

98-609: A drunken luohan steps forward, in Shaolin 18 luohan quan one of the 18 characters is a drunken luohan, and in Shaolin mad-devil staff a drunken luohan sways to the sides with disorderly steps. As with other Shaolin styles , Shaolin zui quan is not a complete stand-alone system itself, but consists of a few barehanded and weapon forms which together with other forms and styles comprise the whole system of Shaolin quan. Every lineage of Shaolin monks may have one or two barehanded and one or

147-408: A few weapon forms of zui quan. The main weapon is the drunken staff, but other weapons such as the drunken sword are also practiced. Though the technical contents are almost the same, the drunken forms of different lineages are different and their historical sources are mostly unclear. The Daoist style of zui quan imitates the characters of the "Drunken Eight Immortals " ( 八仙 ; ba xian ), which are

196-824: A group of eight Taoist immortals. The term "Eight Immortals" became commonplace after the popularization of the Taoist group of writers and artists known as the Complete Realization (Quanshen). The most famous art depiction of the Eight Immortals from this period is a mural of them in the Eternal Joy Temple (Yongle Gong) at Ruicheng. The Eight Immortals are considered to be signs of prosperity and longevity, so they are popular themes in ancient and medieval art. They were frequent adornments on celadon vases. They were also common in sculptures owned by

245-793: A group of legendary immortals in Chinese mythology . First described in the Yuan dynasty , they were probably named after the Eight Immortal Scholars of the Han . Most of them are said to have been born in the Tang or Song dynasty . They are revered by Daoists and are also a popular element in the secular Chinese culture . In drunken kung fu, the eight immortals are used as martial archetypes , or as eight sub-styles of drunken kung fu. Each immortal has his or her own strategy and mindset. This style

294-585: A new complexity in structure and sophistication in language that helped to establish the novel as a respected form among later popular audiences and erudite critics. The Chinese historian and literary theorist C. T. Hsia wrote in 1968 that these six works "remain the most beloved novels among the Chinese." During the Ming and Qing dynasties, Chinese novels inspired sequels, rebuttals, and reinventions with new settings, sometimes in different genres. Far more than in

343-594: A new legitimacy. These novels were written in a mixture of vernacular and classical Chinese, though some were more completely vernacular. For instance, Romance of the Three Kingdoms is known for its mix of classical prose with folklore and popular narratives, while the Dream of the Red Chamber is known for the use of poetry within its mostly vernacular style. These novels popularized and legitimatized

392-409: A person and sought refuge in Shaolin to avoid trial and to repent. Despite his monastic vows, he still continued drinking wine. This was not tolerable by the monks and they wanted to expel him from the temple. While completely drunk after consuming a huge amount of wine, he defied and beat the monks, some say more than 30 monks. The abbot, after seeing this, praised his skill. This drunken style of combat

441-418: A phenomenon within kung fu. Furthermore, drunken boxing rarely appears as a complete and independent system, but rather as an advanced feature within a broader system. A martial art may include a few drunken boxing techniques, one or more drunken boxing forms , a complementary drunken boxing fighting tactic, or a more developed drunken boxing sub-system. A great variety of kung fu schools have drunken styles, but

490-423: A thousand Chinese titles were imported every year. Their prominence prove to be crucial in the development of literature in these places. Eight Immortals The Eight Immortals ( Chinese : 八仙 ) are a group of legendary xian (immortals) in Chinese mythology . Each immortal's power can be transferred to a vessel ( 法器 ) that can bestow life or destroy evil. Together, these eight vessels are called

539-437: Is internal in nature, and emphasizes the role of jin . Movement is initiated in the dan tian area, and moves through the body distally towards the hands and feet. The musculature is kept as soft as possible. Movement in drunken boxing is relatively unique among martial arts in the frequency and degree in which it deviates from vertical posture , with the torso bent and twisted in all directions. The default hand position

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588-416: Is a complete system itself comprising 8 forms, each representing one of the eight immortal characters: These elements combine to form a complete fighting art. This style has also several weapon forms. The main weapon is the drunken sword, but other weapons such as the staff are also used. There are Northern and Southern versions of drunken monkey boxing , which is related to drunken boxing. Drunken boxing

637-691: Is called the Hall of Eight Immortals ( 八仙殿 ). There are many other shrines dedicated to them throughout China and Taiwan. In Singapore , the Xian'gu Temple ( 仙姑殿 ) is dedicated to the Immortal Lady He from the group as its focus of devotion. Overall though, in the Sinosphere , the Eight Immortals are depicted as deities who are very often not seen as such, being more like folk heroes and saints to most who venerate them. However, to these people,

