Talk:Baguazhang/Archive 1

Archive 1

Translations and transliteration

This is a very narrow view (only Xie Peiqi's version). The translations 'Pakua Hand Movements' and 'Pakua Circular Dance' are also pretty strange.

Also, should this be Bagua? Bagua zhang? Baguazhang? How do we separate this?

Finally, dragons, phoenixes, and especially unicorns seem out of place here. While 'dragon' and 'phoenix' are often (mis)translated from 'long' and 'fenghuang,' unicorn is not often used as a translation of qilin (kirin) anymore. Edededed 06:53, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

I agree, some of those alternate translations just seem confusing to me.

Aparrenly this isn't related to Karety —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.105.86.153 (talk) 08:18, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I prefer the spelling "Baguazhang" instead of "Bagua zhang", as I believe this is the most correct Pinyin form, and according to Google, this also seems to be the most popular of the two. Just "Bagua" could be confusing as that could also refer to the theory of the eight trigrams itself (as described in I Ching). I think, however that all the others should redirect to the same place.

I don't know enough about the style to comment on the animal translations, but I have never heard of the unicorn in any other Chinese martial arts. Feel free to change this if you have time, and it would be great if the animal names in Chinese and Pinyin could be included too.

-Wintran 18:00, 25 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Yes, this is the Xie Peiqi version mainly. I understand other bagua systems do not contain all of these eight animals. I think it could be wise to mention those "wrong" translations of the animal names, since people use them, and point out that it is not so correct. Since the page long only contains other meanings of the word, I'll point the link back to Chinese dragon. Don't think the link to Snake kung fu has much to do with the snake in bagua? Habj 02:01, 12 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Some corrections and deletions

I made some corrections/deletions today, mainly:

1. Yin style is not the only style that has large weapons 2. Guo Yunshen did NOT practice Baguazhang, so I deleted that paragraph 3. Toned down the writing a bit to make it sound more serious (i.e., 'ridiculously large', etc. expressions changed, discussion board mention deleted, etc.)

Sorry, I didn't log in, but it was me... Edededed 02:48, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Deleted the line/paragraph "Of all of Dong Haichuan's students, Yin Fu studied with him the longest. Lie" Aparently this is a contentious claim, the contention was not addressed, and it seems like a trivial point for the art as such. Theophan (talk) 16:14, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

Rephrasing

Nice article, folks! Just wanted to drop a note and put my name on that anonymous edit, which I made before getting a username. Apologies if I stepped on any toes, as I'm new here; not quite sure what the ettiquette on prose style editing is, but from the articles I've read I've gotten the impression it's "jump right in" so I did. I tried to stick to rephrasing the prose and avoid changing the content much, being a wikipedia newbie and only a bagua dabbler... jes37226 12:00, 28 Sep 2004

The rephrasing is an improvement, thanks. Welcome to Wikipedia. Fire Star 14:03, 30 Sep 2004 (UTC)

How technical should the article be?

How technical should this article be? For example, I could say that Crossing from Hsing I is closely related to the Single Palm Change in Ba Gua, but would that be too technical?

Pess

Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_martial_art add yourself!

Wikipedia:List_of_Wikipedians_by_martial_art

This is quite different from what I'm learning...

Well, my subject says it all, really. I am certainly no expert, but what I read here seems quite different from what I've been taught.

I'd like to provide a couple of links for your viewing pleasure:
Pa-Kua International
Pa-Kua USA
Pa-Kua Arizona (This is specifically where I'm training.. and I also maintain the webpage, so if you see any errors, please let me know!)

I'm not going to do any editing of this topic, because I don't want to do any toe stepping, and it sounds like these are simply different lineages with different stories of how it was passed down, and obviously very different modern day styles.

I think I am in part guilty to the bias in the article, since I early on added external links to Xie Peiqi Yin Style pages. Later I noticed lots of info kept coming from those pages to the article. Currently I actually don't know how large part of the article is Xie Peiqi Yin Style... but the eight animal thing is specific to him, right? The problem is, so few people have an overall picture of all variants of bagua! and when ten people of different lineages writes bits here and there, the result is often disastrous. Take a look at karate for example. Lots of people have written "facts" about karate that are true onely in their styles or schools, later corrected to "in some schools" leaving the article as a mess of "in some karate styles" etc.

