Hu Family Bladeworks

Hu Family Bladeworks

Contents

The Hu Family Bladeworks (simplified: 胡家刀法, traditional: 胡家刀法, pinyin: Hú Jiā Dāofǎ, jyutping: wu4 gaa1 dou1 faat3) was the hereditary dao art of the Hu family, descendants of the Flying Fox (飞天狐狸), bodyguard to the Storming King Li Zicheng. It was recorded in the family’s fist and blade manual and handed down to sons and nephews but not to daughters or wives. Hu Yidao fought Miao Renfeng to a standstill with it for five days, and taught it to him in the course of the duel. His son Hu Fei, who learned it from the manual, used it throughout Side Story of the Flying Fox and in his final duel with Miao Renfeng in Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain.

Overview

The art was known for sudden, unpredictable change. In the duel at Cangzhou, Baoshu, who had studied the single dao for seven or eight years, saw Hu Yidao use every part of the dao. Single-dao theory divides the weapon into five positions: Heaven (the back), Earth (the edge), Sovereign (the centre of the hilt), Kin (the guard) and Master (the pommel), of which Heaven and Earth are the main ones. Hu Yidao used Heaven and Earth with supernatural skill, but he also attacked and defended with the other three: when Miao Renfeng’s jian came from an angle that neither back nor edge could block, he would turn the dao and strike the jian with the hilt. In his hands the six cuts of the dao formula, spreading, wiping, hooking, chopping, hacking and cleaving (展、抹、钩、剁、砍、劈), were even harder to foresee (ch. 4). The Hu family manual itself did not dwell on such distinctions of cut; it concentrated on the ingenious changes by which a fighter protected himself and wounded his opponent (SIDE ch. 6).

Every move carried a follow-up. Hu Yidao told Miao Renfeng that each move of the Hu Family Bladeworks held a hidden next move (ch. 5), and in Side Story of the Flying Fox a one-armed Daoist swordsman could find no flaw in Hu Fei’s bladework because every cut both attacked and defended and hid a further move behind it (SIDE ch. 19). Its feints and real strikes could change places: a move taught as a feint could be made real without warning (SIDE ch. 11).

To an outsider the moves did not look very different from ordinary bladework; the difference lay in their changes. Attacks were fierce, defence was tight, and attack and defence were mixed (SIDE ch. 11). Wang Jianjie of the Eight Trigrams School, who knew Hu Yidao’s name, could not tell whether the art was hard or soft, external or internal: Hu Fei’s moves were now as heavy as a mountain, now as fluid as water (SIDE ch. 3). When Hu Fei fought Yuan Ziyi, it was “hard within soft and soft within hard, quick as lightning and thunder, steady as a deep pool or a mountain” (SIDE ch. 14).

Miao Renfeng, who had learned it from Hu Yidao himself, told Hu Fei that its essence lay in the ingenuity of its moves, not in meeting force with force. Hu Yidao had used it more slowly and with more restraint than Hu Fei did, and Miao taught him that waiting to strike second could master a hasty opponent (SIDE ch. 11).

History

The Hu family art

Hu Yidao’s great-great-grandfather wrote the family’s fist and blade manual in his own hand. When Hu Yidao showed it to his wife, she remarked that all the Flying Fox’s skills were written in it. Hu Yidao told her the family’s ancestral rule: pass it to sons, not daughters; to nephews, not wives. “That is what makes it the Hu Family Bladeworks,” he said (ch. 5). He left the manual in the iron box for his son; at his death Yan Ji tore away its first two pages, and Ping Asi escaped with the rest and with the infant Hu Fei (ch. 5).

The duel at Cangzhou

In the duel with Miao Renfeng, Hu Yidao first cut through Miao’s jian twice with his own treasured dao, then borrowed an ordinary dao so that the fight would show true skill. For the first two hundred moves neither gained any advantage. Hu Yidao then seemed to fall back, keeping entirely to defence so tightly that Miao Renfeng’s attacks from every side could not reach him, and suddenly changed to hard, direct chops (ch. 4). When the first day ended, Miao Renfeng took his leave with the jian move Crimson Phoenix Greets the Sun (丹凤朝阳), and Hu Yidao answered by raising his dao in Homage to the Northern Dipper (参拜北斗), both moves made as salutes (ch. 4).

