When people think of Dragons in China or dragons are depicted in art, they are usually not shown on the ground walking around chit chatting. Instead, Dragons are usually shown flying through mists and clouds high in remote mountains. The image of their movement is that they are flying magically without wings. Instead, they twist, turn, and fly with a spiraling twisting sinuous type of movement. Dragons have a hidden mystical aspect. Dragons can only be seen by humans when the Dragon wishes. Otherwise, a Dragon remains effortlessly hidden, invisible, mysterious, and incredibly powerful. When Dragons do appear, they are seen as magical, celestial beings bringing the blessings of divine good luck and prosperity.
The name “swimming dragon” is used as a prefix for some styles of Ba Gua Zhang. Ba Gua Zhang, or 8 Diagrams Palm, is a secretive and rare style of Chinese kung fu. Ba Gua Zhang embodies the philosophy of the famous “I Ching” or “Book of Change” that contains the 8 Diagrams and is used for predicting the correct strategy to use to engage the emerging future.
The name, “8 Diagrams Palm”, or “Ba Gua Zhang”, is long enough for most people. However, when discussing their own style some practitioners like to flower up the name a bit calling their style “Swimming Dragon Ba Gua Zhang” or even “Swimming Dragon, Connecting Links, Ba Gua Zhang”. The reason a Swimming Dragon is chosen is because the image of a dragon swimming is very evocative of a smooth flowing spiral movement filled with power. This type of movement is the essence of the Style of Ba Gua Zhang whose practitioners seem to swim in the air with spiraling arms, and twisting torsos while walking in a circle. If any martial art can be said to embody the movement of a Dragon surely it must be the art of Ba Gua Zhang. Ba Gua Zhang, or 8 Diagrams Palm is filled with continuously linking spiral movements of both the legs, torso, and arms. These spirally movements are used to penetrate the opponent’s defenses, throw them, and to escape from their clutches.
The art of Ba Gua Zhang has several different lineages. Originally, Ba Gua Zhang was founded by Tung Hai Chuan in approximately 1860. When he began teaching in Beijing all his original students were already expert martial artists except for Liang Zhen Pu who was a brave shepherd boy. Because Tung taught each of these expert fighters uniquely to develop their individual prowess building upon what they already knew, each diverged into unique lineages. With no previous foundation in martial arts, Liang Zhen Pu, learned a purer form of Ba Gua Zhang from its founder. This style has many dragon references and names “Blue Dragon Bears its Claws”, “Black Dragon Swings its Tail” and many others.
Before moving to Beijing, the founder of Ba Gua Zhang Tung Hai Chuan worked for 25 years in Mongolia collecting taxes for the Empress of China. One can imagine the Mongolians being rather uncooperative with the collection of taxes. Since Mongolians are also often huge and strong, and whose national sport is wrestling, Tung would have had his work cut out for him.
During this period one disciple traveled with him for the entire 25 years, named Yin Fu. Yin Fu spent far longer learning from Tung Hai Chuan than any other student and learned a vastly more complex system of Ba Gua Zhang than Tung’s later disciples did. In the Yin Fu lineage of Ba Gua Zhang there are 9 different animals: 1 for each of the 8 diagrams of the I Ching or “Book of Changes” and the ninth for the yin yang symbol itself.
One of the animals was the Dragon. Xei Pei Qi, the last inheritor of the full system of Yin Fu Ba Gua Zhang, told me all of Tung Hai Chan’s later students learned only the Dragon style. In this case the Dragon was the grandmasters choice later in life as the best for professional fighters and bodyguards to cultivate. The unique aspect of the Dragon in terms of body method in this style was to emphasize the actuation and origination of movements deep in the shoulders, and hips and minimizing the use of the elbow, knee, ankle, or wrist. Other animals in Yin Fu Ba Gua Zhang emphasized the movement of other joints in different combinations.
There is also a Dragon Style of Ba Gua Zhang. This style contains only a single long and magnificent hand form. This BGZ Dragon style was created in the early 20th century. My teacher Liu Wan Fu mastered this style, and it is filled with practical movements for self-defense and close quarters standing grappling techniques. When you watch the Dragon Style of Ba Gua Zhang being performed you can easily imagine the movement of a dragon swirling through the twisting turning rising falling spiraling and unwinding movements. Liu Wan Fu had such structural integrity and flawless body method it was easy to imagine people flying away from him with each powerful rotation of his body.