Chaquan and Tan Tui belong to the family of Chinese martial arts known as Jiao Men, or “Sect Fighting”. China has many ethnic minorities, each with their own skills. Chaquan and Tan Tui originate from the Hui (Muslim) community of North West China, one of the larger minority groups. Over the centuries the Hui people spread across China and many great masters of many styles have been Hui.

Chaquan and Tan Tui were both developed by Cha Shangmir or “Chamir” (Jamil) during the Ming Dynasty. Cha rose to fame fighting the Japanese pirates who plagued the Chinese coast during the later Ming Dynasty. According to Legend he became sick and was taken in by a group of villagers. When he recovered he taught them Chaquan and Tan Tui out of gratitude. From there the style spread across China.

Chaquan is a longfist system, utilising fully extended movements and long, rapid footwork. It is however unique in it’s rhythm. Whereas most longfist styles teach the practitioner to move all their limbs in unison, the Chaquan practitioner moves at an offset, disjointed rhythm. Their movements all finish at the same time, but they move at different speeds to get there.

Chaquan is a beautiful and powerful system, and it’s fourth form has been assimilated into the syllabuses of many shaolin longfist schools for just this reason.

Because longfist systems in general, and especially Chaquan , are quite difficult for beginners to grasp the fundamentals of, Chamir created the Tan Tui (springing legs) routines. The Tan Tui routines consists of ten short combinations or “lines”. These can be practiced as a form, or each line can be repeated over and over to perfect it.

Much of the emphasis in Tan Tui, as the name suggests, is on leg work, with each line revolving around a leg technique. The principle kick of the Tan Tui is a snapping mid level front kick, but it also contains others such as skipping kicks and sweeps.

The Tan Tui are not solely leg routines however. Each line has effective punching, locking and throwing applications as well.

Tan Tui provides a student with an excellent grounding in longfist, and as such it has also been adopted by many Shaolin schools. The famous Chin Woo Institute in Shanghai adopted a twelve line Tan Tui which breaks up some of the principles of the higher lines into more digestible pieces as one of their core routines.