Andy_S wrote:Prominent personalities of Baguazhang and Taijiquan were both active around the military of the Forbidden City in mid- to -late-19th Century Peking. If anything, Bagua had the more famous court-related badasses - notably Yin Fu, who personally escorted the Doweger Empress out of the city during the chaos of the Boxer Rebellion. Moreover, Bagua had as much, if not more philosophical input (Daoist) as Taiji, being based, as it is (or claims to be) on the Book of Changes.
And yet it was Taiji which was seized upon by the literati, eventually morphing into what we have today:
A gentle exercise for old ducks in the park in the morning and the only form of exercise that is suitable hippies.
Taiji is also the central loci of a massive marketing and publishing industry, and its early morning pratice has become one of the most popular icons of Chiense culture, instantly recognized by people around the world and reproduced in documentaries, tourist brochures, etc, worldwide. Even the Chinese term Taiji (Tai Chi, Taichi) has entered the global lingua franca.
Bagua, OTOH, remains (somewhat more) true to its martial roots, and in terms of popularity, its modest battalions of practitioners cannot compare with the overwhelming army of Taiji peeps.
How come Taiji became what it is today but Bagua did not?
This could be a fine study not necessarily in just MA history, but also marketing of a cultural product. I still don't really have a clue how a martial art that was, in the early 19th century, the sole property of a couple of backwater villages in Henan Province, has today exploded into a worldwide phenomena.
Andy,
It's true that in today's world, 99% of people who practice Taiji don't do it for martial art. There are many reasons for that, as others have already pointed out. So while its lower level skills are becoming more popular than ever, the higher level skills that makes it clever and sophisticated, allowing it to achieve effects not possible with say, Taizu Changquan, is becoming more rare. That's definitely Taiji's problem. But is it unique to Taiji?
It's true that for the last century, most enthusiasts of Bagua and Xingyi faithfully practiced those arts with original martial intent. Does that mean the higher level skills survived in better shape? Here I must agree with Meek's assessment that it did not. It's like Chinese calligraphy: yes, we still practice it today out of love. But given that world/that way of life is gone, its original purpose for existence now served much better with modern technology, that unbridgeable disconnect between reality and practice affects not just Taiji but all traditional martial arts. Untethered to reality, such skills seem to have a tendency to grow in wildly different, strange, deformed, maladaptive manners:
In fact there's a popular saying amongst today's remaining experts:
- "Xingyi's problem today is that many people are obsessed with the first stage - Ming Jin." As a result their skill is too one dimensional, like an untempered blade, too stiff and brittle. They run into trouble against people who can really combine hard with soft.
- "Bagua's problem today is that many people don't understand how to make 'change' work". They tend to concentrate on the external physical movements. As a result their big, complex movements run into trouble when encountering much simpler but forceful styles like Toingbei and Baji.
- "Taiji's problem today is that many people do not understand meaning of 'relaxed'. They do that wrong and just become weak, so they cannot fight at all.
Are these observations not true? When's the last time you lost sleep because you have a fight coming up with someone claiming to be a Bagua (or Taiji...) fighter? We don't worry because so many of these people are not doing Bagua or Taiji, they're doing it like external martial art, except worse, with their half-understood attempt at relaxing, no trying to really touch you, etc, which puts them in huge disadvantage.
To know if high level skill/essence is lost we must first define it. That essence is defined by its fundamental principles. In engineering we say the relationship between principle/theory and practice goes like this:
- First there is a necessity. You have a need, a problem that must be solved (ex. At any one time I may not be the person who can produced the biggest force, I must find a way to deal with opponent who's producing a larger, quicker force). You have no idea how to accomplish that. So you just try with whatever methodology and tools you have, and eventually you come up with some solution. Need ---> first solution
- When you have seen enough variations of this class of problems, you acquire experience. Practice ---> experience
- After you have solved this class of problem enough times, you can start summarizing your experience into principles/theories: force = mass x acceleration, momentum = mass x velocity... Experience ---> First Theory
- So having principle - theory means you have a clear idea of how to solve a problem. Now that you have a better understanding of underlying theory, you can use it to improve your practice. Understanding theory ---> better practice
- Your improved practiced leads to new experiences.
- New experiences leads to better understanding of theory.
