Tiger Lady, Expanding Characters

急著，目光閃急，如線穿空，劍貫重甲，清利而直銳也*

He who are fast (the eyes), a fast shiny gaze, as a line piercing the sky, a sword piercing a heavy armour, sharply, thoroughly and incisive.

眼要毒,心要狠

The eyes must be fierce, the heart ruthless.

At least three characters may be expanded: 之, 奪 and 懼. Indeed, since 之 originally meant "to come out", one can wonder what rule then applies to what comes in. 奪 and 懼 are interesting because while not being the most common way to express their respective intended meaning they both contain the radical 隹. It seems then that they may have been chosen for such purpose.

I. In and Out

If 之 is considered in this original meaning, to come out, then 見之似好婦，奪之似懼虎 would more or less mean "Coming out one would look like a nice lady, fighting out like a threatening tiger".  Such phrase directly deals with what shall happen when one is outside, fighting or just simply interacting in society. Applying the Feminine and Masculine (Yin and Yang) theory basic method, one shall then be "Staying in looking like a threatening tiger, fighting in like a nice lady", 見入似懼虎，奪入似好婦. One of the possible explanations is that this follow the direct opposition between fighting and training.

In this sense fighting is considered outside and training inside. Therefore, when one trains he/she shall look like a tiger while using lady qualities for the fight against oneself training is.

Looking like a threatening tiger is meant to achieve at least two goals, to be undisturbed by whatever is outside because it acts as a barrier and to mobilise fully one's organs because it can only be done this way. The lady helps to endure (a mother's forbearance, a pretty lady which does not get impressed easily...) as well as to maintain control of the tiger.

One could also look for an even more internal explanation of this statement limited to one's organs.

II. Small Embrace 

奪 and 懼 both contain the radical 隹 and their use is particular. 奪, as far as fighting is concerned, usually means to seize, to take away forcibly, to wrest control of, to compete or strive for or to force one's way through. Therefore, to convey the general meaning of fighting, one should use the more usual 搏, 打 or 鬥 characters. The use of 奪 is then to be taken as an enigma to be solved in which the radical 隹 plays a centre part. 隹 original meaning is bird or more especially a bird with a small tail. Furthermore, what makes the character also interesting is that it is made of eight strokes, eight the number which symbolises changes. 

奪, Holding a Bird in an Embrace

This original meaning of the character directly refers to a principle found in a lot of practices called 懷抱, to hug, to embrace. Indeed, once straightness has been trained to reconnect and improve all the fascias lines, one shall direct one's training towards roundness, which embrace symbolises. Indeed, it is possible to still find nowadays a lot of postures asking the student to embrace something like a ball in his arms and/or legs for example. Training the locks, where one has to find the part of one's body to round up and which will automatically lock a whole part of it**, also uses such embrace gesture as a result to be achieved. 

奪, From Big to Short

Since 隹 made of eight strokes symbolises changes, one can read the character as big, 大, changing into very short, 寸. In this sense 奪 symbolises the direct opposition between fighting and training, where one trains long but uses short. A direct application of such principle can be found in the schools having their students first practice their routines arms extended as straight as possible while they state that in fighting the arm (as opposed to the forearm) shall always stick to one's ribs. Hence a direct application of this principle is the saying "手高，高不過鼻，手底，底不過膝", which states that the hands should never go higher than the nose or lower than the knees***.

隹 is also found in 懼, reinforcing the idea that such use is definitively not a coincidence.

III. Fearful, A Change of Heart in the Eyes

懼 means to fear, to dread, to be afraid of and to threaten by extension, quite similar in this way to fearful which means feeling fear but also frightening.  Therefore 嚇 or 脅 may have more been to the point instead. Thus the introduction of 懼 precisely because it contains 隹 cannot be avoided.

懼, Fearful Bird

懼 is composed of 忄, heart, 䀠, looking left and right, and 隹 small bird. One can easily see a small frightened bird looking in all directions to escape, especially if it is held in an embrace, which 奪 expresses. One has also to consider that, furthermore, 瞿 means surprised. 

