During the pandemic, I began watching Chinese and Korean historical/magical mostly costume dramas which of course I didn’t really understand at all at first, even with subtitles. Eventually, when I could pull my eyes off the beautiful costumes I found that there were tropes in these that I’d not encountered before. And unlike the familiar “the beautiful young lovers lived happily ever after” in more familiar movies and shows, here it was possible that one or both would die.

Some of these shows involve magic but there is often a good dose of martial arts involved too (and lots of food! Not a lot of sex. Very little or no sex actually – often just a small, meaningful kiss…).

Anyway, I am rewatching one of the better dramas which I had watched quite awhile ago. I think it’s one of the best of those I’ve seen in terms of plot lines and all so I’m glad to discover a few things I’d missed first time through. Today I see one of the characters masquerading as a Taoist priest and carrying this thing – a rod with a horsetail like thing on the end. In some shows, it appears to be an emblem of rank, say for a chief eunuch but here… anyway made me wonder.

Googled it up and BAM. Found this lovely bit of description at the Daoist Gate website which stuck me as rather poetic so here you go.

Here is the Wudang horsetail whisk form:

Turn around the body
Yellow dragon covers its head
Old tortoise tries the way
Step in the position of the five elements
Black tiger beats a way
Sweep thousands of soldiers
Turn over rivers and seas
Put up the whip behind the horse
Monkey shrinks its body
Twist the bamboo
Break Wu Mountain at the waist
Poke away the clouds to see the sun
Look around on both sides
Monkey offers fruit
Touch the sea
Dragon waves its tail
Horse kicks the leg
Falling star chases the moon
Subdue the dragon and the tiger
Turn back to see the moon
Attack the yellow dragon
Whip the horse to run faster
Balance Yin and Yang