- Which in turn leads to better practice
- the virtuous cycle continues....
So theories are important because they are the few unchanging laws/patterns that governs endless variety of surface phenomenons. From understanding one law (or three, as in Newton's 3 laws of motion), you can understand millions of things. My Shorinji Kemple teacher use to tell us, don't worry about the three hundred joint lock techniques we have, study the range of motion for your arm/wrist, and you'll find we only lock the wrist/arm in seven basic ways. This is what conservative older generation masters meant when they say "rather show ten techniques than divulge one principle".
Here there may be a language thing. In English when we say theory, layman may think that's just someone's idea, it could be wrong, completely unrealistic, etc. In Chinese, when we say "quan li" - martial art principles, we mean proven distillation of martial art practice. To avoid further confusion, I'll just use the word "principle" in place of "theory".
Martial art, like anything else we human do, is organic. It's like any plant or animal, it thrives under conditions favorable to its growth, and withers in conditions that are unfavorable to it. Today the environment for realistic (not sport) empty hand combat skills and skills for primitive weapons are unfavorable to say the least. This is where principle comes in.
Each of these art contains a huge body of knowledge. With our modern lifestyle, it's a stretch for any of us to run through enough cycles of that process in our lifetime to reach even mid-level. In the old days it's different, even if someone has not told Yin Fu "don't worry about all these endless, complex variety of changes, what they're really about is these few things. Concentrate on these things in everything you do, and everything will naturally be correct." With enough practice and no distractions (compared to today's world, the average person watches more than 28 hours of TV a week, imagine if they practiced instead), he will arrive at that understanding naturally. It's just like on a soccer field, you ask a child to intercept an opponent enough times, eventually she's going to understand you don't want to race to the point where the opponent is currently, you want to go to where you think she'll be. That later part - intuitive understanding the physics of how objects move, still requires experience. David Beckham is no Stephen Hawking, and he may not be able to fully explain how he does what he does (it's all bunch of feelings to him), but on the pitch he has perfect understanding of how human body and the ball behaves.
Our problem today is that a) what we're trying to learn is highly complex (by definition requires a lot of time), and b) we don't have that luxury of time the way Yin Fu did. So this is where principles can help a lot. If we at least have an idea of what we're trying to do, of what ideal execution of skill should be like (always try to use minimal force to achieve desired result), we can arrive at understanding sooner. At the very least we won't waste too much time going the wrong direction (Xingyi is about destroying opponent with maximum hard force).
And here is where the differences in development of these three arts come in. People say of the three arts:
- Taiji is the most complete in terms of all its major principles and practice methods being clearly articulated in a very detailed, systematic fashion. You know what you're trying to achieve, and what you have to do to achieve that, each step of way. Of course, being a high level skill, only a tiny percentage of practitioners will ever attain that skill. Because you don't really know it until you know it with your body.
- For Xingyi Quan, it's not as detailed as Taiji (ex. classification of type of jins found in martial art, the strength and weakness of each, the appropriate use of each...), but the major aspects of the art are very well explained.
- Bagua: Lower level aspects (more basic things) documented in simple songs and everyday analogies (mud walking, etc), none of its high level principles have been articulated.
Note the keyword here is articulated, not have. Bagua uses very sophisticate, high level principles to achieve results otherwise not possible. Masters like Dong Haichuan and Yin Fu can do those things. But they didn't summarize it, written it down the way Taiji masters did.
By the way, Andy, the most important writings for Taiji are written by masters who also happened to be highly educated (Wang Zongyue, Wu Yuxiang, Li Yiyu, Chen Xin). They form a small part of core teachings in the Taiji Classics. But if we were to judge by volume, most of what's in Taiji Classic (eg. 40 essays passed down from Yang Banhou line) are fluff that no serious martial artist really pay attention to ("The universe is one big Taiji, the human body is one small taiji, therefore..."). But if the average person reads that, it does give the impression that they are just 'theories' that has nothing to do with martial art practice.
For Bagua, most of song talk about shen fa and fighting tactics (if the person is tall/big, move this way...). That's basics. Basics are important because they're the foundation. But we don't judge a building by its foundation, we judge by what's on top of it. So far Bagua writings has not address the that top portion.
