Polian Boxing of Henan's Shao Family Village

Wudang Po Lian Quan
Wu Dang Polian Quan is practiced mainly by members of the Shao family in Shao Jia Cun (Shao family village) located in Qingfeng county, Puyang prefecture, in far northeastern Henan province bordering both Hebei and Shandong.
The oral mythology of the style claims that it was created by Wudang Daoist Zhang Sanfeng during the reign of Ming emperor Hongwu (mid to late 14th century).
The village tradition traces back to Shao Cangzhu who, having mastered the Polian style, began teaching this art in the village around the year 1900.
Since that time Shao family Polian Quan has been passed through 7 generations.
The Shao family Polian system includes 4 roads of Polian boxing as well as a few other empty hand sets, a variety of traditional weapon forms, applications practice, qinna, sanshou, etc.
In the past Polian Quan was spread across an area encompassing parts of Henan, Hebei, Shandong, Jiangsu, and Anhui provinces.
Today Polian boxing has become quite rare.
The only other system of "Polian Quan" I have been able to find any information on is from southern Shandong and is now only extant in the form of a number of empty hand sets that have been absorbed into a lineage of Xinggong Quan.
Aside from that I have also been alerted to a Shaolin form named Po Lian Quan. In that case the Lian part is written with the character for "lotus" rather than the "linking" character. There is also another Shaolin form called Bo Lian Quan. Both of are Polian forms taken from the aforementioned Polian system that has been absorbed into a Xinggong lineage. These 2 forms simply had their names changed in a way that retained the same or similar pronunciation and were passed off as Shaolin.
Within the Shao family village traditional rhyming formula and weapons sets were being lost. However efforts are now being made to record and transmit the style to the next generation of young villagers.
A huge thanks to Jarek Szymanski for all his help in information gathering and transcription, without which I probably would not be posting this.

[@MonkeyStealsPeach]

Interesting find, looks like parts Taiji and parts Chang Quan. I’d be interested in seeing the Xinggong Quan you mentioned in the description, I remember Qi Jiguang lists it in his book.

[@TeaSerpent]

I'll put up a video of that Xinggong style then, I'm sure you've seen it before though. I did put up another video of a Xinggong Quan style but they have a lot of other material from the area mixed in with that one.
There's a few Xinggong Quan styles practiced mostly around southern Shandong, northern Jiangsu, Anhui, eastern Henan kind of area.
Anyways the most famous example of a Xinggong Quan style would be Gu Ruzhang's Bei Shaolin Men.

[@TeaSerpent]

Also just to be clear Xinggong Quan has no real relation to Polian Quan. It's just that one of the most famous Xinggong masters in Shandong learned learned Polian Quan from a teacher from Anhui prior to learning Xinggong Quan from a different teacher. The ten Xinggong forms are the considered the main part of his system. But he also passed down a few other supplementary Xinggong forms, a good number of Polian forms, and a few Baji forms.

[@MonkeyStealsPeach]

@@TeaSerpent oh interesting, didn’t know that’s what Gu Ru Zhang’s stuff was. I always assumed it was Tantui plus some Hua Quan or something

[@ambulocetusnatans]

That Zhang Sanfeng sure was a busy guy.