Book 'Wu Style Fast Set' by MYL now in English

[stephen yan]

SNIP
i warned fu sheng yuan once that he should be careful as if someone don't take his trick and straight way push him or strike him , he(fu) will give a bad name to taichi , and i suggested he should change the titles in his card that instead call himself "great grant mas ter " ,he should just call himself as "a taichi practioner", is much more accurate for him, and it will do less damage to taiji if he is throwed out .
SNIP

Everyone, admit it: You LOVE Dr Stephen Yan - he is a much-needed breath of straight-talking fresh air in IMA!

Stephen:

What was his reaction to your suggestion?

BTW, for your next book, I strongly suggest you write a on your arguments with and challenges against various Taiji masters. (The Gracies did something similar in the late 1980s, and they recorded much of it on film) This would stir up the Taiji scene - a scene that needs shaking up - more than anything else since...well...the Wu/Chen Macau challenge match, if not since Yang LC arrived in Beijing.

there is a folk saying in china : good medicine is bitter to the mouth , honest words is hard to the ear. Fu's reaction to my suggestion was that he replied : " i haven't practised push hand for a long time ."

i also felt strange that in the video called " fu zhong wen's whole taiji art'" ,which made in late 1980's ,fu z w 's age was clearly recorded in the video , but by the time he died , his age suddenly increased extra 4-5 years , why do that ?!
i don't respect people who making storys , i only respect the facts and truth , i am more than happy welcome people correcting me by putting out facts ,it would be good for taiji history . i was lucky that lived togather with master ma y l and wu y h for 6 monthes ,maybe also because ma and wu were outside of china , they talked much more openly which was very important to taiji history . and from 1993 to 1996, during ma and wu's last years it just happened that i had to stay in shanghai for some business , so i got lots of chance to spend time with ma and wu , they often kept me for lunch or dinner ,sometimes in their 2nd floor bed room where they don't usually meet none relatives. i dared to ask all sorts of questions , both masters by that age seemed no longer to be conservative and happy to answer me . i remembered most ma's students had huge repect to ma and wu but acting a bit wrongly , as they didn't even dare to ask questions , i believe that the best way to respect my masters is to ask any doubts in your mind about the art you are learning and practising to get them all cleared which would make you even more respect the master and the art , and practise harder .

[Doc Stier]

well , since you posted on the thread again , it seemed to me that it matters to you

Well, think what you will as usual, but since you always need to have the final word on the subject, clearly it matters more to you....for probable reasons that I have already stated.

Doc

[Doc Stier]

Doc

[cdobe]

Pin Jiang Bu Xiao Shen at early days learned tai chi from xu yu sheng(许禹生）. i read his book in early 1980's , in 1991 when master ma yue liang and wu ying hua lived with me for six monthes in NZ, they told me lots of old things that they heard from wu jian quan ,as the couple lived with wu jian quan in a same house for many years till wu jianquan died.

Once again, the evidence that we have shows us that this is most probably a lie. Since you're repeating it over and over again, I have no choice but quoting myself:

This story was invented in order to negate certain lineages altogether. For example the lineage where you've got your 24 neigong from
In August 1937, Japan started to attack Shanghai. In autumn of the same year Shanghai was occupied. It was completely controlled and surrounded by Japanese forces [1]. Historians have called the Shanghai from 1937 to the end of the war a "gu dao" (孤岛) or "solitary island" [1]. Martial Arts were banned by the Japanese in the occupied China [2]. "Within a few years, most of the top martial artists had fled the city." [3]
So, according to you Wu Jianquan travelled, crossing the enemy lines, during the time between 1937 and 1942 ? I ask this question, because Wu appeared on the group photos of the annual member parties of the Hongkong Jianquan Academy during that time. There are several independant lineages from Hongkong, who all tell us about master Wu Jianquan residing in Hongkong between 1937 and the time when Hongkong got under attack by the Japanese forces in late 1941. E.g. Mr. Young Wabu (http://www.classicaltaichi.com/about-us.html), Mr. Tinn Chan Lee [4] on page 9 of this book there are photographs of the original application documents to Wu Jianquan's school in Hongkong. This is also in accordance with the statements of grandmaster Cheng Wing Kwong).

