I love getting in close. I know where I am then, I know what the other person's limbs are up to. My worst nightmare is some high-swinging roundhouse kick. I'm not much of a boxer, so the mid-range is somewhat sketchy too. But once you're in at that infighting range, it's all Pat Horse High and Fair Lady works At Shuttle, which both contain an element of surprise, a spirit of overwhelming the opponent. It is the range at which the "Four Corners" of the Eight Forces come into play: Tsai (uprooting), Lieh (spiralling back in), Zhou (elbow) and Kao (shoulder), excusing my almost certainly inaccurate spelling...
It is up close and personal that the pressure builds as the space and time lessens. This is prime territory for stiffening up and/or flinching. It seems to require a certain bloody-mindedness to operate at this range. People's tendency seems to be to go up on their toes when someone gets in close, which is why the aforementioned techniques can be effective.
As far as the Handform goes, we can see that there is a great deal of expanding and contracting in it. So we can imagine that we contract to get slip through gaps and get in close, and then expand when we are in their centre, as in Parting The Wild Horse's Mane. This comes about through turning the waist on contact, especially if they are using two hands, so that we slip between their arms. Going through the middle in this way takes bravery, or it comes about as a forced error because really, we want to be on the outside of them and not the inside..but that's what makes being on the inside so surprising.
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