---
title: The Spear and the Crossbow (長槍法選 · 蹶張心法) — Cheng Zongyou, 1621
---

The staff and the saber were only half of **Cheng Zongyou's** arsenal. His 1621 collection *Skills Beyond Farming* (耕餘剩技) held **four** weapons manuals, and the two remaining ones could hardly be more different: the **spear** (長槍法選, *Chángqiāng Fǎxuǎn*), the most esteemed weapon of the Chinese battlefield, and the **crossbow** (蹶張心法, *Juézhāng Xīnfǎ*), the most *mechanical*. Together with the staff and saber pages, they complete the portrait of the late-Ming soldier-scholar who, more than anyone, put the fighting arts into print.

<PageRef space="notes" slug="shaolin-staff-method" text="Shaolin Staff Method (少林棍法闡宗) — the staff volume of the same 1621 collection" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="long-saber-method" text="The Long Saber (單刀法選) — the two-handed saber volume" />

## The spear — 長槍法選

The spear (槍) was reckoned the **"king of weapons"** (兵器之王) in Chinese martial tradition, and Cheng Zongyou went to learn it properly: he studied under **Li Kefu** (李克復), a spear master of **Henan**. What he set down belongs to the most celebrated of all spear lineages — the **Yang-family Pear-Blossom Spear** (楊家梨花槍).

That tradition carried enormous prestige. The Ming military writer **He Liangchen**, in his *Records of the Camp* (陣紀), weighed the great spear schools — the **Ma-family spear**, the **Sha-family pole**, the **Li-family short spear** — and judged that each had its strengths, but the **Yang-family Pear-Blossom Spear stood without equal in the world**; General **Qi Jiguang** praised it in the same breath. Its legendary namesake was **Yang Miaozhen** (楊妙真), the woman warrior of the Song–Jin wars to whom the boast "twenty years of the Pear-Blossom Spear, and no equal under heaven" is traditionally credited.

Cheng's manual lays out the working core of this art: the **Six-Harmonies spear method** (六合槍) and the **"Eight Spear-Mothers"** (八槍母) — the eight foundational actions (thrust, deflect, wrap, block, and the rest) from which every other technique is built — illustrated and named in the same clear, teachable manner as his staff. He noted that the various spear schools shared a common theory with the Pear-Blossom line, and differed mainly in application.

## The crossbow — 蹶張心法

The crossbow manual is the rarest of Cheng's four, and one of the most remarkable technical texts in the whole tradition. Its subject is the **蹶張弩** — the heavy crossbow **spanned with the legs**: the archer sits, hooks the string, braces the bow with both feet, and straightens the body to draw a bow far too strong for the arms alone (蹶張, "treading-draw," as against 臂張, "arm-draw"). The reward is enormous stored power, released by the lightest touch — which is exactly the marvel Cheng dwells on:

> 千觔之弩，挂於一寸之牙，發於半指之力，其妙無以加矣。
> *A crossbow of a thousand catties' draw, hung upon a trigger-tooth one inch wide, loosed by half a finger's force — its ingenuity cannot be surpassed.* — Cheng Zongyou, *Juezhang Xinfa*

Cheng was fascinated by the **mechanism** above all. His biography records that while at **Shouchun** he recovered an **ancient bronze crossbow-lock** (古銅弩機) from an underground cavity and worked from it to design an improved trigger — and the manual bears this out, with essays on **the ancient bronze lock** (古銅弩機說), its exact measurements, and **his own redesigned mechanism** (改古新制銅弩機說). Running to roughly a hundred short discussions, it treats the whole subject — building the bow, spanning it with the feet, making bolts, and even combining the crossbow with spear and saber on the field. It is regarded as the most complete crossbow manual to survive, and Cheng's crossbow material was carried forward into the later military compendium *Essentials of Military Preparation* (武備要略) compiled by his kinsman **Cheng Ziyi** (程子頤).

## Reading the originals

Both texts are **public domain**. The spear and crossbow volumes survive in the **1842 (Daoguang) Juwen Hall reprint** of *Skills Beyond Farming* — freely scanned on **shuge.org** — and in the original Cheng-family woodblock of 1614–1621; the searchable text is at the **Chinese Text Project**.

- High-resolution scan (1842 reprint, with spear, saber, and crossbow): [old.shuge.org/ebook/geng-yu-sheng-ji](https://old.shuge.org/ebook/geng-yu-sheng-ji/)
- Searchable text: [ctext.org — 耕餘剩技](https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=en&res=99531)

## Training & demonstration video

<Callout type="info">
  The **spear** is very much a living art; these are modern demonstrations of the long-spear tradition Cheng's manual belongs to. The **foot-drawn crossbow**, by contrast, is an obsolete military weapon with no surviving practice — it lives now only in manuals like this one and in museums.
</Callout>

- [楊家槍 — Yang-family spear](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIv30G5gYaI) — a performance of the very lineage Cheng's manual records.
- [六合大槍 — the Six-Harmonies big spear](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GXZuOif0HU) — the 六合 method named in the manual, in its large-spear form.
- [Spear forms and demonstration](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYt6ayGdYF4) — a broader survey of Chinese spear technique.

## See also

<PageRef space="notes" slug="shaolin-staff-method" text="Shaolin Staff Method (少林棍法闡宗) — Cheng Zongyou's earliest and most famous manual" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="long-saber-method" text="The Long Saber (單刀法選) — his Japanese-derived two-handed saber" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="source-texts" text="Source Texts — the full chronological reader's guide to the manuals" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="what-is-kung-fu" text="What is Kung Fu? — legend versus history across the styles" />

## Sources

The account follows Cheng Zongyou's **1621** *Skills Beyond Farming* (耕餘剩技) — the **長槍法選** and **蹶張心法** volumes — scanned on **shuge.org** (the 1842 Juwen Hall reprint) and transcribed at the Chinese Text Project; the **蹶張心法** passage was read from that text and cross-checked against its later carriage in **程子頤's 武備要略**. The spear's lineage and ranking follow **He Liangchen's 陣紀** and **Qi Jiguang's** assessments of the **楊家梨花槍**, with **Yang Miaozhen** as its traditional namesake. Cheng Zongyou's dates are given cautiously as "c. 1561 – after 1621"; the staff manual was first issued in 1616, the four works combined as *Skills Beyond Farming* in 1621.