An example of what such a discussion looks like is found in Taiji Classics. There, it's clearly defined that Taiji Quan is called that because it follows philosophical ideas of Taiji. So that we must at any time have both yin and yang. And within that yin there must be a little yang (otherwise it's not soft, but weak), and within yang you must have a little yin (otherwise you're not so much strong as stiff/brittle), and that change between yin and yang, not matter how fast it happens, must be smooth and even. That's a Daoist concept called Zhuan Huan. It's not binary.
So there you have, on a principle level, definition what taiji quan skill should be like. If the skills you use don't have all those qualities, then even if you win, it cannot be called Taiji. What about Bagua? It's supposed to be based on Yin Jing principles right? To be called Bagua Zhang it must follow Bagua principles. What are the major ideas in Bagua, and how do we use those ideas in fighting?
In terms of practice, Taiji Quan lays out all the steps: the types of practices you do (form, push hand, sticking staff, weapons, sparring). The qualities you're trying to develop in each, how you must practice each to achieve those qualities, and progression of skills, ability - rooting (strength and stability) leads to relaxation, relaxation leads to greater awareness (sensitivity), greater sensitivity makes following possible, following makes taking control possible, which makes redirecting to emptiness possible, thus taiji's unique way of using a smaller force to deal with a larger force.
In Taiji this ideal skill is called 'kong dong' (making a point empty) - the opponent can touch you there, but that point is not responsive to input of force the way they want it to (imagine trying to push a volleyball straight down into the bottom of ocean). Xing Yi uses Heng Dong. Bagua uses Bian Dong. So in Bauga how do you achieve Bian Dong, what are the key capabilities/skills you must develop to make that work, how are those abilities & skills relate to each other, how are they developed using what practices methods, what are the stages of practice for each of those training methods...?
All these are not 'just theory', from top to bottom, they tell us how to acquire a certain set of unconventional skills that can produce startling but concrete results: most layman don't understand how Taiji can possibly work because most of their everyday experience tells them a bigger force beats a smaller force. In Taiji Quan the principles explain how under a specific set of circumstances, a large force can be rendered ineffective with a small force, and tells you how you must position your body (dynamically of course) to create that scenario. In terms of Bagua, many layman would also ask the reasonable question: yes, I understand you use circles, you try not to be where he is, you go around the opponent.., but isn't a simple, direct, linear force always faster? Especially when you go around him, he's the center of the circle, you're on the outside, much slower, so how can it possibly work... We know it works, and the secret lies not in the outer physical movement (which is bigger than the opponent's), but those secrets have not been clearly delineated and made available to all practitioners.
Today people think the main reason for Bagua's lack of articulated principles is because it's a victim of history:
- Of the three internal arts, Bagua is the newest, came onto the scene toward the end of last dynasty.
- Before 1911, other internal arts gone through hundreds of years of development process as mentioned above, generations of high level masters summarized every aspects of practice to try to improve their practice. For Bagua, it was more of a punctuated equilibrium, one great individual, standing on the shoulder of all the giants before him, suddenly created this amazing art, propelling it to popularity in unheard of time. Probably like other great masters like him, he started the process of distillation himself (8 basic palms with Cheng Ting Hua), but didn't finish it in his lifetime. But he left great students who could finish the work...
- then overnight their way of life ended. The country is invaded by foreigners, the last dynasty is overthrown, Cheng Tinghua is shot. Decades of world wars, civil wars, and revolutions followed, ...the country spent the next hundred years lurching into modernity in violent fits and convulsions. None of this is conducive to patient, long term practice of empty hand combat skills by a large group of people. So further development of 'Cold Weapon Era' combat skills essentially ended in 1911.
- Overnight, all the great masters, not just Bagua people, their skills was regarded by public as an anachronism (see Boxer's Rebellion). Their major client base - entire idle population of Manchu males, gone.
- Against this historical back drop, most of Dong Haichuan's really accomplished disciples were either older and retired/passed away soon or died too early. Of the great young ones, Ma Gui was super conservative...
So when you think about, in some ways Bagua would be a lot better shape today if it were "Taiji-fied". With Taiji at least we know where the destination should be, and know if we're not on the right path.
by Daniel on Sat Sep 11, 2010 11:46 pm 
