Wu Style Fast Form and Weapons: Thirteen Saber, Qiankun Sword

Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan is a complete system: form for the body, push hands for use, and weapons to extend both. The full movement lists show the scale of it — saber, sword, spear, and pole. Behind those lists lies a distinctive story: a fast form kept secret for over a century, a saber shaped between blade and sword, and a five-route sword system governed by one set of thirteen methods.

Key Facts

The fast form (用架, the “application frame”) has 94 postures and was made public only in 1982, after more than a century as a family secret
The thirteen saber (十三刀) takes its name from 8 gates + 5 steps = 13 — the same thirteen postures that govern push hands
The Wu saber is called “single-back sword” (單背劍): sword-shaped in front, saber-shaped behind, with a swastika-guard and a ring engraved with the taiji-bagua diagram
Heavy-saber training (about 5 jin) draws out internal strength naturally — the weight does the teaching
The sword system has five routes: Qiankun (94), Seven Stars (71), Continuous, Paired, and Double Sword — all governed by thirteen sword methods
Beginners progress form first, weapons later: slow form, then fast form, then saber and sword

The Fast Form: A Century as a Secret

The two frames of Wu Chien Chuan

The fast form is the oldest set of the family — the frame Wu Chuan Yau and Wu Chien Chuan inherited from the Yang school, with issuing, jumps, and bursts intact. When Wu Chien Chuan began teaching the public at the Beijing Physical Education Research Society in 1914, he removed the repetitions, issuing, and jumps, and set the family frame into the soft, even-paced “full frame” (滿架子) that the world now knows as Wu Style. The traditional fast frame stayed inside the family.

That decision created two tracks that still define the school: the slow form as the training frame (體架), the fast form as the application frame (用架). The 108-form beginner path covers the slow frame in detail; the fast form is its twin.

Out of secrecy

In 1982 the national martial arts conference called for the recovery of hidden arts. Wu Ying Hua and Ma Yueh Liang responded by putting the family’s secret fast form into print: Shi Meilin performed it at the 1983 national traditional wushu exhibition with distinction, and the book Wu Style Tai Chi Fast Form appeared in 1987 under the three names — the first publication of the frame in its 150-year history. The Ma Yueh Liang story follows that couple’s work in full.

Fast form is not slow form done quickly

This is the first thing to understand: the fast form has its own rhythm and its own logic of jin. It is not the slow set speeded up.

Dimension	Slow frame	Fast form
Duration	20+ minutes	5–7 minutes
Range	compact, measured	larger, extended
Issuing	not shown	visible, from the dantian
Jumps	none	yes (double flying kick, lotus kicks)
Five characters	still, light, slow, precise, constant	still, light, agile, precise, constant
Role	cultivating the body (gentle fire)	applying the art (martial fire)
Who it is for	everyone, from day one	only those with a slow-frame base

Beginners should not touch the fast form. The slow frame builds the engine; the fast form only reveals whether the engine exists.

The art of issuing

Fast-form issuing differs from hard-style punching. The waist commands and the jin leaves through the spine; the lower abdomen stays loose and settled so the force enters the bones. The burst comes without winding up — no visible preparation, movement and issuing fused, like a whip cracking or a spring releasing. The standard is five characters: song, meng, tou, cui, kuai — relaxed, fierce, penetrating, crisp, fast. The classical description of the ideal state: still as an autumn lake, erupting like a mountain collapsing.

The summit of the training is called dantian explosion — the whole-body jin gathered in the centre and released in one beat. It is built on exactly the fundamentals described in Song, Chuan Zi Bu, and Xie Zhong Yu Zheng: without song, no whip; without the Chuan Zi Bu base, no root under the burst.

Signature movements

The 94 postures include movements the slow frame never shows, or shows differently: the turning double flying kick (翻身二起腳, colloquially “two bounces”), turning strike fist (翻身撇身捶), body-turning kicks (披身踢腳), the turning lotus kick, advancing parry-and-punch, leopard-tiger pushes the mountain (a double-palm issuing), punch to the crotch, bend the bow shoot the tiger, and seven stars step forward. Pause-and-drive alternates: the central-equilibrium jin gives the “stop”, the jumps give the “break”, and the whole set stays connected front to back.

