Four-Character Secret

The Four-Character Secret (四字秘訣) is the shortest fighting manual in the Tai Chi canon: four verbs that name everything the art does to an opponent’s force. The text is attributed to Wu Yuxiang, founder of the Wu(Hao) style, who wrote it after studying the Wang Zongyue corpus in the 1850s. The archive’s English translation, prepared by Steffan de Graffenried, was published by the Golden Eagle schools with the Chinese source text beside it.[5]

A name in three writings

The text’s formal title varies by copy, and every variant is attested:

• 《四字密訣》 — the Lianrangtang family copies; 密 stresses “secret, not for outsiders.”
• 《四字不傳密訣》 — some copies go further: “the secret four characters that are not passed on lightly” — an instruction to choose students carefully, not a ban on teaching.
• 《四字秘訣》 — the modern published convention (People’s Sports Press and most modern editions); 秘 and 密 are interchangeable in this usage.

The archive follows the modern convention in English and notes the older forms here.

The text itself

The Lianrangtang (廉让堂本) recension runs to roughly 180 characters — four paragraphs, one per character, in classical Chinese with no punctuation:

敷者，運氣於己身，敷布彼勁之上，使不得動也。

蓋者，以氣蓋彼之來勁，使不得進也。

對者，以我之勁對彼之勁，彼勁來，我勁接，不頂不丟也。

吞者，以氣吞彼之勁，使彼之勁落於我之懷中。

Copyists differ in small phrases; the above follows the Lianrangtang-family common recension. The Shen Shou punctuation edition of the Taijiquan corpus (People’s Sports Press, 1995 revision, juan 5) prints the full text and is the modern reference version.[1][2]

The four characters, one by one

敷 (Fū) — Spreading. Lay your own qi over the opponent’s incoming force like a sheet spread across its whole face. First of the four and the beginner’s key: it is the art of receiving contact — the whole body relaxed, skin alert, so the least feather cannot be added without being felt. Spreading does not stop the opponent; it attaches you to them.

蓋 (Gài) — Covering. Cover and press the incoming force so it cannot advance. The middle level: sink the shoulders, drop the elbows, settle qi to the dantian, and smother the attack the way a lid seals a vessel — the opponent can neither push forward nor withdraw cleanly.

對 (Duì) — Matching. Meet force with precisely matched force: their force arrives, yours joins it; neither colliding (頂) nor separating (丟). Two gears in perfect mesh. This is the stage of understanding energy (懂勁) — well-trained listening, sticking and adhering without a gap.

吞 (Tūn) — Swallowing. Take the opponent’s whole force into your own frame and dissolve it, as an empty valley swallows whatever is poured into it. The highest level: their strongest attack lands like a blow into cotton, felt by no one. Body transparent inside and out — they do not know you, you alone know them.

A progression, not a list

The four verbs form a ladder, and generations of teachers have read them in order:

1. 敷 — receive. First learn to accept contact and feel its direction and size.
2. 蓋 — suppress. Then learn to cover and control what you have received.
3. 對 — match. Then learn to join exactly — the threshold of 懂勁.
4. 吞 — dissolve. Finally, absorb completely — the approach of 神明.

From outside to inside, from visible shape to invisible intention: the Secret is not four techniques but four timing decisions about how to relate to an opponent’s force.

The Secret and the Treatise

Read against the Treatise of Taijiquan, the four characters are a working gloss on its hardest passages — Wu Yuxiang’s “commentary on the classics” (我注六經) in miniature:

Treatise concept	Four-Character answer
「人剛我柔謂之走」	敷, 吞 — the method of yielding
「我順人背謂之粘」	對, 蓋 — the method of sticking
「四兩撥千斤」	吞 — the highest expression
「沾粘連隨」	all four — the ladder in sequence
「懂勁」	對 — matching is understanding
「階及神明」	吞 — swallowing approaches mastery

