99% of tai chi is fake

Discussion on the three big Chinese internals, Yiquan, Bajiquan, Piguazhang and other similar styles.

Re: 99% of tai chi is fake

Postby windwalker on Sun Jul 30, 2017 7:16 am

Wanderingdragon wrote:Haven't posted on this, but it begs the question, is it the tai chi that's fake, or the teachers?


We have all encountered the debates before. Who was a “closed door” student of whom? Who can really claim to be a true inheritor of some style of Kung Fu? Of all of the criticisms that one can make of the Chinese martial arts, a lack of interest in politics will never be one of them. At the end of the day all sorts of debates in the modern Chinese martial arts seem to devolve into attempts to criticize or illegitimate the quality of someone else’s instruction.

https://chinesemartialstudies.com/2013/ ... ts-part-i/ A good read showing when, who and why, some of the current preactices may have ogrinated from.


The thread was started in an attempt to bring to light, where the current practice of many
to show or claim "x" method or style is the real and all others are fake may have started from.

How could it be about fake taiji or teachers when all that speak of this always seem to
be the ones practicing with or found those who are not.
Last edited by windwalker on Sun Jul 30, 2017 7:34 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: 99% of tai chi is fake

Postby windwalker on Sun Jul 30, 2017 7:30 am

One of the persistent problems that I see in amateur discussions of “Chinese martial studies” is a lack of understanding of how broad the traditional martial arts really were, and the variety of life experiences that they encompassed.

In fact, rather than discussing China’s martial culture in the singular, it would probably be better to think about these cultures in the plural. The martial arts never were just one thing, and our experience with the modern “traditional” arts tends to seriously skew our perceptions of the past.


To counter this trend I have been compiling a series of short biographies on important and interesting martial artists from the 19th and 20th centuries. So far we have seen the martial arts used as a revolutionary philosophy by a cross-dressing political terrorist, as a means of economic and political advancement for a poor boy from the country, and as an natural outgrowth of southern China’s intensely commercial marketplaces.

All of our previous martial artists have pursued very concrete economic, social and political goals. With the exception of Qui Jin’s use of martial imagery in some of her revolutionary poetry, none of them have viewed the martial arts as an overly philosophical or spiritual endeavor.

I believe that this accurately represents the life experience of the vast majority of China’s 19th century martial artists. Most of these individuals were relatively uneducated youth from the countryside. They sought out the martial arts either as a means to better paying employment (perhaps as a caravan guard) or as a source of entertainment and personal cultivation during slack periods of the agricultural year.

https://chinesemartialstudies.com/2013/ ... ts-part-i/


none of them have viewed the martial arts as an overly
philosophical or spiritual endeavor.



The author presents an interesting argument based on historical sources
and influences of the time up to present day.
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Re: 99% of tai chi is fake

Postby dspyrido on Sun Jul 30, 2017 3:52 pm

wayne hansen wrote:
dspyrido wrote:3. The Tai Chi forms all have moves that can displace someone and control them but I know there are also a lot of moves that can only really be applied on joints to frankly mess em up. So spending a lot of time learning to neutralise an opponent and very little time learning the methods of messing them up makes me think that they are not being true to the real TC. It's like doing kickboxing and saying ... no punches. Maybe it works as a training method but misses the big picture.



There is a tai chi saying

Yield only to return

Think of tai chi like a counter puncher in boxing
It is not Aikido ,there is no commandment not to injure your opponent
If what you were alluding to was true there would be no punches in the art
Ban Hou was known for his violence not only against opponents but also his students


I'm not alluding that TC does not injure the opponent. I'm saying the opposite & agreeing with what you said. Moves like neck snaps, groin punches, head kicks, arm snaps etc are all found in TC flavours. All this make it a very dangerous style.

Some moves outright don't even seem to have a yielding response eg a crescent kick.

What I am saying is the problem starts when people think TC is all hippy like and not dangerous. There are many really nasty moves and if it's taught to hurt then the focus sharpens up the style. IMO 99% is fake because 99% have not be trained to deliver the dangerous moves the way they should be trained. Most just focus on feeling all chi'ed up, moving the air in a form or when it comes 2 person activity just playing tofu arms. They almost ignore there are 8 concepts and focus on 4.

99% seem to have misplaced how to grasp, split & strike.
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Re: 99% of tai chi is fake

Postby Trick on Sun Jul 30, 2017 5:58 pm

dspyrido wrote:Moves like neck snaps, groin punches, head kicks, arm snaps etc are all found in TC flavours. All this make it a very dangerous style.
.