[1] In the Shadow of the Rising Sun. Shanghai under Japanese Occupation. Wen-hsin Yeh. University of California, Berkeley. (2004) p. 67
[2] Taijiquan and the search for the little old Chinese man: Ritualizing race through Martial Arts. Adam Dean Frank, BA, MA. Dissertation. The University of Texas at Austin. (2003) p.58
[3] p.226
[4] The Wu Style of Tai Chi Chuan. Tinn Chan Lee. Burbank (1982) p. 6 and p. 9

apparently you are the one telling lies throught fast form to wu jian quan's last few years by ignoring the facts i posted . let me first ask you where did wu jian quan died and burried ? if you are in germany , why don't you get 2nd oppinion from ma jiang bao , i was told by master ma y l and wu y h and wu jian quan's another two students master Jiang chang fong andMASTER zhu lian xiang .

Master Wu and the other family members went back to the mainland, when the Japanese attacked Hongkong. So Wu wasn't burried there.
As for asking Ma Jiangbao, I exactly know all of his answers to the questions we're "discussing" here. The point is that A) He wasn't around at that time, so he can only report what he's been told and B) He will quite naturally present the things from his subjective POV.
You just hope that master Ma would whistle me back, so that you can freely tell your stories, which only serve the purpose of presenting you as the one and only person who knows it all. The problem is that a lot of people here are capable of critical thinking and don't buy into everything you want us to believe. The story that Ma Yueliang's form is the original taiji while all the other people have lost it, really only works in an in-group setting with people who are already set up and want to believe something like that. In the outside world it's just too easy to see through all of this. And, as Michael Corleone would put it, "it insults my intelligence".

CD

[GrahamB]

Let's just look at this objectively.

Mr Yan is suggesting that all the Tai Chi families (and all their students from all lineages) in the entire world, with the exception of just one particular branch of just one style of Tai Chi - the Wu family, which his is in the lineage of, have forgotten the original Tai Chi form (which is, apparently, the 13 Taoist soft hands created by Chang San-Feng), or decided not to practice it.

So all the other styles of Tai Chi in the entire world (Yang, other Wu, Hao, Sun, Li, Chen, Zhao Bao, etc) are all practicing 'made up' versions of Tai Chi. Except his style, of course.

Now on a scale of 1 to 10 how likely does this story sound? I'm rating it about -5.

[Little Bai]

Let's just look at this objectively.

Mr Yan is suggesting that all the Tai Chi families (and all their students from all lineages) in the entire world, with the exception of just one particular branch of just one style of Tai Chi - the Wu family, which his is in the lineage of, have forgotten the original Tai Chi form (which is, apparently, the 13 Taoist soft hands created by Chang San-Feng), or decided not to practice it.

So all the other styles of Tai Chi in the entire world (Yang, other Wu, Hao, Sun, Li, Chen, Zhao Bao, etc) are all practicing 'made up' versions of Tai Chi. Except his style, of course.

Now on a scale of 1 to 10 how likely does this story sound? I'm rating it about -5.

Admit it, you just don't appreciate the soft

[xiranyma]

To Mr. Yang: it is enough in my point of view. You have made it clear what you believe and kindly shared it with us. I appreciate it. But it is too far for any one to try to convince the entire world to believe himself, even he is 100% right( I do not know if there is anything like that in the world). I just noticed that even for God or Buddha, it is beyond their aim to convince everyone.

Arguments are good for all of us, before they begin to damage friendship.

Words themselves do not convince others, without the trusts of where the words come from. I am really worry about the name of Master Ma yueliang because you mentioned the name too much. Please make sure you are not consuming this great name too much.

