Lan Cai Hua

[ppscat]

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In Wu Taiji, some schools say that their curriculum includes 'Lan Cai Hua'. But they give it different meanings: either an bagua like form walking through the S-shape of the Yin-Yang symbol, or some sort of a two-person fighting set or drills.


Searching in youtube there is a Wu 2-person form, which looks very similar to Yang's:




Gerald A. Sharp teaches two other indoor forms: Wu's Xingyi, Power Form (Canon Fist).

Have you CaliG or anyone else seen or practice them?

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[Wuyizidi]

亂 luan4: random, without design
踩 cai3: stepping on
花 hua1: flower

The literal translation is "randomly stepping on flowers on the ground".

In Northern Wu style, this is the most advanced stage in the push hand curriculum - where you progress from single hand-fixed step-fixed routine, move on to two hand-fixed step-fixed routine, to moving step-fixed routine, to fixed step-no routine, to finally moving step-no routine (luan4 cai3 hua2). It's the step right before realistic fight training.

The s-shape of Yin Yang circle is used very commonly in Chinese martial art, not just in internal martial arts. If we think about it, the s-shape path is the fastest way to reverse directions. It's something that, until you do it, seems counterintuitive - how can the longest path be the fastest path?

A similar, and simpler version of this problem is cornering in racing - racers want to take the longest path through the corner. I didn't really physically understand that until I went downhill skiing. In the beginning I had my hands full with just not falling when I'm traveling a straight line down the mountain. Plus changing direction is a more difficult skill, scarier to perform. So I usually don't start doing it until I'm almost crashing into the trees. With so little room left, I have to really break hard. Frequently this meant I come to a full stop. Then I have to awkwardly turn my skies around and start from zero speed again. As I became better at keeping my balance on the straight line, I'm more relaxed, and I can pay more attention to other things. Now I can break sooner, more gradually. Instead of cornering like >, I corner like ). It's a longer, gentler arc. I can go through that gentler arc with much higher speed (minimum lost of speed) and using much less effort (in breaking and re-accelerating) than trying to turn the hard corner.

Same thing with the S curve inside the circle that is the Yin Yang symbol. If you want to completely reverse directions, this time going back to where you started, the longest route, the most gentle curve are the (, ) and ( that makes up the S curve.

In the famous spear manual written by 吳殳 Wu2 Shu1, he said all spear techniques can be boiled down to two things - the straight level thrust, and the circles. Providing maximum speed through transition is but one of the important functions circles (and curves - parts of circles) play in martial art. For these reasons, in Chinese martial art people say 無圈不成拳 (wu2 quan1 bu4 cheng2 quan2) - without circles there can be no martial skill.

This by the way, is why forms practice, even in external martial art styles, are so important. When you have to link discrete techniques together, you are forced to be smooth. That smoothness gives you those precious seconds or split seconds that can mean life and death in a real fight.

Wuyizidi

[CaliG]

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In Wu Taiji, some schools say that their curriculum includes 'Lan Cai Hua'. But they give it different meanings: either an bagua like form walking through the S-shape of the Yin-Yang symbol, or some sort of a two-person fighting set or drills.

Gerald A. Sharp teaches two other indoor forms: Wu's Xingyi, Power Form (Canon Fist).

Have you CaliG or anyone else seen or practice them?.

I'm not sure if Wu's Xingyi refers to the 13 fists or the power form that I was taught. The power form is used develop fajin in your movements.

I have seen Lan Cai Hua form. It's very powerful, very fast, aggressive and no nonsense.

I like to think of it as Taiji for the streets.

Someday I plan on learning it but I believe a strong foundation in the 13 shoufa (which I just posted in the video section) is necessary if you want to understand and be able to apply the techniques of lan cai hua (and understand manipulating your opponent's arms for throwing and joint locks) otherwise you'll be doing the form but not necessarily understand what you are doing.

You may want to ask my older brother Shanghai Jay.

[cdobe]

That's a very good question. I know Gerald's presentation of Lan Cai Hua and the applications for it. It contains a lot of angular entering, evading and reversing the directions. Very applicable.

Dr. Stephan Yan calls it "Taiji Sparring" and has a picture of Ma and himself practicing it.

Source: http://www.tai-chi.co.nz/wutaichi.html
Ma Yueliang was asked in an interview whether there was a form of free fighting in his style and he responded that it was called Lan Cai Hua. He also mentions this in some of his books.
Wang Peisheng writes in his book 'Wu style Taijiquan':

[...]; and finally there is "Free-flower picking" as a form of sparring.

Wu's Xingyi as taught by Gerald Sharp is basically Pao Quan performed in a zigzag pattern. I can figure how this could have been incorporated into the system since the movement of "Shooting the Tiger" of the fast form is very similar.

I have footage of Ma Yueliang himself performing the Power Form (Canon Fist). It contains repeated "Opening Taiji" executed fast, an interesting version of the punch from the fast form combined with a "Single Whip", "White Snake Spits out Tongue" and some chopping and arm twirling.