I do think though that it would be valuable if you tried to add your version. Then we can hopefully merge it in some way. It is not so easy to clean it up, but we could try... /Habj 23:25, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm a member of Pa Kua International, but we consider Pa Kua to be a more complete martial art than Pa Kua Chuan.. I, however, am not familiar enough with Chuan to say with great accuracy that the difference would be. Oh, and to my knowledge, in China, the Pa Kua martial art(Pa Kua is the correct spelling; bagua is a phonetic equivelent. Like Peking and Beijing) regarded as somewhat mysterious.--Vercalos 08:17, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Baguazhang is the correct spelling, as per Pinyin romanization; Wade-Giles romanization spells the same thing Pa-Kua-Chang. Neither will produce the correct sounds when given to a typical English speaker to read without teaching them the respective romanization. Bagua = Pa-Kua = 八卦. The Zhang/Chang (掌) or Quan/Ch'uan (拳) at the end of the name signifies that it is a martial art; without that suffix, Bagua/Pakua is a name of a certain philosophical idea (see the respective article) and not the name of a separate martial art. However, English-speakers often feel that Zhang or Quan makes the word too long, and thus chop it off - thus we have "Tai-Chi" and so forth, when the original word is Taijiquan/Tai-Chi-Ch'uan.

The difference in spelling in Peking and Beijing is more complex; Beijing is Pinyin; Pei-Ching is Wade-Giles. Hundreds of years ago, however, they really called the capital something like "Peking" or "Beiking" - thus the old name. However, pronunciations change, and thus we have the new spelling and the new name.

Edededed 03:09, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Orphan paragraph

About 1796: Shang ch’uan, or "Turning Palms," is created in Anwei Province, perhaps by a man named Tung Meng-lin. Although often said to be a Taoist movement art, shang ch’uan was widely practiced by Chinese Muslims during the 1850s. It gained its modern name of pa kua ch’uan, or "Eight Trigrams Palms," during the 1870s. A boxer from Hopei Province named Tung Hai-ch’uan may have been responsible for the latter name change. (He was not Muslim, but Taoist.) Be that as it may, the pa kua ch’uan practiced by the White Lotus rebel Wang Lun in Shantung Province from 1751 to 1774 is an unrelated martial art.[1]

• "?". Kronos: 1700-1859. Retrieved May 23, 2005.

This, while interesting, has some problems. For starters, ch'uan or quan means fist, not palm. It has good info, but needs to be edited into the article more harmoniously. Fire Star 20:37, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Bagua was developed by Dong Haichuan (董海川) in the early 19th century, who apparently learnt from Taoist and Buddhist masters in the mountains of rural China. There is evidence to suggest a synthesis of several pre-existing martial arts taught and practiced in the region he lived in, combined with Taoist circle walking.

Perhaps the orphan paragraph could be edited in right about here?

Dong Haichuan taught for many years in Beijing, eventually earning patronage by the Imperial court. Famous disciples of Dong to become teachers were Yin Fu (尹福), Cheng Tinghua (程廷華), Song Changrong (宋長榮), Liu Fengchun (劉鳳春) and Ma Weiqi (馬維棋). Although they were all students of the same teacher, their methods of training and expressions of palm techniques differed. The Cheng and Liu styles are said to specialize in "Pushing" the palms, Yin style is known for "Threading" the palms, Song's followers practice "Plum Flower" (梅花 Mei Hua) palm technique and Ma style palms are known as "Hammers." Some of Dong Haichuan's students, including Cheng Tinghua (who was killed), participated in the Boxer Rebellion.

Comments? Fire Star 21:16, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Requested move

Typically transliterated as a single word using standard pinyin transliteration system

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Add *Support or *Oppose followed by an optional one sentence explanation, then sign your opinion with ~~~~

• Support I've seen the transliterations "Baguazhang," "Pa Kua Chang" and even "Ba Gua Chang," but I've never seen "Bagua zhang."JFD 18:32, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
• Support. I have been in the martial arts for many years, and haven't seen this idiosyncratic division anywhere else, either. I much prefer Baguazhang. Fire Star 20:16, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
• Support While there might be other opinions for Southern arts (where Cantonese is the way of things), Baguazhang is also centered in Beijing - to that note, we might as well write up the others to follow suit, i.e. Taijiquan, Xingyiquan, etc. Edededed 00:58, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

I think Xingyiquan has been. Since so much of the Western literature on T'ai Chi uses Wade-Giles I'd prefer to keep the W-G, but we've ended up with the broken down Tai Chi Chuan, for some reason. Fire Star 01:34, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

This article has been renamed after the result of a move request. Dragons flight 19:37, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

Discussion

Add any additional comments

I hope this comment will show up in the appropriate place -- I'm not quite familiar with the Wikipedia system.

