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| Bujiquan 布雞拳, |
Bujiquan: The Rare Kung Fu of Taiwan's Xiluo Qikan
Taiwan preserves martial traditions that are little known outside the communities where they have been practiced for generations.
One of the most interesting examples is Bujiquan 布雞拳, a traditional boxing system associated particularly with the Zhao'an Hakka communities of central Taiwan and the martial culture of the historic Xiluo Qikan 西螺七崁 region.
Unlike internationally famous Chinese martial arts such as Wing Chun, Taijiquan or White Crane, Bujiquan remains largely unknown outside Taiwan.
Its obscurity, however, should not be confused with absence of history.
The surviving Taiwanese record connects the tradition with a martial teacher named Liao Jinsheng 廖金生 and with the establishment of a martial organization in central Taiwan during the Qing dynasty.
And that makes Bujiquan particularly interesting to anyone studying the development of traditional martial arts in Taiwan.
Xiluo Qikan and the Martial Culture of Central Taiwan
The history of Bujiquan cannot really be separated from Xiluo Qikan, a network of settlements historically associated with the Zhang-Liao clans and Zhao'an Hakka communities in what is now central Taiwan.
Martial organizations became an important part of local community life.
This wasn't merely a matter of individual martial artists teaching private students.
Martial training became connected with village organization, local defense, lion dancing, religious festivals and community identity.
Several important martial organizations eventually became associated with the region, including Wuyeguan 武野館, Zhenxingshe 振興社 and Qinxitang 勤習堂.
Bujiquan became particularly associated with the Wuyeguan tradition. Taiwanese government cultural documentation describes Wuyeguan as one of the major martial systems associated with Xiluo Qikan.
Liao Jinsheng and the 1831 Tradition
According to Taiwanese cultural-heritage documentation, the important turning point came during the reign of the Daoguang Emperor.
The traditional date is 1831 — Daoguang 11.
The Liao community around Gangwei faced problems with banditry in the area south of the New Huwei River. According to the preserved account, community members returned to their ancestral homeland at Guanpi in Zhao'an County, Fujian, seeking a martial teacher.
They brought Liao Jinsheng to Taiwan.
Liao was said to possess Bujiquan skills and subsequently established the Jinshilianzhen Wuyeguan, where martial arts were taught to the local community.
A government-supported research project on the Xiluo Qikan martial traditions likewise identifies the Gangwei Wuyeguan tradition with the Zhang-Liao community and Bujiquan.
This gives us a reasonably clear traditional transmission account:
Zhao'an, Fujian → Liao Jinsheng → Gangwei, Taiwan → Wuyeguan → later generations.
But we need to be precise about what this establishes.
The documentation records the traditional history of Bujiquan's transmission to Taiwan.
It does not necessarily establish when Bujiquan itself was created.
Therefore 1831 should not be described as the first proven existence of the martial art unless an independently datable source from that year can be located.
It is better understood as the traditional date associated with Liao Jinsheng's transmission and the establishment of the Wuyeguan tradition in Taiwan.
What Was Bujiquan?
This is where the historical question becomes considerably more difficult.
The name 布雞拳 appears in Taiwanese sources, sometimes with variant terminology. The National Cultural Memory Bank itself records both 布雞拳 and 步雞拳 in material concerning Wuyeguan.
Another government-supported study discusses 布家拳, noting that it may also be called 布雞拳 in Taiwanese/Hokkien usage. Interestingly, that study describes the system as using low stances, elbow actions and combinations of long and short hand techniques.
This already warns us against trying to define Bujiquan from one modern demonstration or one branch.
My older description of the system presented it confidently as an early nineteenth-century Fujian boxing style closely related to White Crane, Five Ancestors and Golden Eagle Boxing.
Today I would be more cautious.
There are certainly features that invite comparison with other southern Chinese martial traditions.
But:
Technical resemblance is a reason to investigate historical relationships, not proof that those relationships existed.
Before claiming that Bujiquan and White Crane share a common origin, for example, we would need evidence concerning their transmission histories as well as technical comparison.
The same applies to Golden Eagle Boxing.
