For Shaolin Ways Episode 6: Baduanjin, click here.
The Shaolin Monks are famous for their mastery of staff fighting. The staff is their signature weapon. Kung Fu lore often shallowly attributes this to the peacefulness of Buddhist monks. It’s one of those mindlessly repeated legends that just doesn’t hold up to logical scrutiny. This myth propounds the notion that the Shaolin Monks, being Buddhist, were forbidden to kill and that the staff being blunt, wasn’t a killing weapon. However, this legend collapses when you consider the rest of the Shaolin arsenal. The fact is that the Shaolin curriculum propounds every single weapon within the vast and diverse armory of Chinese cold arms. And you can kill with a stick if you know how to use it correctly. This renders the idea that the Shaolin predilection of staff due to a killing prohibition as absurd.
It’s more likely that the Shaolin staff association comes from the Buddhism. Buddhists practice non-attachment; consequently, Buddhist monks are only permitted a limited number of possessions. This varies from sect to sect, but they are generally restricted to the most spartan of necessities: three robes, an alms bowl, needle and thread, a razor (for shaving their heads), malas, and a walking stick. It is the Buddhist walking stick that likely inspired the association of Shaolin monks and fighting staffs.
In the extraordinary work, The Shaolin Monastery: History, Religion, and the Chinese Martial Arts, Professor Meir Shahar devotes an entire chapter to 'Staff Legends.' He draws connections to Chinese mythology and the Buddhist deity Vajrapani (a.k.a. Jinnaluo in Mandarin) as well as makes the connection between monks bearing emblematic staffs, specifically the Ring Staff. He also cites Cheng Zongyou's Exposition of the Original Shaolin Staff Method as the earliest extant manual on Shaolin martial arts. Compiled around 1610 CE, one of the five staff methods that Cheng includes is Yinshougun. He also describes a staff as akin to "a mouse's tail" which I shall discuss later.
In Kung Fu, the staff is known as the grandfather of weapons. It is the simplest, the most rudimentary and primordial. The first weapon anyone picks up is a stick. Before learning swords, spears, Guandao, or even nunchucks, it’s best to start with stick.
The staff goes by many names in English – stick, rod, club, truncheon, baton, and the most specific (and my personal favorite despite its obscurity) cudgel. As the martial arts spread westward, the martial arts staff commonly became referred to as the ‘bo staff’ due to the precedence of the spread of Japanese Budo arts. The Japanese character for bo descends from the Chinese character bang (棒), which means ‘stick’ or the onomatopoeic word ‘hit.’ Consequently, this common reference bo staff is redundant, akin to saying ‘ATM machine’ or ‘chai tea.’ Bo staff literally means ‘stick staff’.
The Multitudes of Shaolin Staff
There are countless Shaolin staff forms in Kung Fu. There are several just within the Songshan Shaolin Temple curriculum alone, and far more within the global diaspora of Shaolin descended disciplines. Among the forms that I learned during my first trip to Shaolin Temple was Yinshougun, a fundamental staff set. Yinshougun (阴手棍) is relatively simple to translate. Yin is same yin as in yin yang - it is the dark side, the feminine, or the secretive. I lean towards translating this as ‘shadow’ because it’s poetic. Shou means hand and gun (pronounced more like ‘goon’ than like the firearm with the fourth ‘falling’ tone) means stick, staff, or cudgel. Gun is a more commonly used name for long fighting staffs than bang – when a fighting staff is referred to as a bang, it is typically shorter, closer to sword length.
Yinshougun remains one of my all-time favorite forms.
The meaning behind the name ‘Shadow hand staff’ lies within how the staff is held. When a staff is held with the palms facing each other, that is called yin yang hand. When the hands are faced the same direction, that’s yin hand. In this position, both palms are facing downward – or pronated – so the palms are in shadow.
My first Kung Fu staff form was yin yang hand. That was from my previous Shaolin system, Bak Sil Lum, which means ‘northern Shaolin’ in Cantonese. It’s quite different.