In any case, I seem to be running into either a display or detail issue with how the table with the eight trigrams is showing up; while the trigram names match the "animal" forms (qian trigram corresponds to lion form, kan to snake and so on), the trigram images appearing -- at least on my browser (Firefox 1.0) -- do not match either the trigram names or the associated forms. The equivalent tablee on the Bagua_(concept) page does not seem to have this problem, so I doubt that my browser is the issue here.

Removing Biases

The "title" column in the Table is somewhat biased in that not all (and probably only one) systems of Baguazhang use these forces/movements as each of the trigrams. The animals themselves, however, are not biased, in that the animals are already defined in terms of Bagua philosophy, even though they are not used to name forms or movements in each baguazhang style (however, more than one style makes use of them, including Xie Peiqi's version, Sun Lutang's version, and others). In a rut, I think that perhaps this column should be either removed or removed and moved to another section of the article to either more generalize this article, or if everyone wants to make it more specific, add sections for each baguazhang style with specifics included in those sections.

Edededed 05:31, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Associated correct Yi Jing trigram with each Bāguà

In the table of Yi Jing trigrams, I associated the correct Yi Jing trigram with each Bāguà. Refer to [Yi Jing]. CraigLeger 15:15, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

On this point; the Yijing is actually not considered by most modern Sinologists to be a "Daoist" text (I'll find evidence of this, naturally - but when I learnt Chinese, my Chinese civilisation lecturer made a point of calling the Yijing a Confucian text, rather than a Daoist one). Of course, it predates both Daoism and Confucianism, but it is most often considered to have semi-Confucian overtones. In any case, it is never defined, when one is talking of so-called "Daoist" martial arts, what kind of Daoism they are supposed to reflect - philosophical Daoism never seems to be part of it, and it is only the religious/degenerate Daoism that is supposed to be represented in Baguazhang/Xingyiquan/Taijiquan. I think we have to bear in mind that the founders of these styles were illiterate, and since Daojia Daoism (philosophical Daoism) is associated with the intelligentsia, it is only to be expected that the martial artists would base any philosophical/scientific foundation on the populist forms of Chinese religion. Actually, most martial philosophy and science strikes me as reasonably Neo-Confucian (Lixue). It is important, I think, not to isolate martial arts in China from Chinese culture, which is something that happens too often; if martial artists bandy around the terms "Daoist", "Buddhist", "Confucian", "Yijing" etc, without proper definition as accepted by most sinologists, then martial arts might not be seen as the dignified representations of Chinese culture that they are.Blackjamm 11:00, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

    Yes, i believe that the Yijing is considered more as a confucian text.  It is part of the Five Classics of Confucianism from ancient china, as well as the four classics of neo confucianism from the more recent Song dynasty.  Here i want to further indicate an grammatical issue i have with the first paragraph.  particularly the part which is referenced with the first footnote.  it says that the Yijing is one of the canons of Daoism.  Grammatically speaking, shouldnt it read: the Yijing is one part of the Daoist canon.  I believe that canon refers to the entire collection, not just one volume.--bredmond812 (p.s. i hope i didnt violate rules of posting.  i am not familiar with the wikipedia system.  please advise if this is the case.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.102.253.233 (talk) 07:52, 18 September 2010 (UTC) 

Selecting Links

We should probably cull the links that are on the page - I think that only links that provide a good source of historical and/or technical information about baguazhang should be included; perhaps it would be good to leave only those sites that are considered good, accurate sources by the majority of practitioners as well.

Edededed 05:43, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

IMO I found that only one or two of the links seemed to offer any real content. The rest of the websites seem to promote their own schools, and I think a bias should be avoided. (If there is a really good source on a particular school's website, could we link to the particular article and not the main site?) Perhaps I'm somewhat stubborn, but I think we should go down to 1-3 links for the time being.

Agree. Remove all links that have only commercial value. Only link to pages that really add value to subject. If major information is found in a link, consider adding the essence of that to the article and remove link. JohJak2 11:38, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

References in fiction?