Bujiquan and Golden Eagle Boxing
This comparison is particularly interesting because another important martial tradition existed within the same regional martial environment.
The Xiluo Qikan martial traditions included the Golden Eagle Boxing 金鷹拳 associated with Zhenxingshe, while Bujiquan became associated with Wuyeguan. Taiwanese sources explicitly distinguish these as different martial systems within the Qikan martial landscape.
A modern observer may notice similarities between them.
That is valuable practitioner evidence.
But similarity does not establish that Bujiquan was originally a branch of Golden Eagle Boxing.
The better question is:
Why do martial systems preserved within the same regional environment sometimes share technical characteristics while maintaining separate identities and transmission histories?
That question could eventually tell us much more about Taiwanese martial development than simply trying to force the systems into a single lineage tree.
A Martial Art Embedded in Community Life
One of the most valuable aspects of Bujiquan is that it was not preserved simply as a collection of fighting techniques.
It became embedded within a larger cultural system.
Wuyeguan is particularly associated with the open-mouth lion 開口獅 tradition.
Government cultural documentation connects the lion tradition directly with the martial history of the community, while contemporary local-government material reports that residents continue teaching children Bujiquan, lion dancing and drumming as traditional community arts.
This is important.
When we study traditional Chinese martial arts, we often isolate the boxing from everything surrounding it.
But historically these things could coexist:
martial training, community defense, medicine, lion dancing, temple activities, festivals, clan organization and local identity.
Bujiquan therefore offers us something more valuable than another collection of old techniques.
It provides a surviving window into a particular kind of local martial culture.
Is Bujiquan Disappearing?
There is genuine reason for concern about preservation.
A 2011 report from Taiwan's Public Television Service described local concern that traditional martial arts and associated performing traditions among the Zhao'an Hakka communities were declining and could face discontinuity as older generations disappeared.
But saying that only twenty practitioners remain, or that Bujiquan exists in only one village, requires evidence.
Current local-government material actually documents continuing community instruction in Gangwei, while other research describes related Buji/Bufamily boxing traditions across a wider geographical area.
The situation therefore appears more complicated than simply:
“Twenty practitioners remain and the art is about to disappear.”
What is endangered may instead be particular lineages, curricula, teaching contexts and community knowledge.
And that is arguably an even more important preservation question.
Why Bujiquan Matters
Bujiquan will probably never become an internationally famous martial art.
That isn't what makes it important.
Its importance lies in what it can tell us about the history of martial arts in Taiwan.
Here we have a martial tradition associated with migration from Zhao'an in Fujian, preserved among central Taiwanese communities, connected with local defense traditions and eventually integrated with lion dancing and community cultural identity.
And unlike many famous kung fu origin stories, there is enough surviving historical and cultural documentation to begin reconstructing that story seriously.
There are still major unanswered questions.
What evidence survives for Bujiquan in nineteenth-century Fujian?
How early can the name 布雞拳 be independently documented?
What exactly did Liao Jinsheng teach?
How much has the curriculum changed over successive generations?
What relationship, if any, exists between 布雞拳, 步雞拳 and 布家拳?
And how does its technical vocabulary compare historically—not merely visually—with the other Fujian and Taiwanese martial systems around it?
Those questions are more interesting than declaring that we already know its complete history.
Bujiquan is valuable precisely because there is still something left to discover.
References
The strongest source for a Blogger article is Taiwan's National Cultural Memory Bank, which records the 1831 Liao Jinsheng tradition, Bujiquan and its relationship with the Zhao'an Hakka open-mouth lion tradition.
National Cultural Memory Bank — Zhao'an Hakka Open-Mouth Lion
Its separate Wuyeguan entry gives further information on Liao Jinsheng, Gangwei and later transmission.
National Cultural Memory Bank — Xiluo Qikan Wuyeguan System
The Hakka Affairs Council research is particularly useful because it documents the Wuyeguan martial tradition and living practitioners rather than merely repeating a general martial-arts history.
Hakka Affairs Council research report
Current Lunbei Township material documents continued community teaching of Bujiquan, open-mouth lion and drumming.
Lunbei Township — Gangwei Qikan