If just cool and dangerous moves like that was an absolute requirement for the study of TJQ , TJQ wouldn't be the worlds most practiced MA, maybe even so obscure it would not have found it's way to this forum.
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Re: 99% of tai chi is fake

Postby wayne hansen on Sun Jul 30, 2017 6:00 pm

If by crescent kick you mean swinging lotus kick there is a whole yield and manipulation before it is delivered
Even something that looks like you just going up and hitting someone can have a whole yielding tactic on an unseen mental level
Just because some people don't know how to use tai chi that has little to do with tai chi
That can be said of any martial art
Don't put power into the form let it naturally arise from the form
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Re: 99% of tai chi is fake

Postby dspyrido on Sun Jul 30, 2017 10:02 pm

Trick wrote:
dspyrido wrote:Moves like neck snaps, groin punches, head kicks, arm snaps etc are all found in TC flavours. All this make it a very dangerous style.
.

If just cool and dangerous moves like that was an absolute requirement for the study of TJQ , TJQ wouldn't be the worlds most practiced MA, maybe even so obscure it would not have found it's way to this forum.


If we assume TC is the world most practised martial art (BTW no real stats to back that up) this could be read in many ways but the simplest view & also going by this topic is ... 99% of the worlds most practised martial art is fake. So that does not leave many people who practise "real" TC does it?

But what is it that the 1% get that the 99% don't?

wayne hansen wrote:Even something that looks like you just going up and hitting someone can have a whole yielding tactic on an unseen mental level


Great so what's missing in the 99%?
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Re: 99% of tai chi is fake

Postby Appledog on Sun Jul 30, 2017 10:35 pm

Hello, I'd like to maintain a 'cool post count' of 108 posts. This particular post has gone beyond that number and has therefore expired.

I'm sorry if you were looking for some old information but I'll do my best to answer you if you send me a DM with a question in it.
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Re: 99% of tai chi is fake

Postby MaartenSFS on Sun Jul 30, 2017 10:38 pm

99.9% of Taijiquan is moving Yoga (really Qigong). And most wouldn't even know that it's a martial art. Most Chinese don't know it...

Appledog, that's utterly preposterous.. Qi by itself is just air... Is that what's missing??? Do try to keep up!
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Re: 99% of tai chi is fake

Postby Appledog on Sun Jul 30, 2017 10:45 pm

Hello, I'd like to maintain a 'cool post count' of 108 posts. This particular post has gone beyond that number and has therefore expired.

I'm sorry if you were looking for some old information but I'll do my best to answer you if you send me a DM with a question in it.
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Re: 99% of tai chi is fake

Postby Trick on Sun Jul 30, 2017 11:27 pm

dspyrido wrote:
Trick wrote:
dspyrido wrote:Moves like neck snaps, groin punches, head kicks, arm snaps etc are all found in TC flavours. All this make it a very dangerous style.
.

If just cool and dangerous moves like that was an absolute requirement for the study of TJQ , TJQ wouldn't be the worlds most practiced MA, maybe even so obscure it would not have found it's way to this forum.


If we assume TC is the world most practised martial art (BTW no real stats to back that up) this could be read in many ways but the simplest view & also going by this topic is ... 99% of the worlds most practised martial art is fake. So that does not leave many people who practise "real" TC does it?
i came to know about TJQ through a zheng manqing book, and came to study with a teacher in that tradition. Was ZMQ fake or real? Maybe according to some he belonged in the 99'ers group, if that is so then I'm guessing that most of us no matter if we today practice Deadly fighting TJQ or Boxercise TJQ or TJQ in between got to know about TJQ because of someone amongst the 99'ers.. I don't get why to be irritated about boxercise guys when one could be one of the contestants in the latest UFC show...for example
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Re: 99% of tai chi is fake

Postby wayne hansen on Mon Jul 31, 2017 3:13 am

Just because someone mentions 99% doesn't make it a fact
I don't really care how others do tai chi it is irrelevant to my practice
People tend to talk about tai chi when they don't practice it or it is part of a collage of other things they do
Or they did it once and moved on but still comment on it
When I found the real thing it was like coming home ,I found no need to look for something else
All that was required is that I endeavoured
As JFK said
Ask not what tai chi can do for you but what you can do for tai chi
Don't put power into the form let it naturally arise from the form
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Re: 99% of tai chi is fake

Postby cloudz on Mon Jul 31, 2017 3:24 am

Appledog wrote:
MaartenSFS wrote:99.9% of Taijiquan is moving Yoga (really Qigong). And most wouldn't even know that it's a martial art. Most Chinese don't know it...

Appledog, that's utterly preposterous.. Qi by itself is just air... Is that what's missing??? Do try to keep up!


