Yuejia Boxing
01 · Historical Records
Yue Family Boxing was created by Yue Fei, the national hero of the Song dynasty. Yue Fei combined the boxing he had learned with the requirements of warfare and taught it to the entire army, at which point Yue Family Boxing first took shape.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Because learning and practicing it were prohibited during the Jin and Yuan periods, it fell into silence, and by the late Ming and early Qing it developed anew to reach its peak. Yue Family Boxing has a distinctive combat function. Its sets are marked by plain, classical movements that are simple and easy to learn. Body movement takes advancing and retreating as its principles, with swallowing, spitting, floating, and sinking as the essentials; the hand methods center on cloud-mist lifting and supporting; and the governing method centers on the eight-character formula of remnant (can), swift (ji), rescue (yuan), seize (duo), pull (qian), press (na), force (bi), and absorb (xi). It emphasizes borrowing force to strike force, deflecting a thousand pounds with four ounces, dissolving the body and flashing a strike, combining hardness and softness, and saving with a strike. With the changes of the times, successive generations of old boxing masters have passed away, and the development of Yue Family Boxing has been hindered.
The ten Yue family routines
Ten graded routines, plain and easy to learn, whose body method turns on swallowing, spitting, floating and sinking.
The Yue family weapons
The spear, double hammers, double maces and staff that together with the boxing and medicine form the art's five parts.
The eight-character method
Eight guiding characters that pair with cloud-and-cast hands and floating-sinking body method to turn force against itself.
Body and hand methods
Hands cast like clouds while the body swallows, spits, floats and sinks in a short, fierce, steady frame.
Yue Fei and the eastern Hubei tradition
Created by the Song general Yue Fei for his troops, the art lay quiet under the Jin-Yuan ban and revived in the late Ming and early Qing.
Zhang Yejin and the Yue Fei school
Born in Wuxue in 1950, he learned the whole system from his father and founded the Yue Fei civil and martial school in 2000.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Legend has it that when Yue Fei's fourth son Yue Zhen and fifth son Yue Ting took refuge in Hubei, they taught this boxing art to the people, and it spread through eastern Hubei.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Yuejia Boxing.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Yue Family Boxing emphasizes the dual cultivation of inner and outer, focusing on the training of spirit, awareness, and breath. Through internal practice it cultivates the body's original qi and upright qi and improves the functions of the body's systems and organs, so that the inner assists the outer and the outer promotes the inner: inner nurtured and outer cultivated, inner strengthened and outer strengthened, achieving an all-round fitness effect that strengthens both inner and outer. Today in Wuxue City only a few boxing masters can completely practice the ten sets of Yue Family Boxing along with the Yue Family Spear, Yue Family Double Hammers, Yue Family Double Maces, Yue Family Staff, and Yue Family Qigong; fewer and fewer people are transmitting Yue Family Boxing, and those able to study it in depth are fewer still. Yue Family Boxing has reached an endangered state and urgently needs rescue and protection. Zhang Yejin (related inheritor, official archive records): Male, Han ethnicity, born in October 1950, from Wuxue City, Hubei Province. A Yue Family Boxing master and a national-level martial arts referee. He learned Yue Family Boxing from his father at age 5, and by age 18 had mastered all of its boxing and weapon sets and its secret techniques. In 1985 he served as leader of the Yue Family Boxing group for the excavation and organization of traditional martial arts under the Hubei Provincial Sports Bureau. In 2000 he founded the Yue Fei Culture and Martial Arts School. He has hosted the National Yue Family Boxing Ten-Thousand-Li Journey activities and convened National Yue Family Boxing annual conferences. He has been invited repeatedly to the United States, South Korea, Malaysia, Japan, and other countries for martial arts exchange visits. In international and domestic martial arts competitions he has won eight gold medals in total. He is the author of eight books, including Yue Family Boxing Combat Techniques and Yue Family Spear Combat Techniques. He is a representative inheritor of Yue Family Boxing, a national-level intangible cultural heritage item from the fifth national batch. He is currently engaged as lifetime martial arts coach of the Hong Kong Police Martial Arts Association, Yue Family Boxing instructor for the armed police forces of Wuxue City, and president of the Yue Fei Culture and Martial Arts School, and has trained a large number of Yue Family Boxing disciples.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Zhang Yejin 05-2551
- Lei Jie
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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