Known as Nine Province Eyebrow Height Staff (Gau Yau Chai Mei Gwan 九邱齊眉棍 - again in Cantonese), not only is the hand position different, the staff is shorter and symmetrical. As the name implies, the staff is as tall as the user’s eyebrow when upright on the ground. This is roughly the same distance as the user’s arm span in a proportional relationship akin to da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. By symmetrical, it means that it is the same circumference from end to end. This allows for quick changes on which end is used for striking, more akin to what is conventionally thought of as quarterstaff fighting. Nine Province Eyebrow Height Staff was the first Kung Fu weapon form that I ever learned, so it holds a very special place in my heart.
In contrast, Yinshougun uses a tapered staff, sometimes colloquially called a ‘rat tail staff’ because of its shape. It’s longer reaching to the height of the wrist when the user extends the arm above the head. That’s akin to the length of most spears.
There are plenty of comments any staff practitioner might have about the differences between these two forms and how the structure of the weapons – symmetrical versus rat tail – might affect their usage. However, this essay isn’t about that. This is about the ‘street effectiveness’ of the staff…or more precisely, the ‘trail effectiveness.’ Our martial myopia defines staffs as weapons, but I always look to the roots. Which makes a better walking staff?
Taking Refuge in Yosemite
I originally conceived of this article back in 2019, when I backpacked from Tuolumne meadows past Half Dome to the Yosemite Valley. That was the first time I used a hiking stick, specifically a rattan eyebrow height staff. It reminds me of the riddle of the Sphinx. “What has four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?” The answer, which shouldn’t be a spoiler since this riddle dates to around 2500 BCE, but just in case you missed it, is man. Man crawls on all fours as a baby, walks erect on two legs as an adult, and then uses a walking stick as an old man. Well, I’m at that old man stage, at least when it comes to backpacking. While I’m writing off adopting a walking stick as martial arts research here for this essay, I confess that it has proven as a valuable tool for backpacking.
Our backpacking trips are my vacations – a precious time to get away – to get OFFLINE – and be in the moment. However, being a writer, I never stop writing, at least in my head. I conceived of this article on the trail before the pandemic but never got back to it. In 2021, we went on another backpacking trek to escape the 4th of July. I live in a neighborhood that is overenthusiastic about Independence Day celebrations. When I stay home, I’m forced to sit on my veranda with my fire extinguisher at the ready. Our neighborhood is notorious for launching fireworks and invariably some fires result. After being couped up for two years whilst sheltering in place, from the pandemic, we left it to our neighbors not to burn our hood down. Backpacking is a covid safe activity because you don’t see that many people, and they stay socially distant. That, like getting offline, is part of the point. So, we escaped to the Hetch Hetchy region of Yosemite.
Having never come back to my original eyebrow height walking stick idea, I figured I’d try another walking stick but a rat tail instead. Tiger Claw President Jonny Oh kindly donated a nice thick waxwood rat tail staff to me. It had gotten horribly stained during transport, but the wood was still in good condition. That was perfect. It couldn’t be sold because of the stains, but that was nothing some sanding wouldn’t fix. Plus, I was taking it on the trail where it would get even dirtier. And no, I still haven’t sanded it clean. I’m headed out for some backpacking again this summer, so It’ll only get dirty again.
Everyday Carries and Cold Arms
In college and graduate school, I dabbled in Japanese sword arts - Kendo and Iaido. One of the many lessons that fascinated me was the attention given to how to carry a sword. In the Chinese martial arts, the scabbard is almost vestigial. It’s sold with most swords, but swords are generally carried in sword cases. The same is true for Kendo, but in Iaido, it’s all about drawing and cutting. That starts with carrying. How to properly carry a sword is an important facet of Iaido practice because if you bear it incorrectly, you cannot draw it quickly.
