Tai Chi Glossary > Wu Qin Xi (五禽戏)

Wu Qin Xi (五禽戏)

Definition: Wu Qin Xi (五禽戏) — “Five Animal Frolics” — is a health qigong set of 12 movements built around five animal imitations: tiger, deer, bear, ape and bird. Each animal contributes two movements, and the set opens with a standing breathing adjustment and closes by gathering the breath back to the lower abdomen.

The Five Animals

Animal	Movements	Character the set asks for
Tiger (虎)	Raising the Tiger (虎举), Pouncing the Tiger (虎扑)	Vigour and focus — a forward reach that opens the whole front body
Deer (鹿)	Deer Stamping (鹿抵), Deer Galloping (鹿奔)	Lightness and length — rotation through the waist and lower back
Bear (熊)	Bear Rolling (熊运), Bear Swaying (熊晃)	Weight and patience — a heavy swing driven from the hips
Ape (猿)	Ape Raising (猿提), Ape Reaching (猿摘)	Quick, playful coordination — balance on one leg while reaching
Bird (鸟)	Bird Stretching (鸟伸), Bird Flying (鸟飞)	Ease and lift — the one-legged open shape of a bird about to leave the ground

Where the Modern Set Comes From

The version taught today is not a single ancient manuscript. It was organized and developed by experts convened by the Health Qigong Management Center of the State General Administration of Sport, from the digging-through and tidying-up of traditional Wu Qin Xi material, keeping the traditional style and character, borrowing the strengths of several schools, and adapting to modern life. It is described in its own official material as one of four health qigong routines — the first time in history that a sports authority both compiled a health qigong routine and organized its promotion.

Two details in the modern set are worth knowing because they explain its shape:

• The order comes from a historical record, not from folklore. The sequence tiger, deer, bear, ape, bird follows the Book of Wei biography of Hua Tuo (《三国志·华佗传》). Later lineages each developed their own styles, and some of them even took Hua Tuo’s name. The official routine is closer to a standardization of that record than to any one school.
• The number of movements comes from an earlier text. Ten movements, two per animal, follow the description in Tao Hongjing’s Yangxing Yanming Lu (《养性延命录》); the opening breathing adjustment and the closing return were added, giving 12 movements in total.

The compilation group also cross-checked its material widely — more than 50 texts and 20 recorded sets, visits to Hua Tuo’s home region in Bozhou, teaching experiments at six sites with follow-up testing of 323 older adults. Those figures describe how the routine was developed; they are not a claim about what it will do for any one person.

Two Ming–Qing Illustrated Manuals

Two late-imperial woodblock manuals preserve an earlier five-form set. The Wu Qin Shu (五禽书) was printed in the Wanli era (1573–1620) inside Zhou Lujing’s Yimen Guangdu (夷门广牍) collection, and the Wu Qin Tu (五禽图) was printed in 1832 in the Wanshou Xianshu (万寿仙书). Both are illustrated, both sequence the animals as tiger, bear, deer, ape, bird, and both consist of five standing and stepping forms with breathwork and imagery added to animal imitation.

They matter twice over. They show the set drifting away from the tiger, deer, bear, ape, bird order recorded in the Records of the Three Kingdoms — an order the modern health qigong version deliberately restored. And they show how much lighter the routine used to be: five postures, not ten movements plus an opening and a closing.

Bird, Not Crane

A common source of confusion: the fifth animal is officially Bird (鸟戏), with the movements Bird Stretching and Bird Flying. The crane is the model the bird form imitates — the crane is famous for the length of its beak, neck and legs, and for standing tall — but “crane form” is not the name of the fifth Wu Qin Xi movement. Many English sources get this wrong.

What Each Animal Is Traditionally Associated With

Wu Qin Xi belongs to a system whose theory is the traditional Chinese one, built on yin and yang, the five phases and the meridian system. In that traditional framework:

• Tiger — the liver system and “the sinews are the manifestation of the liver”; lifting and lowering the arms is described as raising and lowering the qi of the sanjiao (the “triple burner”).
• Deer — the waist, the lower back and the Gate of Life (Mingmen); the forward bow of Deer Galloping is associated with the Governing Vessel, and the rounded upper back with the Gaohuang point.
• Bear — the spleen and stomach, and the two flanks along the liver channel. The bear section is traditionally described as the hinge between the animals: the most complex, and the one that carries the middle of the set.
• Ape — the heart, in its role as the ruler of the spirit. Ape Raising with its raised shoulders and rounded chest is associated with the chest area and the upper chamber of qi (Zhongqi).
• Bird — the spine and the Governing and Conception Vessels, which meet at the nape.

These are traditional correspondences in a historical practice — a framework, not a medical claim, and not a promise about how any individual body will respond. For how this site draws the line between research and tradition, see clinical evidence; for the wider aim the practice serves, see health preservation.

Breathing

Four rules run through the whole set: rise on the inhale, fall on the exhale; open on the inhale, close on the exhale; inhale before exhaling; store on the inhale, release on the exhale. Natural, abdominal or lifting-the-perineum breathing are all used, chosen to suit the posture and the effort required.

The one rule that never bends: do not hold your breath. The classical warning is that forcing the qi exhausts it and holding the breath harms it. Breathing should stay easy and natural, gradually becoming slow, even, fine and long.

Learning It

The set is straightforward to start and famously hard to master well — the official material calls it easy to learn, hard to refine. What makes it worth learning is that each movement comes with a documented common mistake and the correction that goes with it, from the angle of the front foot to the order in which the weight shifts.

The 12 movements are taught as a complete four-week course, with every movement broken down alongside its corrections, in the Wu Qin Xi course. The full correction checklist — 31 entries, each with a measurable target — is in Wu Qin Xi common mistakes, and the form-by-form walkthrough for beginners is in Wu Qin Xi for beginners.

Where It Sits Among the Other Sets

• Ba Duan Jin (八段锦) — eight standing patterns built around meridian work; Wu Qin Xi uses fewer patterns but imitates animals, so it swings, lunges and balances rather than stretching in place.
• Daoyin (引导术) — the oldest layer of the same tradition; animal imitation predates the modern set by centuries, and the Mawangdui silk manuscript already shows animal postures.
• Liu Zi Jue (六字诀) — the sibling set from the same official family, which works through breath and sound rather than animal imitation.
• All of it sits inside the broader Chinese health tradition introduced under Qigong, with Wuji (无极) as the standing posture every one of these sets begins from.