I am from Wu style in Beijing. I am a serious player. I am very proud of my linage. But I respect other linage from my heart for sure. And I trust others' intelligence, not less than my own.

In Chinese tradition, respecting to all linages and practitioners is a very basic manner of behavior for any serious practitioners. We can hard hear any bad words from our Masters against any one, even a brand new practitioner. But I also have to agree that every one has the responsibility to be honest to the truth. Those who are at the top of the skills are naturally feel the responsibility more clearly and strongly. Sometime we have no problem to point out who should take the responsibility, sometime it is not easy to do so. Argument on internet would be the last helpful way to me.

A big enough group of experts, closely staying together in real life, is a basic for serious skill development. Friendship is gold. Anyone who could not prove his skills in real life first would do more harms to the linage and others as he give more teaching, publishing more books, repeating more words of Great Masters.

[Slim]

Although I have been silent member of this forum for at least 6 years this is my first post.

I wanted to add to the discussion at hand (and please forgive if it was mentioned earlier, I glossed over one or two of the previous 38 pages) that in determining authenticity of a form, using the length of time to complete the form, so as to compare it with others etc. should be done carefully, if at all. I realize that there are some standard practice times for some forms (speaking within the Wu style world here). My teacher is a 3rd gen. indoor student of the Wu family (Shanghai) and he will tell his new students that the round form of Wu Jianchuan when practiced should last for 25 to 30 mins. However over the months and months the form is changed considerably for each student from its initial starting point where the movements are 'broken apart' and square to later when the student learns to "lianguan qilai" or connect them together making the form very round, as its namesake implies, and subsequently much shorter in duration, taking from 10 to 15 minutes to finish. My point is that the form is far from static, it is a constantly changing thing and as such the duration of a set perhaps is not the best means to determine the origin of a practitioners form.

As a side note this is also true for the Chen style of Chen Zhaokui (perhaps others too, I don't know), when I trained in his line I was taught to do the movements very very slow for the first year or two, taking an hour to go through yilu. Right from the first there was an evolution to the movements not only from slow to fast, but from square to round. Similar to the Wu. Over the years I've realized that those teachers who really had 'something' also were those who understood the form as not being a static thing.

Well that's my two bits
thanks, Slim

PS My teacher also teaches the fast form in the same way. And just for the record he has new students do it in about 10 to 12 mins, for his more experienced students he tells them 7 mins, however one night he demonstrated a few short sections at a very fast speed, I think if he had done the whole thing it would have been about 5 mins.

[stephen yan]

CD wrote:
Master Wu and the other family members went back to the mainland, when the Japanese attacked Hongkong.

now you agree wu jianquan went back to shanghai and died in there late on, but the question is why in the past you denied this fact , your threads sounded like before japanese occupied shanghai in 1937 , master wu went to HK till he passed away there...

now the question is when did wu left HK back to Shanghai? if by your theory , japanese already attacked H K , IT DID'T take long for japanese to occupy HK ,how could they leave during the attack or occupying? they left H K way before the attack.

[stephen yan]

To Mr. Yang: it is enough in my point of view. You have made it clear what you believe and kindly shared it with us. I appreciate it. But it is too far for any one to try to convince the entire world to believe himself, even he is 100% right( I do not know if there is anything like that in the world). I just noticed that even for God or Buddha, it is beyond their aim to convince everyone.

Arguments are good for all of us, before they begin to damage friendship.

Words themselves do not convince others, without the trusts of where the words come from. I am really worry about the name of Master Ma yueliang because you mentioned the name too much. Please make sure you are not consuming this great name too much.

I am from Wu style in Beijing. I am a serious player. I am very proud of my linage. But I respect other linage from my heart for sure. And I trust others' intelligence, not less than my own.