On the third night the two men drank and talked martial arts until dawn. Miao Renfeng explained the essentials of the Miao Family Swordplay move by move, and Hu Yidao explained the Hu Family Bladeworks in detail, holding nothing back (ch. 4). On the fifth day, on Madam Hu’s signal, Hu Yidao used the Eight Directions Hidden Dao Stance to trap Miao Renfeng before he could complete Lift the Jian, White Crane Spreads Its Wings (ch. 4, 5). He then proposed that they exchange weapons and arts, so that whoever won, neither family’s art would be shamed. Miao Renfeng took the dao and the Hu Family Bladeworks. He had trained with the single dao in his youth and could hold Hu Yidao even (ch. 5).

As the two slowed down, Hu Yidao told Miao Renfeng that his Closed-Gate Iron Fan Dao was still too fast for its force to carry. Seeing that Hu Yidao was learning the jian faster than he was learning the dao, Miao Renfeng changed Sand Gull Skimming the Waves, which normally makes an underhand cut followed by an overhand cut: he began with the overhand cut, and made the second cut overhand as well. It was a move of his own invention, born of the Hu Family Bladeworks, and it caught Hu Yidao unawares and cut his left arm. Hu Yidao kicked Miao Renfeng down, and afterwards told him that the two overhand cuts had left his waist open, since every Hu move held a follow-up (ch. 5). The dao had been poisoned, and Hu Yidao died of the wound (ch. 5).

Hu Fei

Hu Fei grew up with a manual that lacked its first two pages, which held the foundation exercises and the general formula for fist and dao, so that however hard he worked he could not get it right (SIDE ch. 1, 3). At Shang Family Fort, Ping Asi recovered the pages from Yan Ji in Miao Renfeng’s name, and Hu Fei’s progress became rapid. He slipped out of the fort every night to practise with a dao carved from wood (SIDE ch. 3). Having learned without a teacher, he knew the moves but little of how to use and vary them until Zhao Banshan taught him the principles of martial arts (SIDE ch. 4).

In Side Story of the Flying Fox, Hu Fei used the art against Wang Jianjie (SIDE ch. 3), against Yuan Ziyi (SIDE ch. 7, 14), and with a pine branch for a dao against Zhong Zhaowen and his two brothers (SIDE ch. 8). When the blinded Miao Renfeng fought Tian Guinong’s men with a dao, Hu Fei was astonished to see him use the Hu Family Bladeworks better than he did himself. Hu Fei then took on Tian Guinong with it, while Miao Renfeng called out the names of the moves, and defeated him (SIDE ch. 11). Afterwards Miao Renfeng performed the whole art for him and said that the Hu Family Bladeworks had at last found an heir (SIDE ch. 11). By the time of the Grand Assembly of Zhangmen under Heaven, in bladework alone there was hardly anyone under heaven who could beat him (SIDE ch. 18). There he cut at Tian Guinong thirty-six times in succession, then shifted to a left-hand bladework that Tian Guinong had only heard of from his father (SIDE ch. 19). With the Cold Moon Treasured Dao he drove off Tian Guinong and the men of Fuk’anggan’s household at his father’s grave (SIDE ch. 20).

In Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain, Hu Fei had learned his martial arts entirely from the writings his father left him (ch. 10). Fighting Miao Renfeng with branches on the cliffs near Jade Brush Peak, he used Subduing Tiger Stance and Bow to the Buddha and Listen to the Sutras, and Miao Renfeng saw that his bladework was exactly Hu Yidao’s. When Miao Renfeng’s back gave its tell-tale shrug, reflected in the ice of the cliff, Hu Fei used the Eight Directions Hidden Dao Stance to seize the initiative, as his father had done. The novel ends as he decides whether to strike (ch. 10).

Techniques

Eight Directions Hidden Dao Stance

(八方藏刀式 – Bāfāng Cángdāo Shì)

The stance with which Hu Yidao, on his wife’s signal, sealed off every line of Miao Renfeng’s swordplay before Lift the Jian, White Crane Spreads Its Wings could be completed (ch. 4, 5). Hu Fei used it the same way in the final duel (ch. 10). In Side Story of the Flying Fox, surrounded by the men of Fuk’anggan’s household, Hu Fei used Night Battle Eight Directions Hidden Dao Stance (夜战八方藏刀式), whirling his dao and turning a full circle on his left foot, and counted his enemies as he turned (SIDE ch. 20).

