Tai Chi, Baguazhang and The Golden Elixir

The Immortal & the Angry Baby

General Qi Jiguang was coughing up blood, near death in a field hospital, when he received a visit from the Sage Lin Zhao'en. The Sage performed a martial exorcism with explosions and a talisman to capture pirate ghosts who blamed General Qi for their deaths. General Qi was completely healed. The Sage then taught General Qi the Golden Elixir, cementing a lifelong bond.

Sage Lin claimed that he learned the Golden Elixir in secret night-visits from the Immortal Zhang Sanfeng. The Immortal was a theatrical character, known for defeating twenty-four palace guards with thirty-two moves while snoring like an earthquake and smelling of booze and vomit-thirty-two moves that General Qi wrote about and later became known as Tai Chi!

The dragon-killer Nezha cut his flesh from his bones and returned it to his parents. He was done. Or so it seemed, until Nezha's secret father Taiyi descended from the sky and gave him a new body made of lotus flowers and the Golden Elixir-making him invincible.

Nezha was China's most important hero-god-so important that caravan guards and rebels nicknamed Beijing "Nezha City." In 1900 thousands of Boxers possessed by Nezha died fighting foreign guns. Blamed and ridiculed for this failure, martial artists who practiced the dance of Nezha hid their history and gave their art a new name-Baguazhang!

The reason you never heard these histories is so dark that few have dared to speak about it, until now... Completely new and meticulously researched, Tai Chi, Baguazhang and the Golden Elixir erases a hundred and twenty years of confusion and error to reveal the specific theatrical and religious origins of Chinese Internal Martial Arts.

His main premise is that in the early 20th century, in the wake of the Boxer Rebellion, China drastically altered its own martial arts, intentionally stripping them of their religious and theatrical trappings and creating a somewhat dubious history that the "pure arts" were just about noble, righteous, practical fighting skills. Curiously, he argues, this approach was subsequently adopted both by the Chinese communists as well as the Chinese anti-communists....The book is also extremely well-sourced, with a detailed bibliography. I would highly recommend this book as a fascinating and thought provoking read for anyone with an interest in Chinese martial arts. --Goodreads Review by Kyle Fiske

This book is an excellent follow up to Possible Origins, building on the author's previous research and expanding into the origins of Baguazhang. The author does a great job describing the cultural context which gave birth to these arts and the complex milieu of beliefs, ritual, and theatre from which they grew. Highly recommended.--Amazon Review by Greg Ripley

If you look at cultural context of Martial Arts they make much more sense; ritual, theatre and martial arts together. I always felt "the forms" I practice told a story that I did not know. Phillips' insight helped me fill in some gaps, connect to a ritual that I didn't even know existed and made my practice more meaningful. Heck I minored in religious studies, so I dig this stuff and even more so, it's cool to connect to something bigger. --Amazon Review by Gregg Fischer

The core premise of the book is that Tai Chi & Baguazhang's origins are deeply tied to Chinese religion and ritual - both of which have seen decades of immense repression and erasure, which leaves massive gaps in context both in movement and philosophy. This book draws a lot of ties, points to a lot of sources, but does not attempt to comprehensively fill in those gaps, but rather point people in the right direction of where to look for further research. If you are a passionate explorer of one of these arts and martial arts history, sometimes just having the right questions or a perspective to open up new ideas for where to look next in finding the ties to the past of your art can be invaluable. --Amazon Review by Christopher Chinn

Fantastic book. Well written and worth the read if your interested in viewing the internal arts from a non-fundamentalist attitude.---Amazon Review by Brian C Schwartz

Scott Park Phillips has a reputation for making his students stronger, smarter, richer, funnier and better looking. He lives in Colorado, where he mixes martial arts with improvisational theater, dance ethnology, and Daoist studies.

The Immortal & the Angry Baby...General Qi Jiguang was coughing up blood, near death in a field hospital, when he received a visit from the Sage Lin Zhao'en. The Sage performed a martial exorcism with explosions and a talisman to capture pirate ghosts who blamed General Qi for their deaths. General Qi was completely healed. The Sage then taught General Qi the Golden Elixir, cementing a lifelong bond.Sage Lin claimed that he learned the Golden Elixir in secret night-visits from the Immortal Zhang Sanfeng. The Immortal was a theatrical character, known for defeating twenty-four palace guards with thirty-two moves while snoring like an earthquake and smelling of booze and vomit-thirty-two moves that General Qi wrote about and later became known as Tai Chi! The dragon-killer Nezha cut his flesh from his bones and returned it to his parents. He was done. Or so it seemed, until Nezha's secret father Taiyi descended from the sky and gave him a new body made of lotus flowers and the Golden Elixir-making him invincible.Nezha was China's most important hero-god-so important that caravan guards and rebels nicknamed Beijing "Nezha City." In 1900 thousands of Boxers possessed by Nezha died fighting foreign guns. Blamed and ridiculed for this failure, martial artists who practiced the dance of Nezha hid their history and gave their art a new name-Baguazhang!The reason you never heard these histories is so dark that few have dared to speak about it, until now... Completely new and meticulously researched, Tai Chi, Baguazhang and the Golden Elixir erases a hundred and twenty years of confusion and error to reveal the specific theatrical and religious origins of Chinese Internal Martial Arts.

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