Fearful in its sense of scared is obviously expressed in this character. Therefore one can conclude that a tiger has to engender such kind of fear in its opponent.

Still, there is another way to decipher this character which may be even closer to its intended meaning. Indeed, 瞿 also means "the gaze of an eagle". The idea would be then to train such a fierce and vigorous look, 瞿, to frighten deep in the heart,忄, of one's adversary. This understanding is helped by the idiom "鷹視虎步"****, eagle gaze and tiger pace, which means a fearsome and vigorous appearance.

Such fearless look shall comes from the spirit trainings.

懼, Change of Heart, Fearful Eyes

With the eight strokes of 隹 symbolising change, 懼 stresses on the fact that fear, inspired or to be inspired, is in the heart and shines in the eyes. Hence, old practices trained to reach a void where the heart becomes heartless, changing the look into a murderous one to scare of one's opponents. It is interesting to notice that by its two opposite meanings, scared and scary, 懼 expresses a deep relation where one has to become heartless, hence scary, a murderous craziness which will shine in one's eyes, directly directed at one's opponents eyes, which will scare them deep in their hearts.

Therefore, the ancients advised never to look at one's opponent, only using one's eyes to strike fear in their opponent with just one quick and decisive glance.

One can, finally, find in the presence of 隹 the bird/feline opposition found in martial arts. 

IV. Predator and Prey

One cannot also overlook the presence of a bird and a feline, two often used symbols in training, in the second part of the statement. Indeed, bird and feline represent different ways of fighting due to different aims, like robbers and guardians would have had (text in French only, sorry). In this particular instance, the focus is on predator and prey.

Indeed, in using 奪 the text insists on a struggle, meaning one has also to take into consideration the prey resistance (the bird trying to escape the embrace), and in 懼 the fact that the prey does not remain still (eyes moving left and right). Not to make this post too long, vigilance for the predator and mobility for the prey are two things one can look for.

Vigilance for the Predator

As obvious as it seems, one shall remember that a prey still remains dangerous, especially if it is as fast and swift as a little bird would be (try to hold one against your chest). Hence, in a simple character, one also conveys the dangers in a fight, even for a predator, and the need to remain vigilant, hence the reference to the heart and the eyes, the two most important factors as far as vigilance is concerned.

Mobility for the Prey

It may seems also obvious, but 奪 and 懼 express the fact that if one ends up being a prey it leads to have, most of the time, to escape as fast as possible, certainly not keeping one's ground, a motto often used by modern self-defense schools. In other words a predator is all about swift, careful and decisive moves to catch while a prey is all about injuring while trying to escape, two very different ways to fight actually.

This present long explanation of just one statement coming from The Lady of Yue is an example of how martists could use writings as a way to find in a very short statement as many principles as possible, a sort of memento. It is important to remember, in a practice ruled by changes, that routines or forms followed the same pattern. Indeed, they were also mementos to be dissected and extended, hence changed, according to the actual needs of each and every student, certainly not to be replicated the same and in the same way each and every time and by everybody. The latter is just the modern evolution of old practices into leisure products for the masses.

*Traning the Eyes, Sword of Chaos Classic, Bikun, 練眼，渾元劍經，畢坤.

**Locks are an advanced transformed body training which supposes to have first reached the maximum fascias extension through straightness. It is named this way because it leads to have parts of one's body becoming almost unmovable through a round stretching. In this sense, the so-called round crotch would have the knees noticeably separated and hardly movable while the feet remain stuck against each other.

***This saying knows a lot of variants where nose is replaced by either mouth or eyes and knees by hips and so on... The present version rhymes more. It is always important, in the days of the empty hand myth, to always remember that old practices were made to fight with weapons. If empty hand techniques can always be found, one has first to try to understand any principle through the "holding a weapon" pattern where they will make more sense, especially the ones linked to fighting.

****A similar idiom, "鷹視狼步", eagle gaze and wolf pace, is found in the same historical records, "Spring and Autumn Annals of Wu and Yue".