[history question] taijiquan was called chang quan?

[johnwang]

Chnag can be 1,000 feet, 1,000,000 feet, or 1,000,000,000,000,000 feet. If the length of Chang has reached to the maximum, it could mean "continue". The Yangtzi River in Chinese is called 長江Chang Jiang. It's 3,915 miles long. When you stand on the river side, your feeling about that river could be "continuous".

Also 長久 Chang Jiu means "forever".

[everything]

I believe the name taiji changquan contains 'chang' because the movements are long and slow and take a long time.

Wouldn't that mean this classic was written after Yang Lu Chan made the movements slow? That seems possible. I don't buy the salt shop "discovered" material written and passed down in classical chinese by a 250 year old legend, though it's a great story.

There is a further requirement that you should practice chang quan continuously AS IF you're a flowing river or a great sea (that's what 'ru' means - like / as if).

Maybe that is just the poetry of these lines then, not used in reference to any previous art literally called chang quan? Still, can't help wondering about John Wang's comments about stances.

Chnag can be 1,000 feet, 1,000,000 feet, or 1,000,000,000,000,000 feet. If the length of Chang has reached to the maximum, it could mean "continue". The Yangtzi River in Chinese is called 長江Chang Jiang. It's 3,915 miles long. When you stand on the river side, your feeling about that river could be "continuous".

Also 長久 Chang Jiu means "forever".

man Chinese is poetic and difficult. some terms are overloaded and ambiguous. The Tai Ji Quan Jing is a wonderful read (I'm only reading the English translation, can't imagine the experience of reading the classical Chinese) in any case.

[cdobe]

no definition of 'chang' means 'continuous'.

I think you're thinking of the line:

chang quan zhe ru chang jiang da hai tao tao bu jue ye

it doesn't say anything about chang = continuous.

it says one who practices chang quan moves like the yangtze river or a great sea - 'flowing on and on continuously, without end'.

長 does carry the connotation of steadiness/being constant. In the context of the various writings it is very obvious that it means continuity. There is constant moving without any stops. That's the meaning.

You can have jing chang, which means frequent, or chang jiu, which means for a long time, but I've never heard of the definition where chang = continuous. It's similar, but not entirely accurate.

I believe the name taiji changquan contains 'chang' because the movements are long and slow and take a long time. There is a further requirement that you should practice chang quan continuously AS IF you're a flowing river or a great sea (that's what 'ru' means - like / as if). But I don't think it's accurate to say chang MEANS continuous, like a flowing like river.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

I just did in my earlier post

What leads me to my conclusion is this: the texts intend to describe the movements of the art. These movements are "chang" like a long river. Since chang among others has the meaning of "steady" or "constant" one could say that taiji has "constant movement like a river", i.e. continuity. There are several additional aspects that support this view: First and foremost: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iO3sBulXpVw
But seriously, the image of water is used a lot in taiji. For example the word jin is used instead of li. The difference is that jin contains the image of flowing water.

Be water my friend
CD

[Ian]

I would gladly accept if I thought I was wrong

but I just asked two chinese teachers (one teaches gu wen) and they both said the meaning of chang is not continuous. they also both agree with me that the implied meaning in context could mean continuous, but the direct translation of chang is nevertheless not continuous.

Maybe you're also thinking of xi4 shui3 chang2 liu2 - doing something 'one drop at a time', without stop..

So I agree with this

長 does carry the connotation of steadiness/being constant. In the context of the various writings it is very obvious that it means continuity.

But not necessarily this

There is constant moving without any stops. That's the meaning.

Tut mir ganz leid, I'm being a pedant, I know

Whether the chang in chang quan means long or continuous, I think the verdict's still out.

-Was the line "chang quan zhe ru chang jian da hai..." penned before or after the naming of the style?
-And is taiji chang quan different from shaolin chang quan? Because shaolin chang quan definitely emphasises long movements and the long range, whereas taiji definitely emphasises continuous movement, like spinning silk.
-And if they ARE different, why is there so much overlap?
-And if they're NOT different, why would it be such a stretch to imagine that the chang in 'taiji chang quan' is referring to the long moves and the long range?

