The Method of Chinese Wrestling

One of the art's earliest and most complete training manuals, The Method of Chinese Wrestling explores all aspects of this ancient fighting system, including solo training, training with equipment, constructing training apparatus, application of techniques, and the rules of competition. Throwing, gripping, and falling techniques are revealed in minute detail, and in accompanying photographs, the author and his top students illustrate the methods described. Both a fascinating historical document and a practical training guide, the book is an essential reference for anyone interested in the martial arts.

Tong Zhongyi (also known as Tong Liangchen), a Manchurian whose ancestral clan came from Shenyang in Liaoning Province, was born in 1878, the fourth year of the reign of the emperor Guangxu, in Zhili (Hebei), Cang County. His father, Tong Enrui, was a famous practitioner of the Da Liu He School in Cang County. Tong Zhongyi became an expert at Chinese Wrestling not through study with his family, but through his training with a senior student of his father, Tong Zhongyi’s older martial brother Cai Jintian. Cai Jintian was a Mongolian and was an expert at “Guan Jiao” (Mongolian Wrestling). Although Tong Zhongyi trained very hard, he had a hard time making serious improvement and would always lose matches to his older martial brother. Eventually, Tong moved to Baoding to assume the role of head martial arts instructor at the military training school. In Baoding he had the opportunity to train with other Chinese Wrestlers on a regular basis, and his skills quickly improved.

Tim Cartmell began his martial arts training with the Chinese styles, including ten years of study in China. He is an Asian Full-Contact champion, a submissions grappling champion, and a two-time Pan American Brazilian Jiu Jitsu champion. Cartmell holds an eighth degree black belt in Kung Fu San Soo, is a lineage holder in several Chinese Internal martial arts styles, and is a black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He has authored and translated several martial arts related books, and currently teaches martial arts at the Shen Wu Academy in the Southern California area. He can be reached through his website, www.shenwu.com.