Tai Chi Glossary > Peng (掤)

Peng (掤)

Definition: Peng (掤) is the first of the Eight Methods (Ba Fa) of tai chi — an arcing, elastic way of receiving and expanding an opponent’s force, and the name of the foundational jin quality the other seven methods are said to rest on.

The character is one of the hardest in the tai chi vocabulary for an English reader, and it carries two meanings that have to be kept apart: peng is a technique, peng jin (掤劲) is a quality of force. Getting that distinction straight is most of what this entry is for.

Key points at a glance:

• Peng is the first of the Eight Methods (掤、捋、挤、按、采、挒、肘、靠). The first four are the 四正手, the orthogonal hands; the last four are the 四隅手, the corner hands
• Two senses, not one: peng the technique is an arcing, elastic reception; peng jin (掤劲) is the rounded, spring-like quality said to be present in every tai chi movement
• The character is read bīng in the dictionaries and pēng in the tai chi world. Neither reading is “wrong”; the English headword follows the tai chi convention
• The original meaning of the character has nothing to do with support. 《说文解字》 gives it as the lid of an arrow quiver — tai chi borrowed the character as a technical term
• Peng is not resistance. Yang Chengfu’s phrase is the shortest statement of the difference: “必曰掤者，粘也，非抗也” — peng is adhesive and connected, not a straight-line stand-off
• The body shape is the definition: the arms form a half-moon arc slightly past a right angle, the armpits stay hollow like springs, and the waist drives the arm rather than the arm driving the waist
• In the form: the right and left peng that follow the opening, and the peng within the 掤捋挤按 sequence of Grasp Sparrow’s Tail
• In push hands: peng comes first, whatever else follows — it is how an opponent’s force is met, felt, and answered

Two meanings of one word

Chinese teaching material uses 掤 in two ways, and an English page that does not separate them will confuse the reader.

The technique. Peng as one of the eight methods is a way of receiving and raising: the forearm meets the incoming arm, turns to a rounded arc, and expands outward and upward, carrying the opponent’s force with it rather than meeting it head-on. The teaching image is a half-moon: the elbow sits slightly past a right angle so the forearm and upper arm make a curve, and the palm finishes open and rounded.

The jin. Peng jin (掤劲) is not a movement but a quality — rounded, elastic, expansive, and at the same time soft enough to yield. In modern teaching this is described as the mother quality of the other seven: 八法之劲势只是一个掤劲, “the jin of the eight methods is only a single peng jin”. That is a teaching formulation rather than a classical sentence, and it should be presented as one.

The two senses are not rivals. The technique is how the quality is expressed; the quality is what makes the technique work. A student who has only been told to “keep the arms rounded” is doing the second without the first, and a student who has only learned the shape of a peng without the quality is doing the first without the second.

Its place among the Eight Methods

The standard order of the eight is 掤、捋、挤、按、采、挒、肘、靠, and the first four — peng, lu, ji, an — are called the 四正手, the orthogonal hands, while the last four are the 四隅手, the corner hands.

Two cautions on how that is written down. First, the order varies between transmitted copies: the mainstream sequence places peng first and cai before lie, but some copies place 采 ahead of 按. Any entry that gives an order should say which version it is following rather than present one as the only correct one. Second, the correspondence between the eight methods and the eight trigrams varies as well — the mainstream mapping is peng–kan, lu–li, ji–zhen, an–dui, with the corner methods taking qian, kun, gen and xun, but other transmitted copies give different directions. The framework is stable; the directions are not.

The sister entries for the other seven are Ba Fa for the framework as a whole, and Lu, Ji, An, Cai, Lie, Zhou and Kao for each.

Reading and writing: the hardest single character in the vocabulary

The dictionary reading is bīng, the tai chi reading is pēng. 《广韵》 gives 掤 as “笔陵切” and 《集韵》 as “悲陵切” — middle Chinese, help vowel of the peng rhyme group, giving modern bīng. The tai chi world has read it pēng for generations by oral transmission, and the English headword follows that convention, because that is the pronunciation an English-language reader will hear. The body of the entry should state both and say plainly that this is the difference between a dictionary reading and an industry reading, not an error by anyone.

The original meaning is not about support at all. 《说文解字·手部》 records: “掤，所以覆矢也。从手朋声” — the lid that covers the arrows in a quiver — and quotes 《诗经·郑风·大叔于田》 for it. The character is a rare one, borrowed into tai chi as a technical term rather than used in its original sense.

A competing claim, marked as such. Some practitioners argue that the character for the sense “filled, abundant” should properly be 弸 (péng), whose meanings all carry fullness or abundance, and that some of Chen Xin’s manuscripts write it that way. This is a circulating claim and personal research, not a scholarly conclusion. It belongs in the entry as “some argue”, never as fact.