Maybe these questions have already been answered so apologies if I missed them.

ps. I just realised I cited jing chang (frequent). of course, that's not the same chang. doh! what was I thinking...

[sinkpoint]

Here's some things to think about.
The conventional wisdom is that Chen taiji is the older form of Yang.

But if you think about it, the two styles in their current derivative came from two different times.
Yang LuChan in the 1800s, when Taijiquan got its namesake.
Chen styles was not known to the outside world until 1928 when Chen FaKe made it famous. Today's Chen style back in the villages is mostly derived from teachings of Chen FaKe's student Feng ZhiQiang.

So essentially, if you imaging taijiquan as a continously changing system until the early 1900s, the classic Yang style might be close to the older style of Chen taiji than today's Chen style. It's likely a good snapshot of taiji's state in the mid 1800s.

Compare classic Yang style with other slow moving styles such as Taizu 108 chang quan and mizong yi, there's a lot of similarities.
As a classification, taiji is Chang quan. Within this catagory, practicing slowly and continuously is not unique to taiji. It's just that it's the most visible.

Chen village and Shaolin temple are not very far from each other. It's likely that the materials have exchanged. Chen Wangting took Qi JiGuang's 32 fist methods as a model for the creation of the system. So there's a lot of classic Ming dynasty martial terminology in the system, such as "Yan Shou Gong Chui" vs "Pao Chui", "Dan Bian", "Shou Tou Shi", etc. Qi's military training manual had heavy influence over almost all Chinese martial arts, it's not unusual to see similarities between styles. Especially considering that "chang quan" is usually used as a frame for basic body postures.

[Doc Stier]

This thread reminds me of a previous thread about the Original 13 Postures of Tai-Chi Chuan.

This is a meaningless semantic debate, IMO, which amounts to nothing more than a waste of valuable training time.

Doc Stier

[Ian]

This thread reminds me of a previous thread about the Original 13 Postures of Tai-Chi Chuan.

This is a meaningless semantic debate, IMO, which amounts to nothing more than a waste of valuable training time.

Doc Stier

No, we are doing this to gain fighting skill

wtf am I still doing in this topic...

Perhaps a run and some pushups

[bailewen]

This thread reminds me of a previous thread about the Original 13 Postures of Tai-Chi Chuan.

This is a meaningless semantic debate, IMO, which amounts to nothing more than a waste of valuable training time.

Doc Stier

You could say that about almost any thread on here. That's always been an annoying kind of comment to me. It's not like the 2 and a half minutes it took to read the thread and type a comment is really going to have an impact on training. Heck, I'm writing this as I cool off and rehydrate. I did my Taiji for about an hour and a half this morning, went for a 40 minute swim after work and once it got dark I went out to the park and did my Baji training. I put in a good 3 hours of training today even though this was a work day and by golly....I still managed to find time to "waste" on RSF.

I am NOT going to feel guilty about posting on this thread because it's a "waste of valuable training time".

As Segs would say....just sayin'

[everything]

This thread reminds me of a previous thread about the Original 13 Postures of Tai-Chi Chuan.

This is a meaningless semantic debate, IMO, which amounts to nothing more than a waste of valuable training time.

Doc Stier

this is somewhat academic which is why I indicated [history question] to try to make it obvious it is not a technique topic so folks not interested could avoid it. it is purely out of curiosity, not a practical need-to-know-how.

[chimerical tortoise]

http://taikiken.blogspot.com/2007/09/in ... gzhai.html

As masters of the original ‘Taijiquan’, I should recommend the Yang brothers Shaohou and Chengfu. They are also old friends of mine, thus I know that this boxing really has some knowledge of mechanics, but out of one hundred persons not even one gains its essence, and even if one can gain it, it is still one-sided, because the basic skills of intuitive perception already died out a long time ago, thus their lower bodies have no real strength to speak of. Originally this boxing consisted of three fists, also called the "old three cuts", Mr. Wang Zongyue changed it into "thirteen postures", and it was later changed into as much as one hundred and forty or fifty postures, this is the major reason for the distortion.

