
Volume One: Chaquan and Spring Kick Drills. Ten Chaquan forms and an extra book on the Spring Kick drills. Volume Two: Further Stylels Within the Chaquan System - Hua, Pao, Hong, and Tui. Volume Three: Representative Weapons of the Cha System - sabre, sword, spear, staff, hooks, batons, cutter, and crescent blade.
Zhang Wenguang’s China’s Chaquan was written by Zhang Wenguan (1915-2010), head of the wushu department of the Beijing Physical Culture Institute while I was a student there (in the early 1980s). Researched and overseen by Zhang Wenguang, the performances for the drawings were done by the wushu department teaching staff. All of my teachers were involved, so it was fun for me to translate. It describes the routines from the Zhang branch of Chaquan. I put the ten routines in volume one and the other routines in volume two. I also added Zhang Wenguang’s little book on the Tantui spring kick drills that we did at the college. I have learned at least five different Tantui drills over the years, and time spent doing them is always time well spent. I learned the fourth Chaquan form at the college, and watched a lot of Chaquan, as the book research was going on while I was a student there. I am glad to finally present professor Zhang’s work to the English speaking Chaquan fans. Volume three is the translation of a later book, to complete the Chaquan translations.
In the volume three book, I forgot to credit my brother Graham and my martial brother Byron, for their work on the cover art. Graham, with his drawing skill, and Byron with his computer graphics skill.
Comments from Readers“We at Plum freely admit that we are big fans of Andrea Falk, in her roles as martial artist, writer, and translator. It is this last role that celebrate today. When we started Plum, almost 30 years ago, there were so many important texts available in Chinese that we never thought we would see in English, and, of course, there still are (many of which we represent). But Falk, and a scattered few, are slowly chipping away at the canon, and this new book is a great example of her work. Thanks to here translation, Zhang Wenguang’s book on Chaquan, and his smaller text on Tan Tui Kick Drills (published as one volume) are now available, in English, on Plum. As is typical of Andrea’s work, it is not just a xeroxed copy, but contains additional notes, prefaces, discussions and a glossary. The format, in English, is accompanied by both pinyin and Chinese character names for each move. We are just so pleased that the literary martial library continues to grow with quality books like this one.” Plum Publications, USA