Does Wu Style Have an Eight Methods Five Steps Form Scroll?

Students keep forwarding the same question: videos and short posts keep using the phrase “Wu Style eight methods five steps,” and occasionally “Wu Style eight methods five steps form scroll.” Does the Wu family have such a scroll?

The question is well aimed, because that single phrase stacks three different labels on top of one another — Wu Style, eight methods and five steps, and form scroll. Pulled apart, the answer is clean. The eight methods and the five steps are technique shared by every school of tai chi, and Wu Style certainly trains them; but in the Wu family they live in push hands, not in the solo frame, so there is no such thing as a Wu Style eight methods five steps scroll. What circulates under that name is usually the general routine the General Administration of Sport promoted in 2018, wearing a family name it does not own.

Key Facts

Eight methods plus five steps. The methods are peng, lu, ji, an, cai, lie, zhou and kao; the steps are advance, retreat, left gaze, right gaze and central equilibrium. The old texts call the whole thing the thirteen postures, or the eight gates and five steps. It is a shared grammar of technique, not the property of any one family
In 2018 the General Administration of Sport promoted a routine called Taiji (Eight Methods Five Steps). Sixteen movements, distilled from what the major styles have in common — same root, different stream, and not specific to Wu Style
Wu Style does train the eight methods and five steps, but inside push hands. That is a two-person listening practice, not a solo sequence
The Wu family’s own scrolls are the frames. The traditional long form of 108, the Shanghai 89, the northern square frame of 83. Our syllabus page lists the frames, and the eight methods are not among them
Three sources feed the confusion: a general routine given a family name, push hands mistaken for a frame, and video titles copied onward

1. First, look: which one are you holding?

Most people asking this already have a document in front of them and simply want to know what it is. There is no need to read the argument first — the opening movements settle it.

It opens like this	It closes with	Count	What it is
Opening, ward-off left, roll-back right, press left, double push…	Cross hands, closing	Sixteen	The 2018 state routine, Taiji (Eight Methods Five Steps)
Beginning of Tai Chi Chuan, grasp bird’s tail, single whip, raise hands, white crane…	Closing posture (He Tai Ji)	83 / 89 / 108	A Wu family frame; the count differs by lineage
Peng, lu, ji, an cycling back and forth, requiring two people	No fixed close	—	Push hands, which is not a scroll at all

The most reliable of the three clues is how it ends. Wu family frames close on He Tai Ji, the closing posture. The state sixteen closes on cross hands and a closing. Push hands has no closing, because it was never a sequence with a beginning and an end.

2. How the question arose

The phrase spread fast because a state routine spread fast. On 8 August 2018 the General Administration of Sport put Taiji (Eight Methods Five Steps) into national circulation; because it is short, easy and suited to mass teaching, it moved quickly through community centres, universities and competitions, and that year was billed as the first of national promotion for it. Teaching and demonstration videos followed in numbers.

To say whose practice a video shows, creators attach a family or a teacher’s name to the title — and so “Wu Style eight methods five steps” was born. Practitioners sense something is off when they see it, but few have set out exactly where the error lies. That is the gap this article fills.

3. Three concepts, three layers

The confusion comes from compressing three layers into one sentence. Separated, everything falls into place.

The thirteen postures: the layer of technique

The name comes from the classical treatises: the eight methods are matched to the eight trigrams, the five steps to the five phases. The eight gates and five steps describe direction, line of force and footwork — a grammar of technique, not thirteen movements to collect. Within the eight, peng, lu, ji and an are the four cardinal hands; cai, lie, zhou and kao the four corners. It belongs to tai chi as a whole, and every school uses it. The full text of the Thirteen Postures Song and the Eight Methods verses, with the Wu family’s reading of each line, sits on our songs and formulas page.

Taiji (Eight Methods Five Steps): the layer of the state routine

In 2018 the Wushu Administrative Centre of the General Administration of Sport took the shared core of the major styles, worked it into a sixteen-movement routine on the principles of being scientific, standardised and simple, and released it through the Chinese Wushu Association. It went into national circulation on 8 August of that year as the entry set following the simplified twenty-four form, and has since been made a set event at national competitions.

Its sequence runs roughly: opening, ward-off left, roll-back right, press left, double push, pluck right, split left, elbow left, shoulder right, and so on to central equilibrium with independent stance left and right, cross hands, and closing. Symmetrical, and countable movement by movement. Note the official name: Taiji (Eight Methods Five Steps). By design it carries no family name, because it is the common entry point to all of them.

The Wu family scrolls: the layer of the frame

In the Wu family, “scroll” means the named movements of a frame, in order — a list that runs from the beginning of Tai Chi Chuan through to the closing posture. The middle frame that Wu Chien Chuan fixed has been handed down as exactly this kind of list.

4. Does Wu Style have the eight methods and five steps? Two answers

As technique and as push hands: yes, and it is the core of Wu push hands.

Wu push hands trains precisely those thirteen: the eight methods with the five steps alongside. Our article on push hands and the eight methods sets out that training. Read that way, “Wu Style eight methods five steps” is a defensible phrase.

As the scroll of a solo frame: no.

Wu Chien Chuan reworked push hands into something upright and quiet, fine and continuous, still without rash movement, tight in method and rich in applications — all of it the work of two people in contact. The family never arranged the eight methods and five steps into a numbered solo frame, so there is no scroll for them to be written on. “Wu Style eight methods five steps scroll” takes a push hands practice and sets it where a frame belongs.