Five generations of commentary

The canon of commentary around the four characters is itself a record of the art’s transmission — the scripture unchanged, the glosses ever new (經文不變， 注解常新):

1. Wu Yuxiang (1812–1880), the author. Extreme brevity, ten-odd characters per verb; emphasis on qi and momentum.
2. Li Yiyu (1832–1892). Slight additions; the first push-hands scenarios.
3. Hao Weizhen (1849–1920). Great expansion; body-method detail drawn from live practice.
4. Hao Yueru (1877–1935). Systematization; the beginnings of a teaching method.
5. Hao Shaoru (1908–1983). The modern standard: the four characters explained at length in his Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan, each now stretched to hundreds of words.

Three currents run through the sequence: the glosses grow (from ten characters to several hundred), the vocabulary shifts from 氣 toward 勁, and the abstractions become drills. See Wu Yuxiang for the author’s own record.

Hao Weizhen’s verses

A four-verse mnemonic circulates in the Wu-family line under Hao Weizhen’s name. It is later gate transmission, not Wu Yuxiang’s text, but it is how many students first meet the four characters:

敷布神氣貼彼身，皮毛相接意要真， 不丟不頂隨人走，沾粘連隨是根本。

蓋壓來勁莫放鬆，氣沉丹田勁貫穹， 沉肩墜肘神貫頂，對方進退不由衷。

對接人勁要分明，不頂不丟自相應， 彼微動時我先覺，懂勁階次自此升。

吞納人勁入懷中，如物落水杳無蹤， 全身透空無滯礙，階及神明是上乘。

Four stages of pushing-hands practice

The same ladder works as a training syllabus; the gate’s teaching pairs each character with a drill and a test:

Stage	Character	Training	Passing test
One	敷	relaxation and skin sensitivity	a feather cannot be added (一羽不能加)
Two	蓋	sinking and pressing	the opponent cannot advance or push you off
Three	對	listening, exact joining	you know their intention the instant it moves; neither 頂 nor 丟
Four	吞	complete neutralizing	their full force lands like a blow into cotton

The practice context lives at Pushing Hands.

Later extensions, honestly labeled

Two elaborations circulate in modern Wu-family materials. Both postdate the original text and are marked as such:

• Five phases and seasons. Later commentators mapped 敷 to wood/spring, 蓋 to metal/autumn, 對 to fire/summer, 吞 to water/winter — a philosophical extension in the spirit of correspondence thinking, not something the 180-character original contains.
• A Buddhist parallel. Readers have noted that the four characters echo the Buddhist “four invitations” (四攝法: giving, kind speech, beneficial action, shared practice). The resemblance is real but is cultural comparison, not influence.

The 2018 archive translation

The Golden Eagle schools published an English translation of the text in 2018, translated by Steffan de Graffenried — “Four Word Secret Formula (四字秘訣)” — with the Chinese presented so the reading can be checked against the source, following the archive’s editorial method.[5] The story of the site that published it is at Archive History.

Cautions

• Which title? 密訣, 不傳密訣, and 秘訣 are all attested; the archive uses the modern 秘訣 and records the others.
• No autograph survives. Every copy descends from the Li Yiyu–Li Qixuan transcription (the Lianrangtang system); none is Wu Yuxiang’s own hand.
• The Hao verses are not the original. The four-verse mnemonic is gate transmission from Hao Weizhen’s line onward.
• The five-phase and Buddhist readings are later extensions, not Wu Yuxiang’s content.
• The order 敷蓋對吞 is the original’s own; a few copies vary it, but the received order stands.
• “Not transmitted” means choose your student, not never teach.

The record continues

The Secret sits beside the Treatise of Taijiquan in the classical corpus; its author has his own page at Wu Yuxiang; the practice it describes continues at Pushing Hands and Wuji.

[5] “Four Word Secret Formula (四字秘訣),” attr. Wu Yu Xiang, trans. Steffan de Graffenried, published by the Golden Eagle schools, 2018.