dresdencodak

Kung Fu facts with Xiaoling

Added 2024-09-17 05:30:34 +0000 UTC

As you may guess, these old Kung Fu grannies are the ones that taught Ling Baguazhang ("Eight Trigram Palm"), more specifically Liang-style Bagua. Its beginner form is the Eight Fixed Palms, eight postures held while walking in a circle.

In the panel above, Ling is practicing that form, specifically "Lion Holds Ball," the fifth posture in the set. However she's incorrectly arching her back, hence why she's getting poked by one of the grannies.

Bagua is probably best known for its circular footwork while training (and also being the basis for airbending in Avatar), but in my opinion what makes it so unique is its ability to synthesize and integrate other martial arts into its system. In fact, the creator of Bagua in the late 19th century tasked his top students with developing their own versions of Bagua using the different styles they'd previously mastered.

For example, Cheng style Bagua was created by a master who integrated Bagua into his wrestling, Yin style integrates that master's Shaolin techniques, and Liang style integrated that master's kicking-focused style into Bagua. So there's quite a bit of diversity!

**Edit**
I forgot to also mention that the reason I chose Lion Holds Ball is specifically because it's the first posture of the Fixed Eight to have an asymmetrical hand position, which offers unique ways to Ling to explore coordination with her prosthetic arm.