擠 - the character ji is usually translated as press or squeeze, which I’ve always found a bit confusing.
Ji also means crowded, or to crowd, or to squeeze. It could have a connotation like the attendants pushing or squeezing or crowding people onto the Tokyo subway. It could also mean something like “it’s crowded in here”. It could also mean to squeeze with the hands. Because of all those subtle differences in connotation, I’m still a bit confused by the word. This word is more “poetic” and describing an “energy” or feeling rather than a technique which is what has always confused me when thinking of a particular move with the hands together or close together and the body moving forward.
At the moment, I tend to think of it in a general sense as in you’re crowding the other person and taking away space, not necessarily that you’re pressing forward or squeezing. That is easy to understand and applies regardless of technique or whether it’s standup as in taijiquan or on the ground as in bjj. It applies especially well to the top position in bjj. You always want the other person feeling crowded in regardless of any other “energy” or technique you might be doing or about to do. This kind of confusion and ambiguity in expression and application always makes me wonder “what is taijiquan” exactly? It seems to be more abstract concepts and philosophy than a body of specific techniques or a “bag of tricks”.
My impression is that Taiji’s Ji is named Ji because it had to be named something, that’s all. There is no single word that can suitably convey a masterful application of technique.
I agree that the good stuff is the good stuff. The names - probably not just names. A lot of poetic expression and a lot of confusion. Some clever people layered on a lot of philosophical and complex terms that can make it difficult to see the actual stuff (especially if we’re reading and writing and not training). For me, 99% of it is interesting for intellectual curiosity - useless for actual understanding of the art. 1% of it is actually helpful to understand something about the stuff itself. I want to know for both reasons what might have gotten lost in the translation.
I cannot find such explanation about the letter ‘ji’ in my dictionaries. literal meaning of ji in traditional Chinese is raising up or press something evenly, usually with both hands parallely. may be the thing i press is valuable or fragile, or i’m in formal situation.
right part of the letter ji (it pronounce same) has the meaning of even and parallel in horizontal position. we can find they use that letter describing the eyebrows of the beauty in old chinese poem. a pair of shoes in well arranged, we can use that letter.
and those letters has much more meanings, 擠 also has meaning of ‘exclude’ something or political enemy. 齊 has meaning of ‘cutting’, ‘clear’ (you can find similarity of this meanings)
Interesting. The other meanings explain a lot. Thanks!
Can you help me with “peng” and “lu”? These concepts seem easy to understand but the actual words are difficult. The translation I find for peng is arrow quiver but the modern word is bing. I only have one English book that tries to explain it.
Lu is not in any dictionaries I checked nor in two classical Chinese dictionaries my wife checked. I am pretty confused about them now. Normally I’m more interested in the “quan” itself than the literature, but the intellectual curiosity is getting to me. I never thought I’d be interested in the literary aspects themselves.
I cannot explain these famous 4 technical points of Taichichuan(掤履擠按) and additional ones(採挒肘靠) now, because i don’t know Tachichuan clearly and which aspect of those letters they adopted either.
I think there must be a famous taichichuan master who explain these letters thoughroughly in English.
It’s not easy to find good old Chinese Character Dictionary. in Asia, there is very famous one, 大漢和辭典(大漢和辞典), 13 volumes Chinese-Japanese Dictionary edited by MOROHASHI Tetsuji. there will be Enlish version of this dictionary in U.S. (copy this word and try to find in Wikipedia)
Thanks again, kabbala. There are English books that explain the concepts. I haven’t seen one explain the letters and words in depth. With my limited Chinese skills I’d also like to learn and ponder the original words myself, not just rely on others’ translations. My interest is 99% intellectual but perhaps 1% of this understanding would help with my actual understanding of the art, since it’s transmitted not only through movement but also through words, which are apparently very rich in meaning and very complex to translate. I’ll look for that dictionary later. Thank you.
“This kind of confusion and ambiguity in expression and application always makes me wonder “what is taijiquan” exactly? It seems to be more abstract concepts and philosophy than a body of specific techniques or a “bag of tricks”.”
Perhaps a large part of your problem with understanding taiji, then, is because you’re coming at it from the wrong angle. Peng, lu, ji, an, etc. all have dictionary definitions because they are Chinese characters. But those dictionary definitions have nothing to do with the usage that each branch of taiji assigns to them (or perhaps only vaguely).
In order to understand, you have to start with a knowledgeable teacher that can show you what peng, etc. is. From there you can do your own further research to deepen your understanding.
But starting like you’ve outlined in your post is just stumbling around in the dark. You wouldn’t know if you’ve found something helpful or not if you don’t have an action/feeling to associate it with.
Do you see what I mean?
Yes, definitely. That makes sense. I’m not starting with the dictionary definitions. I find “peng” is basically easy to understand without analysis, but going back to understand the etymology (intellectual curiosity) is baffling. For “ji”, thinking about it now, the common usage of the word does seem informative - it could be because no one has ever explained “ji” in a taijiquan context to my full satisfaction, though. In that sense peng and ji are opposite. Peng to me is easy to understand but the word itself is almost impossible to understand. Ji was always confusing to me but the word itself is somewhat more clear.