Out now on Kindle
The Five Element Fists of Xingyiquan
An Engineer’s Guide to Pi, Zuan, Beng, Pao, and Heng
Fifteen years of Yizong Xingyiquan under Master Luo Dexiu, written by an engineer for readers who want to know what the classical language actually means in force, structure, timing, and angle.
Free to read with Kindle Unlimited · Paperback edition coming August
What the book argues
Somewhere in the middle of this book you will meet the following claim: your deadlift strength is, in principle, the ceiling of your vertical Zuan Quan.
Not a poetic correspondence. The same hip hinge, the same extensor chain, the same force production — which means the barbell in your gym is a legitimate way to train and to measure a punch described in nineteenth-century Chinese manuals.
The book is organised around one idea: the five fists are not five techniques. They are one force-production engine with five delivery geometries — one power drill with five different bits. That is why the system could historically be brought to functional level in months rather than decades, and it is why learning it as five separate techniques makes it harder than it needs to be.
Inside
- One engine, five bits. Every fist explained as the same force production pointed in a different direction.
- Testable readouts. The deadlift ceiling of Zuan. The audible sound of a correct half-step. Effort-to-effect ratio as a live structural readout you can run on yourself today.
- Forty-nine figures from real classes. Frames cut from a decade of unedited class recordings, 2013–2023 — real corrections, real students, each cited by source video and timecode.
- Twelve sidebars translating combat psychology into negotiation, management, and strategy: the transverse position, the half-beat, the parry that includes the riposte.
- No five-element numerology. Force, structure, timing, angle. Nothing in the book asks you to believe a cosmology first.
Who it is for
The lifter, the coder, the product manager, the fighter from another art — anyone whose first instinct on being told the force is already wrapped as it begins is to ask what that means in Newtons.
What is here, and what it costs
The book points you to this page. Here is the honest layout, so nobody arrives expecting something that is not here.
Free — this page, and the mailing list.
Patreon membership — the class recordings the figures were cut from, and the online course.
In person — classes and seminars at Biyankan in Hsinchu, Taiwan.
The Source Recordings
Every figure in the book is a frame from a real class, 2013–2023, and each one is cited in the text by source video and timecode.
Those recordings are released with English subtitles as weekly drops in the Archive Vault on Patreon, which is a paid membership. Being straight about the state of it: there are roughly 160 sessions and four go up each week, so the archive is filling in over time rather than sitting there complete. A reader who bought the book today will not find every figure’s source class waiting.
So here is a standing offer. If there is a particular figure you want the source class for, email me the figure number and I will move that session to the front of the release queue. That costs me nothing and it beats waiting.
The Practitioner and Advanced Practitioner tiers both reach the Vault; Advanced Practitioner gets each drop the week it lands.
Online Course
Structured, on-camera instruction of the five fists, taught in sequence. Also part of the Patreon membership.
Live Classes and Seminars in Taiwan
Weekly classes and seminars at Biyankan (碧巖館), Hsinchu. The external-load test from Chapter 2 is administered here the old-fashioned way. English, 中文, and 日本語 all welcome.
Contact: areios.chang@gmail.com
Mailing List and Volume II
This one is free. Volume II — Generating, Overcoming, and the Advancing-Retreating Chain will be announced by email first. Write to areios.chang@gmail.com with the subject Book list to join.
— Wenteng Chang （張東逸）, Biyankan