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The video you posted shows a form that at some point was taught in Hongkong at the school of the Jingwu Athletic Association. IIRC Eddie Wu also teaches something like that. I'ld say that it is practiced mostly for demonstration purposes. I haven't seen any fighting oriented practitioners from Hongkong lineages doing a two-person set like that.

CD

[Shanghaijay]

I have footage of Ma Yueliang himself performing the Power Form (Canon Fist). It contains repeated "Opening Taiji" executed fast, an interesting version of the punch from the fast form combined with a "Single Whip", "White Snake Spits out Tongue" and some chopping and arm twirling.

Do you have this on youtube? I have studied this form. I would love to see Ma do it.

Jay

[Shanghaijay]

I'm not sure if Wu's Xingyi refers to the 13 fists or the power form that I was taught. The power form is used develop fajin in your movements.

Greg,

The power form that you learned would be San Huang Pao or cannon fist as I mentioned above.

I am not sure what Gerald is referring to by Wu's Xingyi as it is my understanding that he studied under the Ma family and Zhou Zhan Fang and they did not teach the 13 palms. The 13 palms were taught to Qian Cun Qun by a Tudi of Wu Jianquan.

Jay

[Shanghaijay]

亂 luan4: random, without design
踩 cai3: stepping on
花 hua1: flower

The literal translation is "randomly stepping on flowers on the ground".

In Northern Wu style, this is the most advanced stage in the push hand curriculum - where you progress from single hand-fixed step-fixed routine, move on to two hand-fixed step-fixed routine, to moving step-fixed routine, to fixed step-no routine, to finally moving step-no routine (luan4 cai3 hua2). It's the step right before realistic fight training.

The s-shape of Yin Yang circle is used very commonly in Chinese martial art, not just in internal martial arts. If we think about it, the s-shape path is the fastest way to reverse directions. It's something that, until you do it, seems counterintuitive - how can the longest path be the fastest path?

A similar, and simpler version of this problem is cornering in racing - racers want to take the longest path through the corner. I didn't really physically understand that until I went downhill skiing. In the beginning I had my hands full with just not falling when I'm traveling a straight line down the mountain. Plus changing direction is a more difficult skill, scarier to perform. So I usually don't start doing it until I'm almost crashing into the trees. With so little room left, I have to really break hard. Frequently this meant I come to a full stop. Then I have to awkwardly turn my skies around and start from zero speed again. As I became better at keeping my balance on the straight line, I'm more relaxed, and I can pay more attention to other things. Now I can break sooner, more gradually. Instead of cornering like >, I corner like ). It's a longer, gentler arc. I can go through that gentler arc with much higher speed (minimum lost of speed) and using much less effort (in breaking and re-accelerating) than trying to turn the hard corner.

Same thing with the S curve inside the circle that is the Yin Yang symbol. If you want to completely reverse directions, this time going back to where you started, the longest route, the most gentle curve are the (, ) and ( that makes up the S curve.

In the famous spear manual written by 吳殳 Wu2 Shu1, he said all spear techniques can be boiled down to two things - the straight level thrust, and the circles. Providing maximum speed through transition is but one of the important functions circles (and curves - parts of circles) play in martial art. For these reasons, in Chinese martial art people say 無圈不成拳 (wu2 quan1 bu4 cheng2 quan2) - without circles there can be no martial skill.

This by the way, is why forms practice, even in external martial art styles, are so important. When you have to link discrete techniques together, you are forced to be smooth. That smoothness gives you those precious seconds or split seconds that can mean life and death in a real fight.

Wuyizidi

Yes!

Your spot on.

If you can not do proper push hands than Lan Cai Hua will not work

And that is all I will say on this subject.

Jay

[cdobe]

亂 luan4: random, without design
踩 cai3: stepping on
花 hua1: flower

The literal translation is "randomly stepping on flowers on the ground".

That's strange. Because I'm pretty sure it's:
揽 lan3: seize
采 cai3: pluck
花 hua1: flower

According to Wang it would be 亂采花. But I'm very sure about the second character.

CD

[CaliG]

The power form that you learned would be San Huang Pao or cannon fist as I mentioned above.

Thanks Jay I wasn't sure if they were referring to the same cannon fist, but it looks like they are.

I am not sure what Gerald is referring to by Wu's Xingyi as it is my understanding that he studied under the Ma family and Zhou Zhan Fang and they did not teach the 13 palms. The 13 palms were taught to Qian Cun Qun by a Tudi of Wu Jianquan.

Jay

It sounds like some type of straight line attacks. I know one of his students I'll have ask him sometime.