The Thirteen Saber: The Single-Back Sword

Why “thirteen”

The thirteen saber is not thirteen movements. The name comes from the arithmetic of the art itself: the eight gates — peng, lu, ji, an, cai, lie, zhou, kao — plus the five steps — advance, retreat, left, right, central equilibrium — sum to thirteen. The saber is the thirteen postures placed in the hand, which is why it belongs beside the push hands curriculum rather than apart from it.

A blade between saber and sword

The Wu saber’s shape is unique among tai chi weapons. It is known as the single-back sword (單背劍): one edge, a narrow body, sword-shaped in the front half and saber-shaped toward the back. The guard is cut in the shape of the swastika character, with the forward arm able to lock an opponent’s weapon. The ring at the pommel is cast like an old coin, and around its hole is engraved the taiji-bagua diagram — practitioners are told to rest the intention in that ring and let it turn inward or outward, generating subtle changes of jin. Because the blade is narrow, the wide “coiling head wrapping brain” techniques of broad sabers do not apply. Tradition traces the shape to the two-handed sword of the Tang dynasty.

Training is done with a heavy blade, about five jin. The point is not strength: the weight draws the song out of the arm by itself, and the practitioner discovers rooted, sinking jin without trying to manufacture it.

The thirteen verses

The saber set is written as thirteen lines of seven-character verse, resolved into 38 movements, performed in two to three minutes:

No.	Verse	Meaning
1	七星跨虎交刀式	Seven stars cross tiger, exchange saber
2	閃展騰挪意氣揚	Flash and leap, spirit soaring
3	左顧右盼兩分張	Left gaze, right look, split apart
4	白鶴亮翅五行掌	White crane spreads wings, five-element palm
5	風捲荷花葉內藏	Wind rolls the lotus, hidden in the leaves
6	玉女穿梭八方勢	Fair lady works the shuttle, eight directions
7	三星開合自主張	Three stars open and close at will
8	二起腳來打虎勢	Double flying kick into strike-the-tiger
9	披身斜掛鴛鴦腳	Body turns, slanting mandarin-duck kick
10	順水推舟鞭造篙	Push the boat with the current, whip as pole
11	下式三合自由招	Low posture, three unions, free technique
12	左右分水龍門跳	Dividing the water, leaping the dragon gate
13	卞和攜石鳳還巢	Bian He carries the stone, phoenix returns

The last line carries the set’s moral. Bian He presented a raw stone that courtiers called worthless; inside it was the jade of the He Shi Bi. The saber, like the raw stone, hides its treasure until the practice opens it.

The thirteen saber is the northern lineage’s systematic transmission — Xiu Pi Xun carried it from Wang Mao Zhai back to Laizhou — while the southern line preserved a longer 108-movement saber set; both appear on the forms and techniques page.

Fifteen techniques, one principle

The set absorbs fifteen classical short-blade methods: pi (chop), kan (hack), duo (dice), jie (intercept), tiao (raise), liao (upward slice), tui (push), zha (thrust), tuo (support), qie (cut), mo (smear), zhan (behead), dai (lead), lan (block), sao (sweep). The style remains Wu Style throughout: compact and extended, song and quiet, Chuan Zi Bu footing, slant-within-upright posture, saber driven from the waist and legs rather than the arm, one movement flowing to the next with each technique clear.

Wang Pei Sheng’s northern transmission adds a ten-character formula — zhong, song, yuan, kong, he, chen, wen, huo, ling, chang (centred, loose, round, empty, united, sunk, stable, alive, agile, flowing) — and principles of use: movement as the basis, change as the method, the waist as the axis, subtlety beating speed, never blocking but yielding and entering the gap, and always seeking the opponent’s wrist.

One curiosity completes the system: the saber is paired with twelve coin-shaped darts, the “twelve golden-coin darts,” thrown from the saber hand — the verse “coins fly as darts in strings” records it.

