Xiu Pi Xun: Keeping the Old Frame of Wu Style Tai Chi

Dawuguan Village in Laizhou, Shandong (formerly Yexian county) is a stronghold of the Northern school of Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan. Wang Mao Zhai (1862–1940), the founding disciple of art’s founder Wu Chuan Yau, came from this village — and the man who carried Wang’s original frame home and guarded it for half a century was his ninth formally admitted disciple, Xiu Pi Xun (1892–1976). A hardened Baguazhang fighter who once sneered that Tai Chi looked like “fishing movements,” Xiu became a living witness of the Wu Style attainment of “neutralizing wherever you are touched.” In September 2009, the lineage he founded was inscribed on the second batch of Shandong Province’s intangible cultural heritage list.

Key Facts

Xiu Pi Xun (1892–1976), courtesy name Zhuchen, of Dawuguan Village, Yexian, Shandong; three years of Yin-style Baguazhang before meeting Wang Mao Zhai, with few equals for miles around.
In 1918 he challenged Wang Mao Zhai, who was visiting home to seek successors: one palm strike was stuck and neutralized, and Xiu stumbled more than a dozen steps. He knelt and became Wang’s ninth admitted disciple.
He studied in Beijing for eight years (1918–1926) — three years longer than the usual term, set aside specifically to unlearn the hard force of Baguazhang.
In 1934 he became director of studies at the Yexian Guoshu Guan (martial arts institute), teaching Wu Style systematically in his home county.
He preserved Wang Mao Zhai’s original old frame together with rare weapons sets including the Thirteen Sabres (Single-Back Sword) and the Maymei sabre — a “living fossil” of early Wu Style.
In September 2009, Laizhou Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan was listed as Shandong provincial intangible cultural heritage (Lu Zheng Zi [2009] No. 232).

The 1918 Challenge: “Can Fishing Movements Fight?”

In the seventh year of the Republic, Wang Mao Zhai returned home to Laizhou to look for successors. Xiu Pi Xun was then twenty-six: 1.8 meters tall, broad-shouldered, three years into Yin-style Baguazhang and already famous in the district. Told that Tai Chi Chuan was soft and slow, he scoffed:

“Fishing movements can’t fight anyone.”

He demanded a test. Xiu launched a rising-palm strike; Wang Mao Zhai simply raised a hand and stuck to it. In that single touch Xiu staggered back a dozen-odd steps, every technique dissolved. He tried again — the same sticking touch, the same helpless retreat, no force to use and no move to make.

Xiu had heard the stories of countless martial masters, but none like this. He bowed to the ground on the spot and followed his new teacher to Beijing.

Eight Years of Unlearning

An ordinary disciple completed the training in five years. Xiu Pi Xun studied for eight. The extra three years were deliberate: first unlearn the hard force built up by Baguazhang, so that the neutralizing and issuing power of Tai Chi could grow. In his later years Xiu liked to say:

“To shed my hard force, I spent three years more than the others.”

After those eight years he reached the highest stage of Wu Style push hands:

“Wherever I am touched, I neutralize — without thought I can seize; wherever I am touched, I issue — without thought I can strike.”

At the end of his life he left one sentence to his last disciple, Zhan Bo: “Put more work into neutralizing, and suffer less from being seized.” It sums up a lifetime of kung fu, and the essence of Northern Wu Style push hands.

Homecoming: The Guoshu Guan, the Old Frame, and Thirty Years in the Fields

Around 1926 Xiu finished his training and, at his teacher’s direction, returned to Dawuguan Village to open a practice ground. Wang Mao Zhai taught there himself on his yearly visits home, and the village line took root.

In 1934 the county seat established the Yexian Guoshu Guan, and Xiu became its director of studies, running systematic courses in Tai Chi, Xingyi, and Bagua. He taught at three places — Dawuguan Village, Jiadeng Zhanjia Village, and the county institute — training several hundred students, including his sons Hsiu Liang and Hsiu Chan (courtesy name Kuiyi, his successor), as well as Wen Mingshan, Sun Jingqing, Zhou Fengqi, and Zhan Bo.

One detail deserves special note. After Grandmaster Wu Chien Chuan standardized the Wu Style form in the 1930s, most Wu Style teachers in Beijing and Shanghai switched to the standardized movements. Xiu Pi Xun, in his home village, kept teaching the old frame as Wang Mao Zhai had transmitted it — the original form and weapons preserved intact, making this line a “living fossil” for the study of early Wu Style. Wu Chien Chuan himself repeatedly invited Xiu south to help at the association; family duties kept him from going — a measure of the esteem in which both masters held him.

As for the folk claim that he taught “for free”: no primary source says so explicitly. The fairer description is valuing virtue over money, teaching all who came. In 1964 his last disciple Zhan Bo was gravely injured in a road accident, his organs damaged. In 1965 he sought out Xiu Pi Xun; after examining his condition, Xiu formally accepted him as a closed-door disciple and rebuilt his health through the art. What mattered in taking a student was character and affinity — not the fee.

The Weapons He Kept: Thirteen Sabres and Maymei Sabre

The weapons system Xiu inherited was complete: the Tai Chi Thirteen Sabres, the Maymei sabre, Tai Chi sword, spear, staff, and long pole.

The Thirteen Sabres (also called the Single-Back Sword) is singular: sword-bladed in the front half, sabre-bladed in the back, with a swastika-shaped guard and Tai Chi–Bagua patterns on the rings. The “thirteen” refers not to thirteen movements but to the thirteen lines of seven-character verse that make up the sabre song (the sum of the eight gates and five steps), unfolding into thirty-eight movements that absorb fifteen techniques — chopping, hacking, slicing, intercepting, lifting, uprooting, pushing, thrusting, and more. The song opens:

“Seven Stars crosses the tiger, meeting the sabre; flashing and evading, spirit high; left, right, looking both ways; White Crane spreads wings, five-phase palm…”

The Maymei sabre, a short weapon rarely seen elsewhere, survives today through Hsiu Chan and the Zhenwu Guan (Vigor Martial Arts Hall) in Laizhou.

After Him: Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage

Xiu Pi Xun died in 1976, aged eighty-four. In September 2009 the Shandong Provincial People’s Government published the second batch of the provincial intangible cultural heritage list (Lu Zheng Zi [2009] No. 232), with Laizhou Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan among the entries. His second son Hsiu Chan, president of the Laizhou Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan Research Association and head of the Zhenwu Guan, is a provincial-level representative bearer; his granddaughter Xiu Shu Yu serves as the Zhenwu Guan’s head coach. Zhan Bo’s line continues in Heilongjiang, where he too is a provincial representative bearer.

From that challenge in 1918 to today, the “fishing movements” have been taught in Dawuguan Village for over a hundred years.

Timeline

1892 — born in Dawuguan Village, Chengguo Town, Yexian (today’s Laizhou), Shandong
c. 1915–1918 — three years of Yin-style Baguazhang; known throughout the district
1918 — defeated in one touch by Wang Mao Zhai; ninth admitted disciple; moves to Beijing
1918–1926 — eight years of training in Beijing, shedding hard force
c. 1926 — returns to Dawuguan Village to teach
1934 — director of studies, Yexian Guoshu Guan
1965 — accepts Zhan Bo as last disciple
1976 — dies, aged 84
2009 — Laizhou Wu Style inscribed as Shandong provincial intangible cultural heritage