Hi everyone, I'm looking for some patter or presentation for the Chinese sticks, any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks

I present the Chinese sticks to a poem, and it is a nice diversion from the more dramatic magic I do.

In my kidshow I tell the audience how I met a magician from China at a magic convention and he gave me a trick from China. Then I go into showing that at first I did not think it was very magical. And of course it gets more amazing from there.

I told this story for years. And then I met, thanks to the internet, a fellow magician from Hong Kong at a convention in Germany. Although he did not give me the Chinese Sticks, I now have the feeling I am telling kind of a true story.

In my performances for children, I often claim that many of my props once belonged to my Great Uncle Ivan, who was a famous magician, "Ivan the Great"!
I have tried to develop the character of Ivan in my own mind to help bring a true feeling to my telling of the stories. I did in fact have a great-uncle Ivan, though in reality he was a plumber, not a magician. I was very frightened by him as a child, which helps me maintain a certain emotional image of him as I tell the stories.

I am working on an idea to use my chinese sticks to illustrate the idea that everything in the universe is connected...

"that all of us here in this room share a connection of some kind. Some connections are obvious, such as those shared by family members or friends. Some connections are less obvious, and some we may never understand. But even though we can't immediately see these connections they do exisit!"

Stevens Magic has a video out on the Chinese Sticks. They have many different Magicians performing the Chinsese Sticks. Joe Stevens actually does a routine and his patter is excellent. You might check that out!

Ricahato,
The patter that I used to use when I still did this trick is that I act like a string is connected through both the sticks and it becomes kind of a sucker trick. Keep the sticks touching side by side and do the normal thing where one is pulled as one goes up, but keep acting like a string is connect between the two sticks and at the end separate the sticks far apart and act like an invisible string is coming out the back of them and pull it as both strings rise up. Kind of hard to explain, it's better than it sounds. Bill Pryor used this type of routine when I went to his shop in Cincinnati.

"Do you know what this is?" indicate the long string,
"That's the LONG of it!"

"Do you know what THIS is?" indicate the short string.
"Yep! That's the short of it!

"Now you know the long and short of it."

"If you pull the short of it, the short of it becomes the long of it and the long of it becomes the short of it."

(pause)

(Aside) - That's the toughest part of this routine!

"Now, let's review. If I pull the short of it, the short of it becomes the long of it and the long of it becomes the short of it and that's the long and shotr of it."

pause, pull the short one, but don't pull up the long one. you now have 2 long strings.

"Now in an instance like this, where you have two longs of it and no shorts of it, which can be a bit breezy, I'll have you know, you just take the invisible string in the middle which is..."

they always yell out "the middle of it!"

"the invisible string in the middle, and pull like this!"

both strings go up together.

"Now we have a pair of shorts!" pause. do NOT say a thing. trust me. they WILL get it!

Walk away.

Actually there's a lot more, but I'm running out of space and brains. It hurts to type stuff this confusing.

Lee Darrow, C.Ht.

Hi Ricahato:

If you have the Kidstuff books, there's a routine in one of them about a King who couldn't be fooled. I saw Brian Flora do this routine and is was quite good.

Also, Martin Lewis has a good routine on his video "Making Magic" where is tears up the sticks and throws them in the audience at the end. He shows you how to make the sticks.

I hope this info helps lead you in the right direction.

Ron

Terry Seabrook created a hilarious routine where the Chinese sticks routine is done with props that look like plumbing pipes and water faucets. He describes it on one of his tapes produced by Martin Breese.

I believe someone recently started manufacturing these props (plumbing-themed Chinese sticks). It lets you perform the whole Chinese stick routine without having to fall into tired cliches or inappropriate imagery about "Mysteries of the Orient" and so forth. Of course, it'd only be suitable if you want a funny bit in your act.

Steve Hoffman
Takoma Park MD

Well I can say I have never used this trick, never liked it, sorry, but one of the coolest routines that I saw was done to rap music, and he rap the patter I think you can buy it, and I think it comes with the sticks the rap music, and the rap it was pretty cool but that was some years ago, if I saw it today it might be a diffrent story.