Might be off topic for this thread, but here's one of two (can't remember where the other one was) references to taijiquan as "old three cuts" (老三刀). I was wondering if there's anything to this as well/instead?

[Doc Stier]

http://taikiken.blogspot.com/2007/09/interview-with-wang-xiangzhai.html

As masters of the original ‘Taijiquan’, I should recommend the Yang brothers Shaohou and Chengfu. They are also old friends of mine, thus I know that this boxing really has some knowledge of mechanics, but out of one hundred persons not even one gains its essence, and even if one can gain it, it is still one-sided, because the basic skills of intuitive perception already died out a long time ago, thus their lower bodies have no real strength to speak of. Originally this boxing consisted of three fists, also called the "old three cuts", Mr. Wang Zongyue changed it into "thirteen postures", and it was later changed into as much as one hundred and forty or fifty postures, this is the major reason for the distortion.

Might be off topic for this thread, but here's one of two (can't remember where the other one was) references to taijiquan as "old three cuts" (老三刀). I was wondering if there's anything to this as well/instead?

Ah, the "old three cuts" (老三刀). Now that might be a more interesting topic to be sure. Good luck researching that one!

Doc

[martialartist]

no definition of 'chang' means 'continuous'.

I think you're thinking of the line:

chang quan zhe ru chang jiang da hai tao tao bu jue ye

it doesn't say anything about chang = continuous.

it says one who practices chang quan moves like the yangtze river or a great sea - 'flowing on and on continuously, without end'.

長 does carry the connotation of steadiness/being constant. In the context of the various writings it is very obvious that it means continuity. There is constant moving without any stops. That's the meaning.

You can have jing chang, which means frequent, or chang jiu, which means for a long time, but I've never heard of the definition where chang = continuous. It's similar, but not entirely accurate.

I believe the name taiji changquan contains 'chang' because the movements are long and slow and take a long time. There is a further requirement that you should practice chang quan continuously AS IF you're a flowing river or a great sea (that's what 'ru' means - like / as if). But I don't think it's accurate to say chang MEANS continuous, like a flowing like river.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

常 (chang2) = often (經常)
長 (chang2) = long

i looked in a famous old dictionary (說文解字）and it says chang means "very far (distance)".

[meeks]

The Tai Ji Quan Jing is a wonderful read (I'm only reading the English translation, can't imagine the experience of reading the classical Chinese) in any case.

You should actually look at reading it in chinese - if at least having a chinese friend give you the WORD for WORD on some texts. You cannot gaurantee that the translator understood anything about martial arts, and often they put things into what they assume is 'understandable' to the english reader although often the initial CONTEXT of what was meant has been completely mangled. I dealt with that on a daily basis with my old bagua instructor before learning chinese for myself. He'd bring in a chinese english speaker with no martial arts understanding to 'explain' things to us and just based on my own understanding of things I'd start to question and challenge (politely) - the best thing was to have them read the chinese as a literal translation (3 characters of chinese = 3 words in english, instead of 'basically what it means is....'). That way through your own comprehension based on training you could look at what others have written and translate it for yourself in a much more correct fashion.

[everything]

yes I would really like to do that. will take a while to attempt but does sound more interesting. of course i do put training first.

[Wuyizidi]

I've read various places taijiquan was called chang quan (long fist) or came from it before it ever got the name taijiquan. Since there seems to be no written record, what is the evidence for this theory? Where does this idea come from? Maybe just some of the moves overlap?

That's right, it comes from the earliest Taiji Quan writings by Wang Zongyue. The following is an excerpt from Master Zhang Yun's translation and annotation:



...



Wuyizidi.