I can think of two references in fiction to the martial art off the top of my head; The One, the good Jet Li uses Pa Kua, while the evil one uses Hsing Yi, and Avatar, the Last Airbender, as Airbender movements are based on Pa Kua.--Vercalos 06:40, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I can't think of the name of it for the life of me, but wasn't there briefly a show on the WB some years back about a guy who taught Baguazhang to inner-city youth?--MythicFox 11:43, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I remember that show. It was one of those show where they cast 30-year-olds as teenagers...just like every other show on the WB.
JFD 13:05, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Found it.
JFD 13:29, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

External Links

Please do not include links to schools, excepting those that can be qualified as an unbiased resource for general practitioners of the art. Neither the Tai Chi nor Xinyiquan articles have such a slew of personal sites. I can only attribute this to the general lack of information about Bagua in America and Europe, but it doesnt exempt this article from rules governing Wikipedia External Links. Thank you VanTucky 21:42, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Problems with Baguazhang in pop culture Section

I am writing to contest the entry of:

• In the video game Dead or alive, the character Helena uses Baguazhang.

As well as:

• In the video game Tekken 3, the character Ling Xiaoyu uses Baguazhang.

A brief lookup in the manuals or even the offical sites for the games on the web Helena's style has always been called "Pi Qua Quan". Ling Xiaoyu's, the exact wording is "Hakke Ken, Hike Ken & Various Chinese Martial Arts" They have never been described by the games creator's as having Baguazhang style of fighting.

I feel that these entries and related links need to be removed as they are not correct, as for the others I don't know but perhaps they need checked as well.

Unless I am missing something that their styles are related or were once mentioned being Baguazhang style. Altherix 20:48, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

i'm removing the mention of Helena and Ling XiaoYu as using baguazhang. Thanks. Xah Lee 12:21, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, I checked the Japanese site (http://www.tekken-official.jp/tkdrpsp/character/xiaoyu.html) and it says that Xiaoyu practices "Piguaquan, Baguazhang, and other Chinese martial arts." (Also note that Pi Qua Quan is a misspelling of Piguaquan, as "qua" is simply not standard romanization of Chinese (yes, Helena practices Piguaquan).)

Edededed 14:40, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Naming of the article

should the article be named Bāguàzhǎng or without the accent marks Baguazhang? this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(Chinese) doesn't seem to be clear on the issue. Xah Lee 12:21, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Geographical Distribution Paragraph

Regarding Tanemura Shoto:

What is this "grandmaster" nonsense? Also, as it is highly unlikely that a student's teacher AND his teacher's teacher will both grant discipleship to him, so perhaps sources would be nice? (I.e. Sato Kinbei AND Li Ziming (not "Li Zu Ming") cannot both take Tanemura as a disciple.)

Also, as Tanemura seems to be either teaching only ninjutsu and not baguazhang or at least ninjutsu as his main specialty, mentioning him seems hardly relevant in regard to the main distribution of baguazhang practitioners. (Also note that the paragraph relates to geographical distribution of baguazhang in China.)

The blurb about He Kecai (Ho Ho Choy) also seems rather long compared to the short phrases given to most lineages; seems a bit strange to give a large blurb for everybody (should we also add one for Sun Lutang, Gong Baotian, etc.?). These should probably be added to their respective pages instead.

Edededed 14:54, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Overhauling

Ok, I've gone through and separated out all of the different style-specific information as much as possible. I tried to keep the perspective on the history of Baguazhang in general limited only to those facts which are accepted by all modern styles.

When it came time to discuss histories which were contradictory or lineages which split, I separated them into their own styles. There is a clear predominance of information on Yin Style versus all other styles in this article, which is probably due to the fact that the modern Yin system has far fewer practitioners, and therefore fewer people to disagree on fine points of detail. An authoritative look on the non-Yin styles is needed.

I considered simply making a separate page for Yin Style Baguazhang, but I figured I'd check here first and see what everyone else thinks. Should each individual style of Baguazhang have its own page?

The Geographic Distribution section seems out of place, but I couldn't think of anywhere else it should go to put it. Also, much of this section was actually a list of additional styles of Baguazhang, so I put those paragraphs into the section on 'Other Styles'.

Finally, I removed several sections which were had no basis in fact. Most of it was just little word changes, honestly. Example: changed from 'many schools teach' to 'some schools teach'. Another example is the wording surrounding the discussion of Yin's students. Yin was well known to have had very few students, as several of the page's sources explain...the previous wording, however, seemed to indicate that he had a great many students, without explicitly saying so. I changed the wording a bit to keep the meaning, while limiting the chance for misunderstanding.

