Ditangquan (Ground Tumbling Boxing)
地趟拳Chinese style of falls, rolls and ground-based leg techniques. We did not find it on the national intangible heritage list, and in the 2019 IWUF rules it is just one traditional style.
Quick Facts
ChinaCharacter & Origin
Training
Who It Suits
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
About Ditangquan (Ground Tumbling Boxing)
Ditangquan is a Chinese style that works with falls, rolls and leg techniques delivered from the ground. English Wikipedia lists its content as falls, rolls, spins, leg techniques, somersaults and acrobatics for both attack and defence, and names four forms, Dixingquan, Ditang meihuaquan, Shaolin dilongquan and Feilong ditangquan. We have no technique description from a federation-level source or the national list. English Wikipedia translates the name as ground tumbling boxing.
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The origin is only weakly documented. English Wikipedia places the style's emergence in Shandong province and retroactively in the Song dynasty, and names the monk Hui Kai of the White Lotus Temple as the teacher of Zheng Yishan and Zhuang Zishen as the main spreader, citing no source. We did not find ditangquan on China's national intangible cultural heritage list, nor in the first or fifth batch of the Shandong provincial list. The news site ifeng states that ditangquan is the name used in Foshan for the Fujian style dishuquan, listed nationally in 2011 (item VI-58), while the IWUF regulations treat dishuquan and ditangquan as two different items. The sources give neither a founder nor a year of origin. In competitive wushu, ditangquan is not a separate discipline. The regulations of the 8th IWUF World Kungfu Championships (Emeishan, 2019) name it among the traditional styles in the joint category of other styles. It does not appear in the IWUF traditional wushu rules, in the taolu rules or in the regulations of the 15th World Wushu Championships of the same year. According to Wikipedia, the traditional forms of the style were unknown to modern wushu coaches in the nineteen seventies, and the new form arose from monkey and drunken style movements, citing Kungfu Magazine. We have not verified that source.
History
The documented history of ditangquan is weak. We did not find an item under this name on China's national intangible cultural heritage list, and it is not in the first batch of the Shandong provincial list in the traditional sport section (which contains cuju from Zibo, chaquan from Guan, wushu from Liangshan and tanglangquan from Laiyang), nor in the fifth batch from 2021, where the closest is digongquan from Guangrao county. English Wikipedia places the style's emergence in Shandong province and retroactively in the Song dynasty, and names the monk Hui Kai of the White Lotus Temple, said to have taught Zheng Yishan, and Zhuang Zishen as the main spreader, all without citing a source. The news site ifeng, by contrast, states that ditangquan is the name used in Foshan for the Fujian style dishuquan, also called dilongquan, whose national item (VI-58, third batch 2011, Fujian province) has the Fujian Dishuquan Association as its protected institution. According to Wikipedia, the traditional forms of the style were unknown to modern wushu coaches in the nineteen seventies, and the new form was composed from monkey and drunken style movements, citing Kungfu Magazine. The sources give neither a founder nor a year of origin.
How it differs
The closest relative is the Fujian dishuquan, also called gouquan (dog fist). The description of its national item characterises it as a style imitating a dog, with strong leg techniques and binds. The sources disagree on whether this is the same art: ifeng states that ditangquan is the Foshan name of dishuquan, while the regulations of the 8th IWUF World Kungfu Championships 2019 list dishuquan in the nanquan-type section and ditangquan in the other-styles section as two separate items. English Wikipedia states that traditional ditangquan survives within the chuojiao style and as the separate Fujian style gouquan, a Wikipedia claim without a citation. We did not find any other documented comparison with related styles.
Today
In competitive wushu, ditangquan is not a separate discipline. The regulations of the 8th IWUF World Kungfu Championships (Emeishan, 14 to 19 June 2019) name it in the other-styles section among the individual barehanded forms, alongside xingyiquan, baguazhang, bajiquan, tongbeiquan, piguaquan, fanziquan, imitative styles, chaquan, huaquan, paochui, hongquan, shaolinquan, wudangquan and emeiquan. It is a joint category, not a competition of its own. The IWUF traditional wushu rules of 2019 do not mention ditangquan, nor do the 2019 taolu rules or the regulations of the 15th World Wushu Championships 2019. We did not find a federation or association that oversees ditangquan, and the protected institution of the related national item dishuquan is the Fujian Dishuquan Association.
Frequently asked questions
Is ditangquan a separate IWUF discipline?
No. In the regulations of the 2019 World Kungfu Championships it is one of the named styles in the joint category of other styles, and it does not appear in the 2019 IWUF traditional wushu rules.
Is ditangquan on China's national intangible heritage list?
We did not find an item under this name. The related Fujian dishuquan has been on the national list since 2011 as item VI-58.
Is ditangquan the same as dishuquan?
The sources disagree. The news site ifeng gives ditangquan as the Foshan name of dishuquan, while the 2019 IWUF regulations list the two names as different items.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.