Pushing hands

Pushing hands, Push hands or tuishou (alternately spelled tuei shou or tuei sho) is a name for two-person training routines practiced in internal Chinese martial arts such as Baguazhang, Xingyiquan, T'ai chi ch'uan (Taijiquan), Liuhebafa, Ch'uan Fa, Yiquan. It is also played as an international sport akin to Judo, Sumo and wrestling, most notably in Taiwan, where the biannual Tai Chi World Cup is held.

Overview

Pushing hands is said to be the gateway for students to experientially understand the martial aspects of the internal martial arts (內家 nèijiā): leverage, reflex, sensitivity, timing, coordination and positioning. Pushing hands works to undo a person's natural instinct to resist force with force, teaching the body to yield to force and redirect it. Health oriented t'ai chi schools may teach push hands to complement the physical conditioning available from performing solo form routines. Push hands allows students to learn how to respond to external stimuli using techniques from their forms practice. Among other things, training with a partner allows a student to develop ting jing (listening power), the sensitivity to feel the direction and strength of a partner's intention. In that sense pushing hands is a contract between students to train in the defensive and offensive movement principles of their martial art: learning to generate, coordinate and deliver power to another and also how to effectively neutralize incoming forces in a safe environment.

Pushing Hands (film)

Pushing Hands (Chinese: 推手; pinyin: tuī shǒu) is a film directed by Ang Lee. Released in 1992, it was his first feature film. Together with Ang Lee's two following films, The Wedding Banquet (1993) and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994), it forms his "Father Knows Best" trilogy, each of which deals with conflicts between an older and more traditional generation and their children as they confront a world of change.

The film was first released in Taiwan. After The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman became successful in the United States, Pushing Hands received a U.S. release.

Plot

The story is about an elderly Chinese t'ai chi ch'uan teacher and grandfather who emigrates from Beijing to live with his son, American daughter-in-law, and grandson in a New York City suburb. The grandfather is increasingly distanced from the family as a "fish out of water" in Western culture. The film shows the contrast between traditional Chinese ideas of Confucian relationships within a family and the much more informal Western emphasis on the individual. The friction in the family caused by these differing expectations eventually leads to the grandfather moving out of the family home (something very alien to traditional expectations), and in the process he learns lessons (some comical, some poignant) about how he must adapt to his new surroundings before he comes to terms with his new life.