Tianjin Shuai Jiao
天津摔跤The Tianjin branch of Chinese wrestling. Uniquely among the three, it uses qinna joint locks along with elbow and forearm strikes.
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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.
Catalogs & Databases for Tianjin Shuai Jiao
About Tianjin Shuai Jiao
Tianjin shuai jiao is one of the three main regional branches of Chinese jacket wrestling, and technically the broadest of them. While the Beijing branch relies on high throws and the Baoding branch on speed, the Tianjin branch brings into the match elements found nowhere else: circular leg movements, qinna joint locks, and strikes delivered with the elbow and forearm. This has a twofold root: sources trace it to the wrestling of the Ming period, into which Manchu buku, that is, court wrestling, was later mixed in — the same court wrestling from which the Beijing branch emerged. It is fought in a jacket called dalian, which the opponent grips, and there is no ground fighting; the throw alone decides. The year the branch arose is not documented. The catalog previously listed the year 1890, but for a branch without a documented founder, a rounded year is a placeholder value, not a date, and the field is therefore left empty. The whole discipline was given its modern form only by Ma Liang with a manual from 1917; the name shuai jiao itself was chosen by the Central Guoshu Institute in 1928, when the rules were unified, and the first official competition was held in 1935. Jacket wrestling is still taught today at Chinese police and military academies, but it is not an Olympic sport.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.