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Emeiquan (Emei Mountain Kung Fu)

峨眉拳

A group of fighting styles from Sichuan that trace themselves to sacred Mount Emei; no unified historical school is documented.

Quick Facts

Masters & notable people
Country of OriginChina
RegionAsia
Primary FocusHybrid
Contact LevelLight contact
Belt SystemCertificates

Character & Origin

StatusLiving, organized
LineageTraditional
Era of OriginEarly modern

Training

AttireNo specific attire
SparringLight contact
Role of WeaponsWeapons optional
Role of FormsForms at the core

Who It Suits

Kids ProgrammesRare kids groups
Senior FriendlySuitable with adaptation
Physical Demand3/5
Injury Risk2/5
Learning Curve4/5
Self-Defence Value3/5
Fitness Value4/5

Organisation & Competition

Grading SystemCertificates
Competition FormatForms
Weight ClassesNo
Olympic StatusNot Olympic
Estimated Practitioners10k–100k

What the style is built from

Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.

Hand strikesCore
KicksSignificant
Throws & takedownsMarginal
Ground fightingNot used
Locks & holdsMarginal
WeaponsSignificant

Catalogs & Databases for Emeiquan (Emei Mountain Kung Fu)

📜 Traditional Katas & Forms1 items
📖 Glossary of Terms3 items
👥 People & Masters1 items

About Emeiquan (Emei Mountain Kung Fu)

Emeiquan (峨嵋拳, "Emei fist") is a collective label for a group of fighting styles from the Chinese province of Sichuan that trace themselves to the sacred Mount Emei. Emei is one of the four holy Buddhist mountains of China, and popular tradition names it alongside Shaolin and Wudang as the third great school of Chinese martial arts; that triad, however, is largely a literary construct spread by twentieth-century wuxia novels rather than a documented institution. The best attested Emei tradition is the spear: the treatise Emei qiangfa, printed in 1621 in the collection of Cheng Zongyou, sets out a spear method and credits it to a monk named Pu'en. No written evidence for a single unified Emeiquan school before the twentieth century is available, so this page lists neither a founder nor a year of origin. The present shape of Emeiquan comes from the provincial martial-arts survey carried out in Sichuan during the 1980s, when local family and monastic traditions were recorded and sorted; Sichuanese sources usually divide them into eight branches. Technically these are close-range styles with low, springy stances, pronounced wrist and forearm work, rapid changes of direction and a broad weapons repertoire in which the spear and the straight sword jian hold pride of place.

Similar styles

Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.

Wuzuquan (Five Ancestors Boxing)Wu (Hao) Style Tai ChiDitangquan (Ground Tumbling Boxing)Tianshan Pai (Tien Shan Mountain Kung Fu)Yau Kung Mun (Flexible Hard Power Kung Fu)Pak Hok Pai (Tibetan White Crane)