Maintainerzero 17:51, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Should each individual style of Baguazhang have its own page?

If its section grows big enough, certainly.

JFD 18:00, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Yin style could certainly have its own page if there is enough content to at least make a stub. It certainly meets notability and other tests for inclusion. There are many style pages connected to Tai chi chuan as you can see. Feel free to create one. VanTucky 19:13, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I went ahead and created the Yin Style page, and moved the Yin Style content from here over to there. Would be great if someone with a bit of history in the Cheng Style could do the same. I also added a list in the 'modern styles' area with links to those pages. Right now the Cheng and Other Styles links just go to their respective headings on this page.

Maintainerzero 20:09, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Where to learn in L.A. ? or a website for finding well respected locations to learn ? or world and national headquarters for various styles ?

Hello,

I'm looking for a place to practice in L.A. Where would I figure out how to find something? While I don't think the article or talk page should directly advertise specific locations to learn, I think it should be more helpful in directing someone who is interested in the right direction. Thanks. Tkjazzer 21:05, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

I can't think of a way to provide that kind of information any more than it already is by the list of references. Providing specific school information would clearly be advertising. There is NO world headquarters of any kind for Baguazhang that I am aware of, and I think if someone was looking for a school in their area they could always just Google it?

Maintainerzero 19:24, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Removal of Pop Culture Section

Removed the following section due to guidelines established by the Martial Arts WikiProject:

Baguazhang in pop culture

• In Jet Li's movie, The One, the protagonist uses Baguazhang, while the villain character uses Xingyiquan, possibly reflecting the tale of a sparring match between Dong Haichuan and Guo Yunshen.
• In the anime and manga Naruto, the characters Neji Hyuga and Hinata Hyuga use a style similar to Baguazhang, the former having techniques containing "Eight Trigrams Palm" in their names.
• In the video game series Tekken, the character Ling Xiaoyu uses Baguazhang mixed with Piguaquan and other styles.
• The art of Airbending in Avatar the Last Airbender is based on Baguazhang.
• In the manga and anime Negima!, student #12 [Fei] uses Baguazhang, as well as Xingyiquan and other styles.
• Black Sash, a television show that aired for six episodes in 2003, revolved around the instructor and students of a martial arts school where Baguazhang was taught.

Maintainerzero 19:22, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup, Style Article Creation

Went through and cleaned up various spelling errors/inconsistencies throughout. Also, removed all style based information, and created links to new style pages (which I plan to create stubs for in a moment). Per the discussion above, having style based information tends to just clutter the main article, so having separate articles for each makes much more sense (in the same manner as the Tai Chi article).

As people with the appropriate style information wish to add content, they can now do so in a style's own page, ensuring the maximum amount of content applicable to each style is allowed to stay.

Also, per the discussion in the Martial Arts Wikiproject, I removed the old chinese language infobox, and replaced it with the martial arts infobox, which contains all the same information as the old one, plus information related to the art itself.

Finally, I removed the whole section on geographical distribution of practitioners, as it provided an extremely narrow, unverifiable viewpoint, and made little sense in relation to the overall article. Maintainerzero 15:29, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Ok, stubs created. If any new style articles need to be created (I'm sure I didn't hit them all, I only created those with information on the old main page), please create them with the same naming scheme as the others. (examples: Fu Style Baguazhang, Cheng Style Baguazhang) Maintainerzero 15:53, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Styles by Focus

Baguazhang should be moved from "striking" to "mixed," seeing that it includes extensive striking, throwing, locking, and weapons in its technical repertoire. (I don't know how to do this, so if most of us are okay with the move, I hope someone can do it for me :) ). Edededed 02:26, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree.

-- Maintainerzero 14:47, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Ho Ho Choi is a sub system of Gao Style Bagua

I made a small change to the Styles List entry. It would be more appropriate to enter it as Gao Style Bagua, not Ho Ho Choi style. Ho Ho Choi AKA He Cuo Cai was a student of Gao Yi Sheng. Really nice to see the Baguazhnag entry got cleaned up, it was terrible. Nice work. I'll check back in a few days to see responces. Monkman29000 22:02, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like a good change to me. When I went through and did the major article overhaul, I simply didn't know enough about that style to infer that information from the source.

Maintainerzero 16:29, 13 July 2007 (UTC)

Attempted to Add Cites

I tried to add some cites from Crandall's excellent translations. I think I have the cite template correct, but not the link to it. I can not believe something so important to Wikipedia's success is so difficult to implement. I am a Java Coder and still can't figure out what all the gook on citing. Will be back.