A practical note for readers: 掤 is a rare character with poor input-method support, so the pinyin and the gloss alongside it are not decoration.

What the body actually does

The following is drawn from public teaching material and describes what is visible from outside — it does not describe internal sensation.

• The arms make a half-moon. The elbow sits slightly beyond a right angle, so forearm and upper arm form a curve rather than a line. The teaching note is “掤要圆撑” — peng must be rounded and supported.
• The armpits stay hollow. 松肩坠肘 with an armpit that holds space, “like a spring”, gives the support its elasticity. An armpit that is closed or a shoulder that is raised turns the support into a lock.
• The waist moves the arm. 左掤向左转腰, 右掤向右转腰. The arm is carried by the turn of the waist, in the same spirit as “一动无有不动”.
• Front and back answer each other. When the front of the body pengs, the back carries a matching support, so the shape is symmetrical through the body rather than a front-arm action.
• The arc is the point. A curved structure resists pressure better than a straight one; that much is ordinary mechanics, and it is a useful analogy rather than a law of structural engineering.

The 《十三字行功诀》 sums it: “掤手两臂要圆撑，动静虚实任意攻.”

How peng differs from its neighbours

Peng is receiving and expanding. It is not pressing head-on. Each of the other methods has its own use, and none of them is peng.

The old maxim that assigns each method to a part of the body — “掤在两臂，捋在掌中，挤在手背，按在腰功，采在十指，挒在两肱，肘在屈使，靠在肩背” — is a teaching formula rather than a classical line, and textbooks differ in their wording. The 《十八在诀》 it comes from is a later compilation, not a nineteenth-century source, and should be marked as one.

Where peng appears

In the form. Right peng and left peng follow the opening, and Grasp Sparrow’s Tail contains the sequence peng, lu, ji, an. Peng appears often enough in standard material to be described as running through the whole routine.

In push hands. The teaching formula is that whatever comes next — listen, neutralise, take, release — begins with peng. Peng is the first line of defence: it meets the force, and in meeting it you can feel whether the opponent is heavy, light, or unsteady.

The standardised popular routine 《太极八法五步》, compiled by the national sports administration for mass promotion, is a modern competition and teaching set built from the common technical ground of the different styles. It is not a traditional family form, and it should never be attributed to one.

For the whole system of the eight methods and how it is practised, see Tai Chi’s 8 Techniques and Tai Chi’s 8 Gates. This entry is about what peng is.

Common mistakes

1. Pushing with the arms. Raised shoulders, locked elbows, braced arms — that is resistance, and practising it hardens the very thing peng is meant to be. Correction: let the shoulders drop and the whole body’s weight do the work.
2. Moving the arm without the body. The correction is the old chain: “其根在脚，发于腿，主宰于腰，形于手指” — the root is in the feet, it is issued through the legs, commanded by the waist, and takes form in the fingers.
3. Turning relaxation into collapse. A soft, sagging arm with the armpit pinched in is the opposite failure. The aim is loose but not scattered, settled but not collapsed: the round support is kept.
4. Writing 棚, 捧 or 膨 for 掤. These are homophone or near-synonym guesses, not the correct character.

Sources

• 《打手歌》 (attributed to Wang Zongyue, authorship disputed) — “掤捋挤按须认真，上下相随人难进……” Earliest recorded in the handwritten “old three books” (老三本) of Li Yiyu, 1880–81.
• 《十三字行功诀》 / 《十三势行功歌》 — “掤手两臂要圆撑，动静虚实任意攻.” The title differs between transmitted copies (《十三式歌》, 《十三势行功歌》, 《太极十三势歌》, 《十三势歌诀》); cite the version used.
• Yang Chengfu, 《太极拳体用全书》, push hands chapter — “掤法向外，驾驭敌人之按手……必曰掤者，粘也，非抗也.”
• Yang-family old manuscript, the “eight methods” formula — “掤劲义何解，如水负行舟，先实丹田气，次要顶头悬，全体弹簧力，开合一定间，任有千斤重，飘浮亦不难.” Wording varies between copies.
• 《十八在诀》 — “掤在两臂.” Attributed to Yang Banhou, first appearing in a twentieth-century compilation; mark it as a later text.
• 《说文解字》 and 《广韵》/《集韵》 — the character’s original sense and its dictionary reading.
• 《太极拳释名》 (traditionally attributed to Wang Zongyue, attribution and date disputed) — the source of the framework that sets the eight methods in place.
• Shen Jiazhen and Gu Liuxing, 《陈式太极拳》, People’s Sports Publishing House, 1963, ISBN 9787500901983 — for the hearing and description of peng in Chen-style teaching.