About this wiki

A source-based deep-dive reference on the martial art of Yiquan (意拳), in German and English — what it is for, and a plain account of how it comes about.

What YIQUAN.wiki is

YIQUAN.wiki brings together a staged training guide, an A–Z glossary, an interactive knowledge graph and the lineages and people of the martial art of Yiquan (意拳, “intention boxing”, also Dachengquan 大成拳) — gathered from selected sources: books, primary texts and interviews of the lineages.

Why this site?

This reference work explains Yiquan as a coherent whole: method, terms, people and lineages in one place, clearly worded and cross-linked throughout — with pronunciation audio, visualisations and a glossary that opens up every technical term. Every statement rests on a specific source; where the sources disagree, this is named rather than smoothed over.

What you will find here

• Training guide — the method in eight stages, from Zhan Zhuang (standing work) through Mo Jin, Shili, Mocabu, Fa Li, Tuishou and Sanshou to Jian Wu.
• Glossary — every central term, A–Z.
• Lineages & people — who learnt from whom, from the founder of Yiquan, Wang Xiangzhai, through Yao Zongxun to the branches of today.
• Knowledge graph — an interactive graph of all the pages and their cross-references: drag nodes, zoom with the scroll wheel, click to jump to the matching section.
• Pronunciation audio — the correct Mandarin pronunciation can be played for over three hundred Chinese technical terms (with pinyin and characters).

In German and English

This website is published fully bilingually: every section, every glossary entry and every explanatory page exists in German and in English. The DE / EN switch sits at the top of every page and changes language without a reload — you stay right where you were reading.

For linking and citing, each language additionally has its own address: the German edition under yiquan.wiki/…, the English one under yiquan.wiki/en/…. Each points to the other, so that search engines show whichever language fits.

Both editions sit sentence by sentence side by side in the source and are maintained together — whatever is added or corrected in one language is added or corrected in the other. So no automatic translation is layered over the page.

What gets translated is the published edition, not the working basis: the sources stay in their original language, and the curated wiki behind them (layer 2, see below) is kept in German. And the Chinese technical terms stay Chinese in both editions — with pinyin, characters and pronunciation audio. They are explained, not replaced.

Learning Chinese pronunciation along the way

Yiquan is a Chinese martial art. Accordingly, every exercise and every principle carries a Chinese name: 站桩 Zhan Zhuang, 试力 Shi Li, 发力 Fa Li … A click on the loudspeaker icon next to a term plays the correct Mandarin pronunciation — for more than three hundred terms. Alongside stand the pinyin with tone marks and usually the characters (hanzi).

That way you learn the terms as they actually sound — and pick up a little Chinese as a side effect: characters, pronunciation and meaning in context.

For whom — and how to use it

• Practitioners find a progression through the eight training stages they can follow.
• Teachers find a source-based reference for terms and lineages.
• The curious get an ordered way into Yiquan — from the glossary to the training guide.

The wiki is meant as a reference work: dip in anywhere, follow the terms, read into the depth — not as a linear course.

How this wiki comes about

YIQUAN.wiki is maintained with a language model: I, Ralph van Terwingen, select the sources and set the direction of the analysis; the model summarises, links and files. In this way the knowledge is gathered carefully once and then kept up to date, instead of being worked out afresh with every question.

Behind it lies a simple principle in three layers:

Sources → curated wiki → website.

With every new source the affected pages are updated, lineage attributions verified and contradictions marked — where that has not yet happened, a hint helps (see below).

For those interested in the architecture: at its core this wiki follows the pattern of an LLM-maintained wiki described by Andrej Karpathy. More in his GitHub gist: gist.github.com/karpathy/442a6bf….

A living document

This wiki grows with every source worked in. So that notes on errors, missing sources or contested claims can find their way easily, almost every heading on these pages carries a small blue annotation icon. On the start page it appears as soon as you move the mouse over a heading.

Clicking it opens a pre-filled e-mail to the site’s ingest mailbox, with a reference to this very section — so a correction or addition can be proposed precisely. The contact address is assembled only at the moment of the click and never sits unprotected in the page source. Try it now: move the mouse over the heading “A living document” — that is exactly where this button appears.

Notes are expressly welcome — alternatively via the contact address given in the legal notice.