I was mulling over a variety of ways to respond to this and I realized the difficulty was in trying to respond constructively, because as you said yourself you 'don't give a fuck about tai chi'. So if I am going to try to add information to the discussion there are not a lot of ways to do so while staying on topic. But that is in fact the issue here, which you are bringing to a head. You don't do tai chi, you 'don't give a fuck about tai chi', and you don't even seem to understand what I said about qi in a general sense. Why are you here, Maarten? What is it exactly do you want out of this discussion?



Well for sure we're touching on something here. In regards "qi"..
Forget Maarten for a moment, he's not a tai chi guy, obviously. Well not yet anyway.

But as you are probably aware there are a fair few tai chi / CIMA people who are all about the woo woo free narrative.
Anything that veers near esoterica, be it spiritual, energetic. Well you may as well set a hornets nest on them they instinctively (perhaps) want to run a mile from it.

I probably find that as 'mad' as you do.

Which reminds me, and I suppose, brings us back round to a discussion Charles was having with you I presume. Someone anyway, i think it may have been in one of those threads you had a prolonged discussion. But his example was of CXW telling students their belief was not important, or how they beleived or how they interpreted (should that be re interpreted?) qi. They could still learn and practice to high levels (one presumes). Was he just being nice, did he really really mean it. Does he even really know. I think he may have a good point, but It may depend. Different strokes for different folks. But maybe everyone has room for improvement, and sometimes it could take something significant to change - everyone hits platues for example.

I guess it is about levels.. I'm not sure personally how much better you might or might not get changing ones perspective vs. others. That's rather hard. What can be easier is to gauge ones personal changes and growth in relation to ones own changes in perspective, paradigms.. that kind of thing.
Last edited by cloudz on Mon Jul 31, 2017 3:30 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: 99% of tai chi is fake

Postby MaartenSFS on Mon Jul 31, 2017 5:10 am

Appledog, I studied Taiji for years and gradually became frustrated with it, mostly because of the Taiji community and how delusional most are. I'm still considering to work with my master and develop a really short form, just the essentials, but I am afraid. The art has been turned into a New Age hippy movement that is allergic to fighting. Based on your comments here, I'd be very surprised if you did a lot of sparring. I have literally met zero masters that could really fight (not just be good at Tuishou) that cared about Qi or thought that it was important. It was more of a by-product that some believed in or not, than a pursuit in itself.

My master believes in it, so I do. He's still got some incredible, mysterious skills that I'd like to learn, but there's no point until one can already fight really well. How can one begin graduate studies without first going through kindergarten, primary school, middle school, high school, college etc.? That's a sure-fire way to end up with a steaming pile of nothing. I can tell you that I'm not ready for graduate studies yet. I just spent a year away from my master digesting everything that he taught me and sparring with boxers. I'm heading back there tomorrow to begin the next phase of my studies. Not sure yet what that will entail. Probably not Qi, though. 99.9% of Taijiquan is lacking the Quan part. It's as simple as that.
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Re: 99% of tai chi is fake

Postby Niall Keane on Tue Aug 01, 2017 1:26 am

Wow...

We were really getting somewhere by page 3 ...

Logic presided...

Tai Chi Chuan is an "internal martial art", we agreed...

Adjective - internal

Noun - martial art


Logic suggested without a well-designed method to enhance one's fighting ability an activity claiming to be a martial art failed right out the gatepost...

If your style and it's focus doesn't train people to go from zero to hero in a fully resistant scenario, as far as "martial arts" are concerned, it's fake. (It can be a real something else... waste of time?)

Now people have spent 7 pages trying to give the adjective primacy over the noun.... dunces!!!

If what you do is some form of esoteric "energetics", then it is best described as a chi gung system "based upon elements" of tai chi chuan.
Selling it as tai chi chuan ( boxing ) is a fallacy. Deliberate or delusional?

Either way it's fake as fcuk!

P.S. the "just add sparring" (to forms and tuishou) attitude displays only utter ignorance of how to train for effective combat ability.
that's why those schools produce nothing!

( would anyone dare suggest simply adding sparring to boxercise would produce anything but disasterous results?)
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Re: 99% of tai chi is fake

Postby cloudz on Tue Aug 01, 2017 2:55 am

Neigung/chi gung is integrated into the style so obviously you need to have that part and the fighting part. I'm good with that, it's a bit of me for sure. I feel sorry for the people who have to live in some kind of denial state about what they are doing or bend over backwards to re package or re interpret it, airbrushing out the bits they aren't that comfortable with - either side of this 'divide'.. I don't have to be a "hippy" (it's not the fucking sixties anymore) to be a bit spritual.. and if you think it makes everyone "soft", come and see.. so how about we give stereotypes a rest for a hot minute and be like real grown up people who aren't all about the chest thumping.. he said after beating his chest raw. Or is this all too novel an idea?
Last edited by cloudz on Tue Aug 01, 2017 3:11 am, edited 2 times in total.
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