Emeiquan (Emei Mountain Kung Fu)
峨眉拳Sichuan styles linked to Mount Emei, on China's national intangible heritage list since 2008. The item description gives 68 branches, the oldest treatise is on the spear (17th century).
Quick Facts
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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 Emeiquan (Emei Mountain Kung Fu)
Emeiquan, more precisely Emei wushu, is a collective name for a group of martial arts styles from China's Sichuan province that claim ties to Mount Emei, one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains of China (a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996). Emei wushu has been on China's national intangible cultural heritage list since 2008 (second batch, item 795, code VI-23, category traditional sport, games and acrobatics). It was submitted by the city of Emeishan, and the protecting institution is the Emeishan City Sports Association. The item description and People's Daily count Emei wushu among the three great currents of Chinese wushu alongside Shaolin and Wudang.
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The national item description states that 68 branches and 2638 items exist today (unarmed sets, armed sets, paired sets, exercises and combat), while the introduction to the same description speaks of more than eighty branches. According to it, Emei quan proper is divided into four great types, eight great gates (seng, yue, zhao, du, hong, hua, zi and hui) and eighteen family fists. The style is characterised by a balance of hard and soft, inner and outer training, and alternating fast and slow movements. The description also places its origin in the Yin and Shang period and a complete theory in the Southern Song, a claim of the description that has not been independently verified. The earliest documentation comes from the Ming and Qing periods. Hong Kong's HK01 names as the oldest mention of Emei martial art a 16th-century poem by Tang Shunzhi, Emei daoren quan ge, in thirty seven-syllable verses. The spear treatise Emei qiangfa was written by Cheng Zhenru following the method of the Emei monk Pu'en, and Wu Shu included it in the collection Shoubi lu, with a preface dated 1678. We found nothing to support the claims that today's form arose in a provincial survey in the eighties and that the trio of Shaolin, Wudang and Emei is a construct of wuxia novels. HK01 says only that the image of Emei as a women's school comes from wuxia. Sources give neither a founder nor a year of origin.
History
The national item description states that Emei wushu arose in the Mount Emei area, has almost three thousand years of history, arose in the Yin and Shang period according to historical accounts and received a complete theory under the Southern Song. This is a claim of the description that we have not independently verified. Mount Emei is one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains of China, and according to UNESCO the first Buddhist temple on it was founded in the 1st century AD.
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The earliest documented accounts come from the Ming and Qing periods. Hong Kong's HK01 (2021) names as the oldest account of Emei martial art a poem by the Ming commander Tang Shunzhi, Emei daoren quan ge, in thirty seven-syllable verses, in the collection Jingchuan wenji. It is a literary text, not a manual. The spear treatise Emei qiangfa is signed Cheng Zhenru and explicitly states that the method was established by the Emei monk Pu'en. Wu Shu included it in his collection Shoubi lu, whose preface he dated to the year wuwu, that is 1678, and in which he names Cheng Zhenru and, separately, Cheng Chongdou (Cheng Zongyou), author of the collection Geng yu sheng ji, as two different authors. Cheng Zongyou's collection contains four other works, and Emei qiangfa is not among them. Emei wushu was added to China's national intangible cultural heritage list in the second batch of 2008 as item 795 (code VI-23) in the category of traditional sport, games and acrobatics. It was submitted by the city of Emeishan in Sichuan province, and the protecting institution is the Emeishan City Sports Association. Sources give neither a founder nor a year of origin.
Technique
The national item description states that 68 branches and 2638 items exist today, that is unarmed and armed sets, paired exercises, training methods and combat, while its introduction speaks of more than eighty branches. According to it, Emei quan proper is divided into four great types (high stance gaozhuang, low stance aizhuang, kejia and faxiang), eight great gates (seng, yue, zhao, du, hong, hua, zi and hui) and eighteen family fists. It characterises the style by a balance of hard and soft, inner and outer training, and alternating fast and slow movements. It gives no more detailed technical description. The treatise Emei qiangfa has thirteen sections, from care of mind and body through stillness and movement, attack and defence and assessment of the situation to thrusts, regrips, overcoming other weapons and general principles. According to the text, the last section was added by Weng Huisheng. As the core of attack and defence it gives eighteen thrusts and twelve regrips.
Training
The Sichuan Department of Culture and Tourism lists among the forms of Emei wushu the bench fist (bandengquan), eagle claw (yingzhaoquan) and duck fist (yaxingquan), which it calls unique to Sichuan. Among weapons it names the xiaoyao fan, the Emei spike (Emei ci), the Emei sword, the Emei spear and the pair of crescent weapons yuanyang yue. The representative bearer of the national item, Wang Chao, born in 1962 in Emeishan, leads according to his biography on the website of the national list the styles Emei quan, Fuhu quan, Tongbi quan and Emei jian. We have no source at federation or national-list level on the content of basic training or the way of transmission in the individual branches.
Today
The protecting institution of the national item is the Emeishan City Sports Association. The representative bearer of the fifth batch of bearers is Wang Chao, holder of the sixth duan of Chinese wushu, who according to his biography on the national list website led the Chinese team at the 4th and 7th World Traditional Wushu Championships, where the team won four gold medals. People's Daily (2023) names Man Lin as president of the Emei Wushu Federation and describes the fourth edition of the Emei wushu exchange between the two shores of the Taiwan Strait on Mount Emei, with about two hundred participants, an event begun in 2017. The ninth World Kung Fu Championships, organised by IWUF and the Chinese Wushu Association, were held in Emeishan from 25 August 2023, with around 6649 athletes and coaches from 53 countries and regions. In the IWUF rules for traditional wushu from 2019, emeiquan is not a named discipline. The regulations of the 8th World Kung Fu Championships 2019 list it among traditional styles in a shared category of other styles. We have not found a system of grades specific to Emei wushu outside the general duan system.
Did you know
The idea of Emei as a women's school of martial arts comes, according to HK01, mostly from wuxia novels, not from documented history. In his preface to the collection Shoubi lu, Wu Shu says that Cheng Zhenru received the Emei spear from an Emei monk and that master Pu'en lived in Shu and trained for two years in a secret chamber. Mount Emei has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1996.
Frequently asked questions
Is Emei wushu on China's national list of intangible heritage?
Yes. It has been listed since 2008 as item 795 (code VI-23), and the protecting institution is the Emeishan City Sports Association.
How many branches does Emei wushu have?
The national item description gives 68 branches that still exist and 2638 items, while its introduction speaks of more than eighty branches.
Who wrote the treatise Emei qiangfa and when is it documented?
It was written by Cheng Zhenru following the method of the Emei monk Pu'en. Wu Shu included it in the collection Shoubi lu, with a preface dated 1678.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.