This contemporary sword form is a combined form used in competition. It’s difficult, subtle, and sophisticated, with elements of all four major styles of Tai Chi — Yang, Chen, Sun, and Wu. I’m hoping to learn it well enough to work with Hu Pei when she comes back this spring.
Hou Ju Tui Jia Jian
On the left, Amin Wu demonstrates one of the more striking and unusual moves in 42-Sword.
As usual, I’m starting with a demonstration video and list of names just to get the rough sequence. The demo is a beautiful video of Amin Wu doing 42-Sword.
I haven’t yet found a definitive list of names in Chinese. I’m still looking. For now, I have two. The first list is Pinyin only, and it seems a bit sketchy (some words appear to be missing). I’d rather have the Chinese and look up the pinyin for myself.
The second list is Chinese, but alas, it’s all images. Not possible to copy and paste into a dictionary to get Pinyin and translation. There is a wealth of good information about Tai Chi sword on Phil Cheung’s page. I wish I could read it better. Here are the links.
I’ve just about got the sequence figured out, so the next step is to get Long Feng to lead me through it and show me some of the more baffling moves. I’ll also work my way through some instructional videos. There are three instructionals that I’ll use. I don’t have Jesse Tsao’s yet. His will be in English.
Amin Wu
Li Deyin’s instructional videos are in Chinese, and I wish I could figure out more of the parts where he simply talks, but it’s not hard to follow the demonstrations and specific instructions. I have the DVD, but it’s also on Youtube, in two parts (with lots of commercials, and rather poor video and sound quality, unfortunately).
On Youtube, I also found a complete set of videos with much better visual and audio quality, by Amin Wu, whose detailed instructions are quite clear, especially if you understand some basic instructional vocabulary. Love these!
- Amin Wu, 1-5
- Amin Wu, 6-11
- Amin Wu, 12-16
- Amin Wu, 17-21
- Amin Wu, 22-27
- Amin Wu, 28-32
- Amin Wu, 33-37
- Amin Wu, 38-42
- Amin Wu, 42-Sword The full tutorial (50 minutes)
This should keep me busy until next spring.
Tai Chi Notebook 