686-532: Is described as a technical derivative of dì tàng quán . The Bā yǐng quán (八影拳) lineage from Henan attributes its wine boxing to the Shaolin Kung Fu style. Hung Ga lineages stemming from Wong Fei Hung attribute their drunken boxing to So Chan . Drunken boxing is not a single martial art with an established lineage and hierarchy, but rather a group of loosely related kung fu styles. In this respect, drunken boxing could also be understood as

735-513: Is the " cup holding fist", which is a softly held semi-open fist that uses the knuckles to strike and the tips of the fingers to grab . Other hand positions are used, too, among them the phoenix eye single knuckle fist. Many aspects of drunken boxing are specialized towards deception: continuous bobbing and weaving and slipping , feigning instability and lack of focus , attacking from unusual angles and seemingly weak positions, sudden changes of momentum , compounding multiple attacks with

784-406: Is the clearest and most sophisticated example: the action is sometimes grossly sexual, but in the end emphasizes conventional morality. These novels influenced the development of vernacular fiction in later Chinese literary history . Traditionally, fiction and drama were not held in high regard in the Chinese and East Asian literary culture, and they were generally not seen as true "literature" by

833-625: Is the first to show strong signs of a single author who composed all or most of the text, which became more common in later novels. In the late Ming and early Qing, new commercial publishing houses found it profitable to issue novels that claimed specific authors and authentic texts. They commissioned scholars to edit texts and supply commentaries to interpret them. Mao Zonggang , for instance, and his father Mao Lun, edited Three Kingdoms and Jin Shengtan edited Water Margin , supplying an introduction to which he signed Shi Nai'an's name. In each case

882-700: The Ming and Qing dynasties , the Eight Immortals were frequently associated with other prominent spiritual deities in artwork. There are numerous paintings with them and the Three Stars (the gods of longevity, prosperity, and good fortune) together. Also, other deities such as the Queen Mother of the West are commonly seen in the company of the Eight Immortals and she is also popularly thought to have blessed them with their supernatural abilities. The artwork of

931-509: The literati who dominated intellectual life. Writers in these forms did not have the same level of prestige as poets or scholars of Chinese classics . The late Ming and early Qing dynasty versions of these novels, however, included commentaries that were printed between the lines, so that the reader saw them as part of the text. These commentaries interpreted the text in often strained ways, but established critical and aesthetic criteria, modeled on those of poetry and painting, that gave fiction

980-665: The "Covert Eight Immortals" ( 暗八仙 ). Most of them are said to have been born in the Tang or Song Dynasty . They are revered by the Taoists and are also a popular element in secular Chinese culture . They are said to live on a group of five islands in the Bohai Sea , which includes Mount Penglai . The Immortals are: In literature before the 1970s, they were sometimes translated as the Eight Genies . Some stories had them all "cheerfully addicted to wine", so they were called

1029-636: The "Jiu-zhong Ba Xian" or "Eight Drunken Immortals". First described in the Yuan Dynasty , they were probably named after the Eight Immortal Scholars of the Han . While cults dedicated to various Taoist immortals date back to the Han dynasty , the popular and well-known Eight Immortals first appeared in the Jin dynasty . The wall murals and sculptures in the Jin tombs, created during the 12th and 13th centuries, depicts

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1078-527: The 14th to 18th centuries, though a little earlier in China. Chinese audiences were more interested in history and were more historically minded. They appreciated relative optimism, moral humanism, and relative emphasis on collective behavior and the welfare of the society. The rise of a money economy and urbanization under the Song dynasty led to a professionalization of entertainment which was further encouraged by

1127-450: The 1610 text, however, was a more coherent and presumably closer to the author's intent. In chronological order of their earliest forms, they are: From early times, Chinese writers preferred history as the genre for telling stories about people, while poetry was preferred for personal expression of emotion. Confucian literati , who dominated cultural life, looked down on other forms as xiao shuo (lit. “little talk” or “minor writings”),

1176-581: The Eight Immortals archetypes for conditioning, qigong/meditation and combat training. One subsection of ba ying quan( 八英拳 ; bā yīng quán ) drunken fist training includes methodologies for each of the eight immortals. Established in the Song Dynasty , the Xi'an temple Eight Immortals Palace ( 八仙宮 ), formerly Eight Immortals Nunnery ( 八仙庵 ), has a collection of statues depicting the Immortals in what

1225-547: The Eight Immortals is not limited to paintings or other visual arts. They are quite prominent in written works too. Authors and playwrights have written numerous stories and plays on the Eight Immortals. One famous story that has been rewritten many times and turned into several plays (the most famous written by Mu Zhiyuan in the Yuan Dynasty) is The Yellow-Millet Dream , which is the story of how Lǚ Dòngbīn met Zhongli Quan and began his path to immortality. The Immortals are

