Wudang Eight Immortals Style

武当八仙武学

Eight Immortals Style 八仙武学 is a martial system based on the movement styles of the Eight Immortals, a band of wandering Daoist mystics from the Tang dynasty (618-907 CE). This style has unarmed 拳, staff 棍, and straight sword 剑 forms and is a very advanced set in the San Feng lineage. We did not start learning the Eight Immortals Style until the end of the third year of our training, when we began studying Eight Immortals Staff 八仙棍. After that we moved on to Eight Immortals Sword 八仙剑 in year four. Our class never officially learned the Eight Immortals Fist 八仙拳. However I sneakily learned some of it in year five from an elder Kung Fu brother who had gotten Shifu to teach him. The unarmed style is very gymnastic, what might be classified as a tumbling style 地趟拳, with break falls, rolls, handsprings and flips. The staff is entirely unique. I have never seen another staff form even remotely like it. And the sword is to my mind the peak of Wudang swordsmanship. This was the last sword style we were taught.

This was one of the martial styles grand master Zhong picked up on his years of cloud wandering 云游. In 1985 he and a Daoist brother wandered to Hengshan 衡山 in Hunan Province. I will let him tell the story:

I encountered an old Daoist master from Gansu 甘肃 just as I was traveling to Hengshan’s Southern Peak 南岳衡山. At that time he was over 60 years old. Every day I would practice at that place in a small courtyard. Next to it there was a large cypress tree. Every day he would squat under the tree and watch me train. After a while I began to think, “what a strange old codger.” I knew his last name was Chen 陈, so I asked, “Hey Grandpa Chen, do you know any Kung Fu?” He smiled and said, “a little.” In those times if someone said they knew a little, it certainly meant that they knew a lot. Not like the young people of today who say they can do a lot but can’t even throw a punch. Back then we weren’t like this. Anyway, when he said he could do a little, we were very happy. I said, “let me see.” Only after he had done his Kung Fu did we learn that he was a transmission holder of the Eight Immortals Gate 八仙门. All of his forms had some drunken style in them. The earliest form of drunken fist was the Eight Immortals Fist. His Kung Fu was really excellent. I thought he was great, and wanted to train with him. He happily taught us.

According to Grandpa Chen, this style was originally a Wudang martial art that had traveled northwest and wound up being transmitted in Gansu province. Master Zhong never actually learned Grandpa Chen’s full name, as asking someone’s first name is kind of inappropriate in China unless the person you are asking is your junior. So not even knowing master Chen’s full name, it’s difficult to trace the deeper history of this style.

But there is an interesting parallel lineage for the Eight Immortals Sword 八仙剑 which master Zhao Jianying 赵剑英 trained in. She learned her Eight Immortals Sword under the famous Kung Fu master Sha Guozheng 沙国政 (1904-1993), who learned it from Wang Xian Chen 王显臣 (1881-1935) through whom we can trace this style back to Dong Haichuan 董海川 (1797-1882), a major figure in the development of Baguazhang, who himself claimed to have learned it from a wandering Daoist.

Curriculum 目录

We started learning staff basics in July of 2012, finishing the Eight Immortals Staff that summer. The Eight Immortals Sword we learned in the Spring of 2013. And as for Eight Immortals Fist, I learned it in 2014 shortly before leaving Wudang. As I mentioned above, we never practiced that one as a class.

八仙基本功 Eight Immortals basics

1. 基本棍法 Staff Basics

2. 八仙基本剑法 Eight Immortals Sword Basics

3. 醉拳基本功法 Drunken Fist Basic Methods

套路 Forms

1. 八仙棍 Eight Immortals Staff

2. 八仙剑 Eight Immortals Sword

3. 八仙拳 Eight Immortals Fist