[ppscat]

Great responses, thank you for sharing. It's amazing how wide Wu Style curriculum is. I read on the Internet many times that Wu is grappling oriented, plus there are numerous videoclips on youtube where applications are finished in that ways. Also my teacher met a known master of MYL lineage who told that 'all applications of the long form comes from tuei-shou', that is apps where both hands are in contact with the opponent instead of a fist-fight approach where you engage and disengage quickly if you haven't found a spot, which made me think that perhaps that PH+grappling connection is the focus of the style. But then the Pao Quan and Lan Cai Hua you talk about makes me think that at the end of the road all that input is poured into a 'long fist' combat fighting approach. Here is WPS doing a linear form, perhaps related to the straight lines you mention:

[Wuyizidi]

If you can not do proper push hands than Lan Cai Hua will not work

And that is all I will say on this subject.

Jay

Jay,

Well, I'm not as diplomatic as you, so I would say more

Push hand is a progressive training method that links the skills developed in solo practice to real fighting. In the external martial arts I studied, we use structured sparring. We don't have people go directly from solo practice to anything-can-happen realistic fighting. Because everything happens so fast in real fighting, if you ask a beginner to apply what he learned right away, he's just going to lose his form (especially footwork, shen fa, overall coordination, so he's back to just using his isolated arm movements). So we would go through a process like this: person A can only attack on the left side using technique X at mid-level, person B can only defend with technique Y on the same side same level; then person A can attack on any level; then either left or right, and person B has to defend on the correct side, correct level... then finally person A can use any attack....

Taiji breaks this process into even more steps, especially at the front-end of the process. Take away the threat of hard physically contact at the beginning. I give you a force on this spot of your body slowly while standing still, can you use taiji principle to solve the problem? Then how about faster, bigger force? How about more than one force at a time? How about moving? How about I increase pressure by instead of using flat of the hand, using points of fingers on your sensitive points (like areas just below, behind the ears)?...

When you get to luan cai hua level in push hand, it's not that different from fighting. After that you just need to do fight-specific practice, like how to make the crucial first-contact with the opponent, hardening exercises, psychology (ex. not let anything your opponent do affect your calmness, how to dominate him...), physiological responses (don't blink, don't move directly away from the incoming force...), psychological hurdles ("thou shall not kill"), actual contact training (lots of hitting against moving human flesh, which is a very different feeling than hitting a heavy bag)...


In external martial art training we do a lot of this type of training right away. So lots of external martial art people look at this and think internal martial art people don't even know the basics about real fighting. But that's just because they are not familiar with 1) how internal martial art training is structured, 2) why it's structured that way, and 3) what "high level" implies.

1) we already talked about above.

2) In Chinese martial art we say external martial art training enhances our natural abilities - the principles and tactics of external martial art is based on how we react naturally (deal with a big force with a bigger, faster force); and that internal martial art changes our natural way of dealing with force - 換勁 huan4 jin4(deal with a big force using a smaller force). So internal martial art focuses on deprogramming first, on doing the most unnatural thing when we are physically threatened. That's a huge challenge, especially the mental part. If we cannot use this new way to deal with force even in simple scenarios, we are not ready for real fighting, and therefore those fight-specific training is premature.

Like we said before, using less force is not the only way to win fights. If we cannot change, we may still win fights, but we won't be doing internal martial art. Breaking habits take a long time. It requires a lot of small, incremental steps. If we ask people do apply these principles in the most challenging scenario of realistic sparring first, people are just going to revert to their old habits - the more they train this way, the further away from their real goal.

The reason people would revert to old habit of using more force is that structured sparring is about idealized, controlled scenarios where you can work on executing our skill in the most optimal manner. In a real fight, the psychological dimension alone makes that optimization near impossible. Unless there's a huge difference in skill, we always use more force than necessary in realistic sparring. So sparring too early is very detrimental to internal martial art training.

So internal martial arts have very long, exacting, logical progression in training. That sequence is just very different than those of external martial art. It is a university, I would say graduate level curriculum. It's a high level pursuit. So what's the implication when something is high-level?

3) When something is truly high level, when it takes a high level of selection and training to reach the level of mastery, most people will not be able to be successful at reaching that goal. Most of us can work at McDonald's, how many of us can be neurosurgeons? A lot of people tries and fails at becoming a doctor. At that point the person working at McDonald's can say "see, I'm making more money than you, in fact, you are heavily in debt, you spent all this time and money and didn't get anything..." They can say that about the individuals who failed at becoming a neurosurgeon, but they cannot say that high-level body of knowledge is no good. The relative few who does become neurosurgeon, they understand things, they can do things the person at McDonald's can never do. In the end it's all about the goals of your training - win fights (a win is a win, no matter how ugly), or win fights with least effort, using the most skillful, elegant way possible?

Most people practice Taiji for health today, plus empty-hand fighting in general is totally obsolete, so we don't have that many Taiji people today who are at the neurosurgeon level in those arts- who has gone through all these stages of push hand, to a point they can do luan cai hua, or actual fighting. Today we have a lot of people who can "do something" at some level of push hand, but cannot do anything at the real fighting level. That's just how Taiji training is - in the end either you get everything, or nothing. But that's mostly because of the world we live in, that it places no real pressure or demand on anyone to be good in those arts, not because those arts themselves are no good.


Wuyizidi