In Chinese tradition, respecting to all linages and practitioners is a very basic manner of behavior for any serious practitioners. We can hard hear any bad words from our Masters against any one, even a brand new practitioner. But I also have to agree that every one has the responsibility to be honest to the truth. Those who are at the top of the skills are naturally feel the responsibility more clearly and strongly. Sometime we have no problem to point out who should take the responsibility, sometime it is not easy to do so. Argument on internet would be the last helpful way to me.

A big enough group of experts, closely staying together in real life, is a basic for serious skill development. Friendship is gold. Anyone who could not prove his skills in real life first would do more harms to the linage and others as he give more teaching, publishing more books, repeating more words of Great Masters.

first my name is yan not yang ; 2nd ,don't get emotional and try to be calm like historians , as a matter of fact , i don't really care wether you believe it or not , i only put the fact out , and welcome people also putting fact out to correcting me if they think that i am wrong as i repeated many times. if someone felt left out and started to be emotional , i feel sorry for them , as it is not my intention at all , my advise is widen your mind , and see the facts that i posted here are true or not ,are there any other testimonies , or just ma's lineage's saying alone? put down a narrow one person's gaining or loss , look at a big picture.

as to the tradional respect , it is a scale of respect the truth and be honest or just for the sake of respect eventhough it is hypcritic (sorry next thing i need to learn is spelling check). to me a real respect is based on being honest and truthful , then the respect will be real and from heart .
before 1949 , famouse cma historian Tang Hao pointed many stories that some cma schools made ,but by then those schooles might did them unintentionly . after 1949 , as whole china accepted telling untruthful words and making up stories as normal manner ,and no one allowed to chanllenge them , so the concept of "respect" in lots people mind just like a egg which has been gone bad.

let's face the facts: Martin has phoned Yang c f's grandson ,he told Martin " yang family had a fast form , but lost in yang c f's time"; yang s h's student wu tu nan also wrote a book with his pictures in it to show the fast form that he learned from yang s h in early 1960's ; Tian zhaolin was the best of yang c f's student and he learned not only from yang c f , but yang s h and their father yang j h, no body should be more qualified than Tian z l to talk about yang styles of tai chi ,his son TIAN y j had a website ,i posted some of the articles tian wrote ....those can be seen as testimonies to what master ma y l's saying, if you guys have problem to face what i said , then to ignor above three defferent sources of "testimonies" are clearly no respect to the facts and a betray to the word of " honest".

so , it is clear that fast form is easier to get changed and lost( TIAN z l 's site also said same thing), so far people can see tian y j's fast form vid , wu tu nan' s fast form vid and master ma's fast form vid , they all looked defferent ,then the question is no longer wether fast form existed or not ,but which of those three didn't change or kept original ? i have iron evidences that ma's one was kept original !which the whole CMA world should feel lucky, like the original yingyang bagua zhang , original xin yi liu he quan ect,where from those original art , you can see the clear influences of each other.

[Doc Stier]

[xiranyma]

To Mr. Yan,

I am very sorry to make the mistake to write your name wrong.

I admire your efforts to try to contribute to the truth. But I am surprised that you wish every one to discuss without emotion. Do you really believe that is possible? I am in Wu linage myself. But it would not be a problem for me to image how some people feel about your "original " topic.

But I do have difficulty to agree that you just easily mentioned some names and evaluated their skills as poor, especially the guys are not in your same linage.Being honest to truth is a great quality. But for everyone, judgment is made based on his own understanding and knowledge. We are all not perfect so we may make mistake. We'd better leave the opportunity to people to evaluate themselves, and give suggestion when we were asked. That is my understanding.

Again, I would like you to know that I admire the works you have done. Please keep working on it. The work itself is more important than the conclusion. Best regards.

[cdobe]

Don't put words in my mouth, Stephen.
I wrote that the Wu family left Hongkong when the Japanese army attacked Hongkong. At that time Wu Jianquan was still alive. This piece of information comes directly from Wu Gongzhao's (2nd son of Wu Jianquan) writings. We don't have any more detailed information about their journey and the circumstances of grandmaster Wu Jianquan's death.
There are various independent accounts and documents that place master Wu in Hongkong between 1937 and December 1941. Just face it.