The Qiankun Sword and the Five-Route System

Five routes, one standard

Wu Style sword is not one set but a system of five routes, all judged by the same standard — the thirteen sword methods:

Route	Name	Character
1	Qiankun Sword (乾坤劍)	compact and precise; the foundation set, 94 postures in Wu Ying Hua’s southern transmission
2	Seven Stars Sword (七星劍)	71 postures, many one-leg balances, expansive
3	Continuous Sword (連環劍)	soft and unbroken
4	Paired Sword (對劍)	two-person practice
5	Double Sword (雙劍)	one in each hand

The transmission numbers vary by line — 94 in the south, 75 in Inner Mongolia’s Tumed banner (where the direct disciple Wu Tong carried it), 64 in the north — but the thirteen methods do not.

The thirteen sword methods

Method	Meaning	Representative posture
抽 Chou	draw	Dang Men Jian (front-gate sword)
帶 Dai	lead	Push the Boat with the Current
提 Ti	lift	Phoenix Swirl
格 Ge	block	Small Cloud-Grind, Split Hands
擊 Ji	strike	Cloud-Grind Three Dances
刺 Ci	thrust	Li Guang Shoots the Stone
點 Dian	point	Dragonfly Skims the Water
崩 Beng	flick	Reining In at the Cliff Edge
攪 Jiao	stir	Dusting in the Wind
壓 Ya	press	Sweeping a Thousand Troops
劈 Pi	chop	The Fairy Carries Her Hoe
截 Jie	intercept	Liu Bang Beheads the Snake
洗 Xi	sweep	Red Dot Between the Brows

The names carry the history: Li Guang’s arrow entering stone, Liu Bang cutting the white snake, the arrow between the brows. Though the methods are thirteen, they interpenetrate — a single posture may contain several.

Style and representative postures

The Qiankun Sword is small and compact, exquisite in its changes, continuous and unhurried — “the sword like a swimming dragon and flying phoenix, quick and light yet steady.” Yin and yang divide at the opening posture and reunite at the close. Representative postures include Crouching Tiger at the Gate, Old Man Carries the Qin, Rhino Gazes at the Moon, Kuixing Lifts the Dipper, White Snake Spits Its Tongue, Seize the Turtle at the Sea Bottom, and White Ape Returns to the Cave. Although it is practised slowly, every movement contains its technique complete — slow does not mean empty.

Training follows the same five characters as the slow form — still, light, slow, precise, constant — with sword-specific corrections: keep the methods distinct (a point is not a chop), let the tip travel vertical circles close to the body, use the left sword-fingers to lead and complete the jin, and keep the armpit hollow rather than locking the arm straight. The classical standard is printed in Wu Ying Hua and Ma Yueh Liang’s sword book, published in 2001 — the last book she left.

What Makes Wu Style Weapons Distinctive

One body, many arms. The footwork is Chuan Zi Bu, the posture slant-within-upright, the jin song, soft, round, alive — the saber and sword are the form’s body method extended, not a separate discipline.
The weight teaches. Heavy-saber practice uses the tool’s own mass to reveal internal strength — no forcing, only listening.
Thirteen everywhere. Eight gates plus five steps make the saber; thirteen methods govern the sword; thirteen postures structure push hands. One philosophy — the thirteen totalities — running through every part of the curriculum.

A Beginner’s Path

Form first. Build the slow frame until body, legs, and song are settled — the weapons assume it. The 108-form path gives the schedule.
Sword before saber, short before long. The Qiankun Sword trains precision and intention; the saber adds weight and issuing. Spear and pole come last.
Slow, precise, constant. Small daily sets beat long weekly ones; precision in each of the thirteen methods beats completing the set quickly.
Fix the classic faults early: methods blurring into one another, body bobbing, the tip cutting flat loops, sword-fingers hanging idle, armpits closed.

Closing

The old sword saying puts the whole matter in one line: practise until body and sword unite, sword and spirit unite — then where there is no sword, everywhere is the sword. The fast frame, the saber, the routes of the sword: three roads to the same place, which is the art itself.