Threading-Hand Hidden Dao

(穿手藏刀 – Chuānshǒu Cángdāo)

One of the moves, with Advancing-Step Chain Dao and Coiling-Body Pluck-Heart Dao, to which Miao Renfeng sometimes replied with Lift the Jian, White Crane Spreads Its Wings (ch. 4). In Side Story of the Flying Fox, Miao Renfeng used it to strike the dao from an opponent’s hand, and Hu Fei opened his fight with Tian Guinong with the same move (SIDE ch. 11).

Embracing the Moon and Closed-Gate Iron Fan

(怀中抱月 – Huáizhōng Bào Yuè; 闭门铁扇 – Bìmén Tiěshàn)

A pair of moves: Embracing the Moon was a light backward cut and a feint, and Closed-Gate Iron Fan followed it, pushing the dao out and then sweeping it across (SIDE ch. 11). Miao Renfeng used the pair against Tian Guinong’s men, and Hu Fei repeated it against Tian Guinong. Later Hu Fei shouted that Embracing the Moon was a feint; Tian Guinong braced for Closed-Gate Iron Fan, and Hu Fei made the feint real and cut his wrist (SIDE ch. 11). In Flying Fox of the Snowy Mountain, Hu Yidao told Miao Renfeng that his Closed-Gate Iron Fan Dao (闭门铁扇刀) was too fast for its force to carry (ch. 5).

Three Appearances of the Cloud Dragon

(云龙三现 – Yúnlóng Sān Xiàn)

A single move that pressed three opponents at once. Seated in a chair with a wounded leg, Miao Renfeng used it with the Cold Moon Treasured Dao to cut through two of the Zhong brothers’ judge’s pens and gash the eldest’s shoulder (SIDE ch. 2).

Sand Gull Skimming the Waves

(沙鸥掠波 – Shā’ōu Lüè Bō)

Normally an underhand cut followed by an overhand cut. Miao Renfeng opened with the overhand cut and made the second cut overhand too, a variation of his own that wounded Hu Yidao (ch. 5).

Other named moves

  • Advancing-Step Chain Dao (进步连环刀) and Coiling-Body Pluck-Heart Dao (缠身摘心刀) (ch. 4)
  • Subduing Tiger Stance (伏虎式) and Bow to the Buddha and Listen to the Sutras (拜佛听经), used by Hu Fei in the final duel (ch. 10)
  • Kite Turns Over (鹞子翻身), a turning cut, which Miao Renfeng used to sever an opponent’s arm (SIDE ch. 11)
  • Sha Seng Bows to the Buddha (沙僧拜佛) and Advancing Step Plucks the Stars Dao (上步摘星刀), used by Miao Renfeng (SIDE ch. 11)
  • Guan Ping Presents the Seal (关平献印), Yaksha Probes the Sea (夜叉探海), Advancing Step, Seizing Dao (上步抢刀), Flashing Dao Stance (亮刀势), Guanyin Sits Upon the Lotus (观音坐莲) and The Prodigal Son Returns (浪子回头), which Miao Renfeng called out as Hu Fei fought Tian Guinong (SIDE ch. 11)

Variations

Hu Family Quick Dao

(胡家快刀 – Hú Jiā Kuài Dāo)

A “quick dao” created by the Flying Fox and enriched with many variations by Hu Yidao. In it a fighter cut four or five times in the time others cut once. Hu Fei had drilled it thoroughly, and against the one-armed Daoist’s lightning swordplay he fought more than five hundred exchanges with it in the time it takes to drink a cup of tea (SIDE ch. 19).

Left-hand bladework

At the Grand Assembly, Hu Fei switched his dao to his left hand. Tian Guinong had heard of this left-hand bladework from his father but had never faced it (SIDE ch. 19).

Notable practitioners

The Flying Fox

The Hu bodyguard of Li Zicheng, whose skills were recorded in the family manual and who created its quick dao (ch. 5; SIDE ch. 19).

Hu Yidao

Master of the art, who held Miao Renfeng even for five days and taught him the art in the course of the duel (ch. 4, 5).

Miao Renfeng

Miao Renfeng learned the art from Hu Yidao himself and used it with the Cold Moon Treasured Dao against the Zhong brothers (SIDE ch. 2). Blinded, he fought Tian Guinong’s men with it, using it more skilfully than Hu Fei, who had worked it out alone from the manual (SIDE ch. 11).

Hu Fei

Hu Yidao’s son, who learned it from the manual and practised it throughout Side Story of the Flying Fox. He used it in his final duel with Miao Renfeng (SIDE ch. 3–20; ch. 10).

See also

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