Blogwalker 02:35, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

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Added Cites using the ref format. --Blogwalker (talk) 02:50, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

Edits by 66.133.245.117

in the last few days, 66.133.245.117 has made a large number of changes to this article. Although some of these changes seem to contain reasonable information, much of their tone is non-encyclopedic. I tried to revert, but couldn't work out how to revert so many changes. Specifically the problems are:

"Before going into detail, baguazhang is one of the most beautiful, inspiring, spiritually uplifting and complete of the Chinese arts. It is flowing, magical, and as deadly as it is healing. 'A dragon playing in the clouds', The 'sister' of taiji and hsing-i, it is characteristically feminine, spherical, spiraling, coiling and uncoiling."

This text is definitely inappropriate. it is mostly opinion and laced with a strong emotional undertone.

Baguazhang has its roots in the Martial art of the Vajra Ksatriya which is called Vajra Mukti, then to the Bonpo shaman of Tibet. The Bonpo would walk circles (mandala), hold postures (mudra), Chant/tone (mantra), and open gateways (this is the origin of the Japanese Bon dance which is done in a circle). From Tibet, the art Baguazhang was created in Kunlun Mountain range along with Taoism, which then spread through the mountains of china and then into the mountains of southeast Asia (Kuntao, Hmong, Muay Lao, etc.) Baguazhang and its roots come from the deeply spiritual, thunder and lightning practices of the shaman. Wudang Dragon Gate [longmenpai ('complete understanding' sect)] Baguazhang retains much of its root with practices such as Snake Baguazhang, Dragon baguazhang, Tibetan thunder and lightning boxing, Kunlun baguazhang. Wu wai moon's Wudang Wu family lineage (the 'black khan' advisors to ghengis khan) was passed to wu hsio deng , to wu hsiao shr and to lao xie lee matsuo of dragon gate sanctuary, Honolulu, Hawaii. From Wudang mountain, the Art was taught to a man named Dong haichuan in the early 19th century.

This paragraph sounds fine by itself, but doesn't fit in with the following paragraph, in fact some of the information is the same. If this is to remain, it should be incorporated properly into the article.

The original form of baguazhang was wudang snake baguazhang. The Dragon Style came later, as it sounds more celestial.

"sounds more celestial"? really? Definitely not appropriate for an encyclopedia.

Naga', which is the root term for serpent, was the original term for the energy 'awakened' in the Bagua practitioner. The essence of the 8 forces of nature or bagua are all contained in the heaven palm aka single palm change. This shows the authenticity of the bagua style as the heaven palm is the nucleus of all other palm changes. Authenticity can also be found in the bagua 'post', circle walking method, 8 power palms, 8 mother palms, 9 palaces, and silk reeling which are the pillars of baguazhang. Detailed knowledge and articulation of mudra, mantra and mandala are also foundation. Baguazhang is the articulation of Taoism from physical to spiritual form, therefore can be articulated and taught intelligently. Baguazhang is spiritual, medical and martial qigong.

Confusing and convoluted. Actually it just sounds like complete nonsense. If any of this is to remain it should be re-worded.

All of the above seems to be sourced from http://www.dragongatesanctuary.com, a reference to which was also added to the bottom. The website belongs to a spiritual school that teaches martial arts, it is not an unbiased source of information and most of it sounds like new-age nonsense. 118.209.54.167 (talk) 11:06, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I've trimmed the remaining dragongatesanctuary POV copy-paste, and added citation requests. If no references are added in the next week or two, I'm going to take it out entirely; it's poorly written, unsubstantiated and conveys little useful information about baguazhang to the reader. Yunshui (talk) 08:57, 19 November 2009 (UTC)

Introduction

This article is great, and highly-developed. But if you show it to someone who understands nothing of BaGua, the introduction is so esoteric, and references so much of what is not English culture that I'm sure it loses a lot of people. BaGua is awesome and amazing, and at last gaining popularity in the 21st century. I propose rewriting the introduction such that the lay-person can understand that the basis of BaGuaZhang is gait and highly-skilled stepping, etc. I propose to rewrite the introduction with clarity for the lay-person, and somehow, integrated superlatives of the art to demonstrate how it is the "graduate study of all martial arts." What thinks thee ? TommyKirchhoff (talk) 00:39, 18 May 2011 (UTC)