Nowadays, it’s socially unacceptable to carry a sword about, never mind a staff (don’t even get me started on firearm open carry here). I suppose I could get away with a cane, but that’s not the same as a walking stick. Always eager to deepen my understanding of ancient weapons, I’ve found places where weapons might be carried, just to get the feel of carrying one all day. You can carry a sword of walking stick at a Renaissance faire although you must abide safety restrictions. Many such gatherings will require you to tie your sword into sheath, akin to how the sageo might be used to secure a katana in the emperor’s castle (the sageo is a cord wrapped around the saya (scabbard) of a Japanese sword).
Similarly, you can carry a sword or staff if you’re a cosplayer at a Comic con, but again, there are safety restrictions. Comic cons generally frown on real weapons, so steel swords are seldom permitted – plastic or foam swords are recommended. However, those don’t give you the weight that a real weapon would have, which detracts significantly from the experience.
While Renn faires and Comic cons might seem nerdy to some practitioners, if you’ve never tried to carry a weapon around all day, you don’t fully understand or appreciate it. Simple tasks, like going to the bathroom, take on new meaning when you’re trying to unshackle your sword belt in a porta-potty. A yard of steel can be unrelentingly awkward when moving through a crowd or getting around small obstacles. It’s embarrassing when you crack a beer wench or a Twi’lek dancer across the shin with your dangling scabbard. Imagine how much harder it is with a walking stick that’s nearly twice as long.
Once, when visiting Shaolin Temple during one of the Festivals, I crossed paths with some Japanese monks on pilgrimage. They were in full robes, replete with walking sticks, and these magnificent traditional backpacks constructed entirely of wood. They must have weighed a ton. When backpacking, you carry as little as possible because, well, you got to carry it. Every ounce of extra weight counts when you’re hiking for miles, often in the thin air of high altitudes, climbing up and down mountains. These monks could’ve used a modern backpack like mine, which is tough yet feather light. But it was an act of their devotion to bear these traditional wooden packs. I was impressed and inspired by them.
Monk Climbs the Mountain
A walking stick has become an indispensable item in my backpacking tools. In my high-altitude oxygen-deprived fantasies, I imagine I could use it to fend off a bear (more like a raccoon, but those are fierce too). I’d like to say that I could practice my Yinshougun and Nine-Province staff high up on the mountains at every panoramic vista like in the movies, but I only ran through it once or twice on each trip because my legs were spent from hiking. On my last trip, my rat tail staff saved me from face planting when traversing a muddy bit of trail near a bog (and believe me when I say that falling in the mud in full pack sucks).
Which was better? I prefer the rattan eyebrow height staff. Not only is it shorter (and thus more manageable), but it’s also lighter and I’ve already discussed how important less weight is while backpacking is. If I ever did have to bear or raccoon, perhaps the extra length of the rat tail would be preferable, but it hasn’t come to that yet (I did encounter bears on two different occasions on my 2021 trip – and I evacuated those areas as quickly as I could in full pack). I suppose this reflects upon their usage as a weapon too. Being lighter and shorter, an eyebrow height staff is faster and more versatile. But a rat tail staff is longer, so it could keep an opponent at bay from a greater distance.
I’m planning to go on some more backpacking trips this summer, which is one of the reasons I’m finally getting this article off my desk. Within the Wuxia genre, there are many warriors known by the weapons that they carry, like the Lord Guan and the aforementioned Guandao. In The Lord of the Rings, the fellowship had walking sticks and Gandalf had his mighty wizard’s staff. I’ve toyed with the idea of carrying some classic Kung Fu pole arm to level up my experience with this. I have a nice Monk Spade in my collection that I never learned how to use. It’s hollow so it’s not too heavy, but it is significantly heavier than a staff, and far more unwieldy with the crescent and spade heads.
But no, that’s a quest for a younger man. Like I said, I’m at that Sphinx’s ‘three in the evening’ stage of my life so I’ll stick to my trusty eyebrow-height stick.
Amitoufo and Happy Trails.
