Lie
挒
Literally: split
Lie, split, is one of the eight gates of taijiquan: a spiraling force that pushes the upper and lower parts of the opponent's body in opposite directions.
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Lie (挒), in English split, is one of the eight gates of taijiquan. Taiji-forum.com describes it as an opening, dividing movement that sends parts of the opponent's body in two directions; egreenway.com compares it to a spinning flywheel that throws off anything thrown into it, far apart. Unlike cai, a one-directional tug, lie acts with opposing forces on the upper and lower parts of the opponent's body at the same time and causes them to fall backward. It belongs among the four corner gates of the Thirteen Postures together with cai, zhou and kao, and corresponds to the trigram zhen (thunder). The corner gates, unlike peng, appear only in specific forms of the sequence; egreenway.com gives, among others, the postures Parting the Wild Horse's Mane and Slanting Flying for lie. In tui shou practice, the eight gates serve to unbalance, displace or fell the opponent.