The origin of baguazhang

The expression "Bagua Palm" has many sources.

(1) According to the famous Quyi theorist Ni Zhongzhi:

"Baguazhang" originated from storytelling. In the early years, every storytelling performance was eight paragraphs. After the cross talk was transplanted, it was often performed in Fankou (in the past, cross talk venues were all continuous performances, and there were not many audiences at this time). At this time, telling such a continuous joke can win the audience. Therefore, it is compared to the meaning of "eight poles can't hit, and a hundred shots hit".

(2) according to the famous crosstalk artist Mr Li Boxiang said:

In Beijing in the Qing Dynasty, the gambling industry was very prosperous. The most powerful casino at that time was the "Treasure Bureau". Allegro's masterpiece "Zhuge Liang Gambling" once described the chaotic scene of gambling in the treasure bureau: a small treasure chest is a piece of copper coin, which can be made by skilled craftsmen. Four pieces of copper help crush a piece of wood, black on three sides and red on one side. The treasure chest falls into the bachelor's hand, and the treasure shed is set in the sky of Huang Chengcheng. "Cangbang" opened the treasure, surrounded by seven floors, eight floors outside, and seven miles and eight outside were airtight. There is nothing to gamble on the seventh floor, and he guessed that it was black and red outside on the eighth floor. This one says, "Give me a 300 turn." The other said, "Give me 200 orphans."

It can be seen that the gambling scene at that time was "thrilling". As the saying goes, "there is no winner after gambling for a long time", how many gamblers lose here, and their families are ruined. Some gamblers who lost their eyes were desperate and went to the treasure bureau to "play the game" and "stand in line". One way is to chop off your fingers, or cut a piece of meat from your leg to bet on the table. If the boss of Baoju can't annoy this person, he has to hang a few copper coins on the wall every day. When he comes, he takes the money and leaves. This is called "hanging money".

There is also a more extreme method of "erecting a stick", that is, the person involved in the "treasure-jumping case" lies prone on the gambling table of the treasure bureau, covering his head and key parts with his hands, and slightly bending into a "half bow" to show the motivation of the "treasure-jumping case". At this time, the owner of the treasure bureau should act according to the "Jianghu rules" instead of forcibly pulling people away, and he should "invite" his own "treasure of the town bureau". Generally speaking, a stick can break a leg, and several sticks can make a person disabled for life, but it is absolutely not allowed to kill a person, otherwise the Bao Bureau will compensate a large pension. However, no matter how painful it is, the people in the "jumping treasure case" can't "hum and haw", otherwise even if the "jumping treasure case" fails, they will be killed. If the owner of the treasure bureau is convinced by the silence of the ticket holder, it is considered that the ticket holder's "jumping treasure case" is successful, and this person's later living expenses are all provided by the treasure bureau. The "jumping treasure case" is a perverted "game rule" in that perverted society.

The big stick used to hit people at Treasure Station has a special name, called "Eight Big Sticks", which was a legendary noun at that time.

Early long stand-up comic dialogues, such as Song Jingang's Bet on a Covenant, The Birth of a Horse's Head, The Birth of Zhang Guangtai, Kangxi's Private Visit to the Moon Palace, etc., all involved eight bars or treasure bureau, so cartoonists called these works "eight bars".

Many later works, such as Bai's Falling from the Building, Falling from the List and Shuanghuai, are similar in length to the original Bagua Palm, so they are also collectively called "Bagua Palm" by artists. This is also a common phenomenon of "word meaning expansion" in Chinese.

If we go back further, the club that Bao Bureau beat people is called "Eight Clubs" because in old Beijing, besides Bao Bureau, there are seven places (Cang, Cang, Da, Xiao, Ming, Dark and Zhong) where gangsters often appear. In the above eight places, the owner of "Standing Stick" is not simple, so it is called "Eight Sticks". Later, this kind of address for people was used to beat sticks, which is also a phenomenon of "semantic transfer" in Chinese.

There is another saying: The earliest cross talk art did not have stand-up cross talk, only storytellers told stories. Later, crosstalk performers borrowed the art form of "understanding" and added some unique techniques of crosstalk, forming the art form of stand-up crosstalk, which was dissatisfied by storytellers. According to Jianghu rules, crosstalk choked to death and robbed them of their jobs. Later it was between two people. Storytelling actors allow crosstalk performers to say storytelling, but they can only say some "bald stories", that is, fragments intercepted from some long storytelling, which are headless and bizarre. If storytelling is a big tree with branches and roots like Ye Er, then stand-up crosstalk is like Ye Er, with no branches but bare sticks. Because the storyteller at that time only gave crosstalk performers eight excerpts from eight storytellers, it was called "Eight Stories".