5. What the Wu family scrolls actually are

This is the Wu system as our syllabus page lists it:

Category	Name	Lineage	Count / note
Frame	Traditional Long Form, Wu Style	Hong Kong / overseas	108, counted movement by movement
Frame	Traditional Long Form	Shanghai Chien Chuan	89, repeated names merged
Frame	Northern square frame	Wang Mao Zhai line	83, about 326 units, odd opens and even closes
Frame	International competition set	Hong Kong / overseas	54
Frame	Competition set	Northern	45
Frame	Fast form (round boxing)	Shanghai	94
Frame	Fast form, overseas	Hong Kong / overseas	108 Fast Form
Frame	Simplified teaching frames	Shanghai	30, 16, seated 16
Frame	Short sets	Hong Kong / overseas, northern	12, northern 13 / 37
Weapon	Sabre	Hong Kong, Shanghai	108
Weapon	Sword	Combined Hong Kong line, Shanghai qiankun and seven star	108 / 89 / 54 / 75
Weapon	Spear and sticky pole	Shanghai	twenty-four spear, thirteen spear
Push hands	Eight methods five steps, four cardinal and four corner, Great Rollback, free plucking	Hong Kong, Shanghai	technique and paired practice, not a frame

The frames column counts 108, 89, 83, 54, 45, 94, 30, 16, 12 and 37. The eight methods five steps appear under push hands. That is the family’s own classification, answering the question directly.

6. Where the Wu eight methods come from

Someone may turn the question around: if Wu Style has the eight methods, what is the evidence? The evidence is specific.

An official record. The China Intangible Cultural Heritage database, in its entry for Wu Style tai chi, lists the main push hands practices one by one, and among them states that the Great Rollback is the combined practice of the eight methods. The Wu eight methods, and the Great Rollback as their combined form, are recorded in a state archive
A complete system. Beyond the Great Rollback, Wu push hands keeps the four cardinal and four corner practices, free plucking and free-hand application, all built on the eight methods
The northern compilation. Zhang Quanliang and Ma Yonglan, in the Wang Peisheng line, published The Eight Methods of Wu Style Tai Chi (Beijing Science and Technology Press, 2019), working from the thirty-seven form as Wang passed it down, with fixed postures, single-method drills, linked practice, and verses on the organs and trigrams attached to each method
The Shanghai compilation. Zhang Yaozhong’s Simplified Wu Style Tai Chi gives the basic eight methods a chapter of their own, and includes a solo drill for the Great Rollback
One art, two schools, one source. South under Wu Chien Chuan, north under Wang Mao Zhai; what they share, besides the Chuan Zi Bu stance, slant-inclined uprightness and the compact middle frame, includes the eight methods in push hands. The Daxing District listing of 2014 and the Shanghai extension listing of 2021 both rest on this living content — see the five generations of the Wu family for the records

7. Three sources of the error

A general routine given a family name. The 2018 routine is a common entry point that anyone may use; writing it as “Wu Style eight methods five steps” hangs public teaching material on one family’s door
Push hands mistaken for a frame. Wu eight methods five steps is two-person listening practice: contact, cycle, no beginning-to-closing skeleton. Treat it as a frame and no scroll will ever be found
Titles copied onward. A video called “solo practice of the Great Rollback, Wu Style eight methods five steps” usually means “the eight methods five steps performed in Wu Style” or “the Wu Great Rollback drill.” Reposted a few times, it becomes “Wu Style has an eight methods five steps scroll”

8. Points of dispute ⚠

The name. Our push hands article uses “Wu Style eight methods five steps” to mean the eight methods and five steps as Wu push hands trains them. Compressed into “Wu Style eight methods five steps scroll,” it collides with the frames. This is where the error usually happens
The state routine should be called Taiji (Eight Methods Five Steps), not “Wu Style eight methods five steps”
The differences between 108, 89 and 83 come from counting every posture, merging repeated names, odd-opens-even-closes, and differences of the parent frame — not from different arts. See why the Wu form counts differ
⚠ Unresolved: material circulating as “Wu Style eight methods five steps” is mostly individuals performing the general routine in a Wu manner, not a family transmission. We do not treat it as evidence of lineage

Conclusion

Does Wu Style tai chi have an eight methods five steps scroll? Put the three labels back where they belong and the answer is clean. The eight methods and five steps are shared technique, and Wu Style trains them as push hands. The Wu family scrolls are the frames of 108, 89 and 83. One is use, the other is body, and each sits where it belongs.

What deserves guarding against is not whether Wu Style trains the eight methods five steps. It is mistaking another school’s teaching material, or one’s own push hands practice, for a Wu scroll that does not exist. Keep body and use apart, and the confusion ends.

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage database, “Taiji (Wu Style),” Shanghai listing, fifth batch
China Intangible Cultural Heritage database, “Taiji (Wu Style),” Beijing Daxing District listing, fourth batch
Taiji (Eight Methods Five Steps), the sixteen-movement entry routine put into national circulation by the General Administration of Sport on 8 August 2018
Zhang Quanliang and Ma Yonglan, The Eight Methods of Wu Style Tai Chi, Beijing Science and Technology Press, 2019
Zhang Yaozhong, Simplified Wu Style Tai Chi, Beijing Sport University Press, 1993
Wu Kung Cho, Wu Family Tai Chi Chuan, Hong Kong, 1980
Wu Ying Hua and Ma Yueh Liang, Authentic Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan, Beijing Sport University Press, 1999