1274-533: The European tradition, every level of society was familiar with the plots, characters, key incidents, and quotations. Those who could not read these novels for themselves knew them through tea-house story-tellers, Chinese opera , card games, and new year pictures . In modern times they live on through popular literature, graphic novels, cartoons and films, television drama, video games, and theme parks. The literary critic and sinologist Andrew H. Plaks writes that

1323-607: The Golden Vase until 1957 and in 1985 ). Since the early 1980s, they have been known in mainland China as the Four Great Classical Novels . None of the six were published in the author's lifetime. Three Kingdoms and Water Margin appeared in many variants and forms long before being edited in their classic form in the late Ming. There is considerable debate on their authorship. Since the novel, unlike poetry or painting, had little prestige, authorship

1372-521: The Golden Vase was banned for most of its existence. Despite this, Lu Xun , like many if not most scholars and writers, place it among the top Chinese novels. After the Communist takeover in China, the official People's Literature Publishing House successively republished the collated editions of Water Margin , Romance of the Three Kingdoms , Dream of the Red Chamber and Journey to the West between 1952 and 1954 (It would not republish The Plum in

1421-575: The Ming and Qing dynasties represented a pinnacle of classic Chinese fiction. Until World War II, the dominant sinological scholarship considered all fiction popular and therefore directly reflective of the creative imagination of the masses. C. T. Hsia, however, established the role of the scholar-literati in the creation of vernacular fiction, though not denying the popular subject matter of some texts. Scholars then examined traditional fiction for sophisticated techniques. The American literary critic and sinologist Andrew H. Plaks argues that Romance of

1470-500: The Three Kingdoms , Water Margin , Journey to the West as well as Jin Ping Mei (not considered one of the four classic novels but discussed by him as one of the four masterworks of the Ming dynasty) collectively constituted a technical breakthrough reflecting new cultural values and intellectual concerns. Their educated editors, authors, and commentators used the narrative conventions developed from earlier storytellers , such as

1519-426: The best-known works of literary fiction across pre-modern Chinese literature . The group usually includes the following works: Ming dynasty novels Romance of the Three Kingdoms , Water Margin , Journey to the West , and The Plum in the Golden Vase ; and Qing dynasty novels Dream of the Red Chamber and The Scholars . These works are among the world's longest and oldest novels. They represented

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1568-481: The different cases of drunken boxing with each other. The earliest written reference to drunken boxing is probably in the classic novel Water Margin , in which the Song dynasty rebel Wu Song is depicted as a master of drunken boxing. In the kung fu manual "Boxing Classic" ( 拳經 ; quán jīng ) from the 18th century, Shàolín monks are described as practicing the style of eight drunken immortals boxing. This style

1617-449: The editor made cuts, additions, and basic alterations to the text, misrepresenting them as restoring the original. They also supplied commentaries with literary and political points that modern scholars sometimes find strained. Their editions, however, became standard for centuries, and most modern translations are based on them. Zhang Zhupo likewise edited The Plum in the Golden Vase . Zhang worked on an abridged and rewritten text of 1695;

1666-769: The enemy and grabbing as they retract. The power for grabs is sometimes generated by dropping the body, either through slightly lifting the feet off the ground and then stomping down with the weight of the entire body or by falling to the prone. Some styles of drunken boxing use traditional kung fu weapons , often the jian or gun . The Bā yǐng quán wine boxing system includes many weapons, including saber , spear , guan dao , flute , fan , gourd bottle , sash , sash tied to guard and more. 27,^ Drunken Kung Fu – White Wine Form (Baijiu Quan) – Cyril Nolgrove CAMC (video). Classic Chinese Novels Classic Chinese Novels ( traditional Chinese : 古典小說 ; simplified Chinese : 古典小说 ; pinyin : gǔdiǎn xiǎoshuō ) are

1715-420: The episodic structure, interspersed songs and folk sayings, or speaking directly to the reader, but they fashioned self-consciously ironic narratives whose seeming familiarity camouflaged a Neo-Confucian moral critique of late Ming decadence. Plaks explores the textual history of the novels (all published after their author's deaths, usually anonymously) and how the ironic and satirical devices of these novels paved

1764-440: The most important landmarks" of the novels of China. There have been a number of groupings. Romance of the Three Kingdoms , Journey to the West , Water Margin and The Plum in the Golden Vase were grouped by publishers in the early Qing and promoted as Four Masterworks ( Chinese : 四大奇書 ; pinyin : Sìdàqíshú ; lit. 'four great masterpieces'). Because of its explicit descriptions of sex, The Plum in

