Baoding Shuai Jiao (Kuai Jiao)
保定摔跤The Baoding branch of Chinese jacket wrestling, known as kuai jiao, or fast wrestling. The throw must land before the opponent can settle into the grip.
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About Baoding Shuai Jiao (Kuai Jiao)
Baoding shuai jiao is one of the three main regional branches of Chinese jacket wrestling, and the most distinctive of them, since it has its own name: it is called kuai jiao, that is, fast wrestling. The name is not decorative. While other branches allow for longer work in the grip, the Baoding school is built on the idea that the throw must land before the opponent can settle and brace — the technique is therefore launched out of motion, and often from the very first contact. Sources also credit it with borrowing elements from Shaolin kung fu, which sets it apart from branches that grew purely out of Manchu court wrestling. It is fought in a jacket called dalian, and there is no ground fighting; what decides the bout is who brings whom to the ground. Among the documented masters of this branch, sources name Ping Jingyi, who lived from 1830 to 1908. Neither the founder of the branch nor the year of its origin is documented, and the catalog leaves both fields empty. The whole discipline was given its common modern form by Ma Liang with a manual from 1917; the name shuai jiao was chosen by the Central Guoshu Institute in 1928, when competition rules were unified, and the first official competition took place in 1935. Shuai jiao is taught today at Chinese police and military academies as well.
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