You ask how they could leave Hongkong during the attack ? It happens all the time when cities are under fire. Look at the invasion of Iraq or the recent war in Georgia. There are always endless convoys of refugees. I also think that the Wu family was well informed before the actual attacks since they had good connections to high ranking officials. The same happened when they left the hard-fought Beijing in 1928 to settle in the "Paris of the East" (Shanghai) and likewise they left Shanghai just in time before the Japanese were attacking.

CD wrote:
Master Wu and the other family members went back to the mainland, when the Japanese attacked Hongkong.

now you agree wu jianquan went back to shanghai and died in there late on, but the question is why in the past you denied this fact , your threads sounded like before japanese occupied shanghai in 1937 , master wu went to HK till he passed away there...

now the question is when did wu left HK back to Shanghai? if by your theory , japanese already attacked H K , IT DID'T take long for japanese to occupy HK ,how could they leave during the attack or occupying? they left H K way before the attack.

[stephen yan]

To Mr. Yan,

I am very sorry to make the mistake to write your name wrong.

I admire your efforts to try to contribute to the truth. But I am surprised that you wish every one to discuss without emotion. Do you really believe that is possible? I am in Wu linage myself. But it would not be a problem for me to image how some people feel about your "original " topic.

But I do have difficulty to agree that you just easily mentioned some names and evaluated their skills as poor, especially the guys are not in your same linage.Being honest to truth is a great quality. But for everyone, judgment is made based on his own understanding and knowledge. We are all not perfect so we may make mistake. We'd better leave the opportunity to people to evaluate themselves, and give suggestion when we were asked. That is my understanding.

Again, I would like you to know that I admire the works you have done. Please keep working on it. The work itself is more important than the conclusion. Best regards.

thank you for your understanding , when i first realised the fast form was " original" from the taoist , master ma had already passed 5 years , so i couldn't share my excitement with him, when i first come to this forum ,i only wanted to share this information with all taiji lovers , but i never thought of the various emotion that it would cause ..... as i lived in nz for many years , i have become more straight and love the ways of simplicity and natural , i remembered the big reason that i left china ( i had worked as a junier surgeon in one of our teaching hospitals of shanghai medical university , now called medical school of fu dan university)was because that i couldn't say the words that i wanted to say when i saw things not right, my this nature gave me lots of troubles in china , but i have no regret, i gained peace in my heart. i am lucky that i could leave china ,even though i love her.

easily mentioned some names and evaluated their skills as poor, especially the guys are not in your same linage

you are right here , but i just couldn't bear some poor skill people call themself "great grant master" or " heavenly king of tai ji 太极天王”like the guy xue nai ying 薛乃印, it will not only damage the impression of taiji , but also as a chinese from mainland china ,i don't like to see the bad habit brought out from china to pollute the rest of the world by those few guys regardless they are in same lineage as mine or not , they needed to be chanllenged to realise their skill doesn't match their titles at all ,and has a suspection of misleading or cheating people ,at least , they should realise being overseas , they couldn't cheat as the way they did in china which they will face the risk getting chanllenged . i did same thing each time when i was in china ,especially people talking about "lin kong jin" from taiji or qi gong masters , no matter how far away they are , i will look for them to tell them that " it is a lie".the big reason those cheaters could sourvive in china as since 1949 all chanllenges had been forbitten, people use hypercritic respect towards cheaters , if carry on like this way , chinese real culture and civilisation would vanish forever ,instead will be a culture of thugs无赖 and liars.

[stephen yan]

[b]CD wrote:
This piece of information comes directly from Wu Gongzhao's (2nd son of Wu Jianquan) writings. [/b]

can you show me what he wrote? i have "more detailed information about their journey and the circumstances of grandmaster Wu Jianquan's death."