1813-484: The nobility. Many silk paintings, wall murals, and wood block prints remain of the Eight Immortals. They were often depicted either together in one group, or alone to give more homage to that specific immortal. An interesting feature of early Eight Immortal artwork is that they are often accompanied by jade hand maidens, which are commonly depicted as servants of the higher ranked deities, and depictions commonly include other images showing their great spiritual power. During

1862-405: The role of vernacular literature in literary circles. In the late imperial periods, with the widespread of commercial printing, Chinese novels also became heavily circulated across East and Southeast Asia; it was reported in 1604, several hundreds of titles of Chinese books came through to the port city of Nagasaki alone, and throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, estimated over

1911-405: The same limb, use of blind-spots and visual distractions , changing game plans in mid-fight and employing concealed or improvised weapons . Like many styles of kung fu, drunken boxing employs a wide variety of attacks, including striking , chin na and wrestling , with trapping range fighting as a default skill. Strikes and grabs are alternated with the hands striking as they extend towards

1960-438: The spread of printing, the rise of literacy, and education. In both China and Western Europe, the novel gradually became more autobiographical and serious in exploration of social, moral, and philosophical problems. Chinese fiction of the late Ming dynasty and early Qing dynasty was varied, self-conscious, and experimental. In China, however, there was no counterpart to the 19th-century European explosion of novels. The novels of

2009-527: The subject of many artistic creations, such as paintings and sculptures . Examples of writings about them include: The Eight Immortals have been linked to the initial development of qigong exercises such as the Eight Piece Brocade . There are also some Chinese martial arts styles named after them, which use fighting techniques that are attributed to the characteristics of each immortal. Some drunken boxing styles make extensive use of

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2058-433: The surface meanings of the story. Three Kingdoms , he argues, presents a contrast between the ideal—that is, dynastic order—and the reality of political collapse and near-anarchy; Water Margin likewise presents heroic stories from the popular tradition in a way that exposes the heroism as brutal and selfish; Journey to the West is an outwardly serious spiritual quest undercut by comic and sometimes bawdy tone. Jin Ping Mei

2107-572: The term " classic novels " in reference to these six titles is a "neologism of twentieth-century scholarship" that seems to have come into common use under the influence of C. T. Hsia's The Classic Chinese Novel . He adds that he is not sure at what point in the Qing or early twentieth century this became a "fixed critical category", but the grouping appears in a wide range of critical writing. Paul Ropp notes that "an almost universal consensus affirms six works as truly great". Hsia views them as "historically

2156-672: The term that in later times came to be used for fiction. Early examples of narrative classics include Bowuzhi , A New Account of the Tales of the World , Soushen Ji , Wenyuan Yinghua , Great Tang Records on the Western Regions , Miscellaneous Morsels from Youyang , Taiping Guangji and Yijian Zhi . The novel as an extended prose narrative that realistically creates a believable world evolved in China and in Europe from

2205-513: The two major schools are the Buddhist and Daoist styles: Creation of the Buddhist style of zui quan is attributed to Shaolin temple. At the beginning of the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD), 13 monks from the Shaolin temple intervened in a great war to help Li Shimin against rebel forces. The role of the monks was prominent so Li Shimin, as the next emperor, appreciated the monks' help and bestowed on them officialdom, land, and wealth. In ceremony of

2254-423: The victory, he sent the temple a gift of meat and wine. Because of the emperor's permission, the monks could abandon the Buddhist rule of not consuming meat and wine. This happened around 621 AD and since then, some Shaolin monks have consumed wine. According to some, the drunken style was first introduced in the Song dynasty (960–1279 AD). It is said that a famous martial artist named Liu Qizan accidentally killed

2303-469: The way for the great novels of the 18th century. Plaks further shows these Ming novels share formal characteristics. They almost all contain more than 100 chapters; are divided into ten-chapter narrative blocks, each broken into two- to three-chapter episodes; are arranged in symmetrical halves; and arrange their events in patterns that follow seasons and geography. They manipulated the conventions of popular storytelling in an ironic way in order to go against

2352-431: Was adopted from him by the monks and refined over the generations. The most important Buddhist icons in Shaolin kung fu are Arhats , known in Chinese as Luohans . The same holds for the drunken style as a part of Shaolin kung fu, in which, the main character is the drunken luohan. Drunken luohan methods in Shaolin kung fu do not appear only in zui quan, but in some other styles as well. For example, in Shaolin luohan quan

2401-404: Was of little interest in any case. While tradition attributes Water Margin to Shi Nai'an , there is little or no reliable information on him or even confidence that he existed. The novel, or portions of it, may have been written by Luo Guanzhong , perhaps Shi's student, who was the reputed author of Romance of the Three Kingdoms , or by Shi Hui ( 施惠 ) or Guo Xun ( 郭勛 ). Journey to the West

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