Why is Cheng Man Ch'ing so underestimated?

[ShortFormMike]

I've met a lot of martial arts teachers and 3 i consider really great; 2 were CMC stylists. one was a 3rd generation too (he actually seemed the best of the three).

Tao Ping Siang said Cheng was the greatest of all his teachers and he was a disciple of Wu YiHui who was one of the "2 and a half" people that Wang Xiang Zhai said possessed real martial art skill. Can this mean nothing?

Cheng had so many students that proved their gungfu (won tuishou & full contact tournaments etc) and have/had great followings. (e.g. Huang Xing Shyan, Gen. Albert Liu, Ben Lo, Tao PingSiang, William C.C. Chen, Chiu Hongbing, etc). And most of them were already accomplished martial artists themselves.

Heck, I had to be converted myself. based on videos and reading i thought CMC style was an unsophisticated hippie style and wasn't convinced until i got to feel it myself from an adept. and i always wondered why TT Liang said Cheng was like hitler but wrote he was the best of his dozen teachers. that's uncommon in MA culture.

lol, i sound like Cheng's apolgist.

[cloudz]

Yea, but you have a point.. A lot of people (to me) seem to like to judge on form a fair bit.. and things like that. If you look at what he left behond in Malaysia and what he taught in US there seems some disparity so maybe that has influenced peoples opinions. They see Chen forms and compare them to CMC and think well how the heck is that not some watered down innefective hippy shit..

I think these might sometimes be people who havn'r quite grasped that a tai chi guy doesn't necessarily have to practice a form with bells on to be effective..

Although that just skims the surface I'm sure and of course I have no real idea how he compared to his contemporaries. We can only really guess at these things. Much like in todays CMA/ CIMA world.

[Ian]

May I ask, as respectfully as possible, what the point is of the majority of these applications?

While I realise that they require a high degree of control, I don't understand the point. Same applies for CMC's push hands vids.

[middleway]

Personally I think that maybe compared to your average American dude travelling around or the guys in the US when he was there he probably was brilliant ... I have however heard from a fairly reputable fighting Taiji guy that compared to the really good guys in Taiwan he had very little ... but who really knows huh.

Who knows ... and ultimately ... who cares! If you like his stuff ... train it, If you dont ... then dont!!!! All pretty simple really! Lifes to short to get bent out of shape about what someone else is saying about someone you probably never met or knew.

Cheers
Chris

[ppscat]

I have mixed emotions about CMC. While I don't like at all their forms and push hands format, their exercises are quite quite good if you give them a try. I'm sure that every style has its strong points, it's up to you to discover them.

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[everything]

it's a popular lineage so it reflects the overall state of tjq. some good stuff and folks. mostly hippies. people direct their rants against the hippies at the substyle. i see the criticisms as more marketing hype and the primate stuff chrismckinley talked about. just idiot primates thumping their chests and pointing to the shared stripe patterns on their limbs. like ppscat said, every style has its strong points.

[cerebus]

LOL! I have to second what ShortFormMike is saying. I first got into the internal arts in 2002. Prior to that I was mainly a Northern Shaolin/ Northen Mantis guy. In '02 my main interest was Hsing-I (which I still really like), with a minor interest in Bagua and almost no interest in Tai Chi. But Tai Chi was part of the curriculum in our school, so I learned a variation of the Cheng Man Ching form.

Last year, after fighting at the USKSF Lei Tai event, I realized that my concentration on Hsing-I caused my brain to stick in "Straight-line aggression" mode. I went in with the intention of taking my opponent's ground and just knocking them down or out. Well, I was amazed at how resilient my opponents were, at how they were taking my best shots and coming right back with their own.

After that, I began experimenting with how I would fight if I concentrated more on my Tai Chi and I automatically relaxed more and used my mobility and "empty body" training, as well as being much more fluid in relying on "effortless power". As a result I began really training the empty-body skills with my instructor (Scott Jensen) as well as reading one of his instructor's books (Peter Ralston's "The Principles of Effortless Power"). The in-person teaching combined with reinforcement of reading the same things in detail, practicing them in my Tai Chi form, and then trying them out in sparring really brought it all to a point of practical reality for me. One of Ralston's teachers, by the way, was William C. C. Chen.

Now I'm alternating my reading between Ralston's "Principles of Effortless Power", "Cheng Man Ching's Advanced Tai Chi Form Instructions" and William C. C. Chen's "Body Mechanics of Tai Chi Chuan". And finally I'm really feeling the effectiveness, the combat effectiveness, of deep and total relaxation combined with proper body mechanics. It's something which I've understood on an "intellectual" level ever since first reading the "Tao Te Ching" in 1979, now I'm becoming able to apply it in a "practical" manner to fighting.

I really don't think I would've come to this point if it weren't for the extreme relaxation emphasized by the Cheng Man Ching style of Tai Chi. I can really understand how William Chen and Peter Ralston went on to become fighting champions through this kind of training...

[cerebus]

May I ask, as respectfully as possible, what the point is of the majority of these applications?

While I realise that they require a high degree of control, I don't understand the point. Same applies for CMC's push hands vids.

I just watched the first half of the vid, but I don't know if I understand your question. The "point" of the applications? From the stuff I saw it looks like the guy's point is to punch, kick, strike or lock his opponent after neutralizing his initial attack. Was there some other point we should be looking for?

[neijia_boxer]

CMC tai chi style was my first Martial art, but everyone i learned from was from the 60's generation and totally acted like they were some kind of high level master. the best thing they did was point to the right direction with going to seminars: Ben Lo, Yang Zhen Dou, Robert Smith, William Chen, ect. and 'Taste of China' event in Va.

the thing i do like about them they are very slow and exact with form and push hands. they take time so it takes a year to learn 37 short solo form. They also hold or "molding'' the postures for a long time so your legs burn. There are some very exceptional push hands players there I do admire- Mario Napoli, David Walls-Kauffman, Lenzie Williams, William CC Chen family to name a few.

However I was lucky to break out of the group mind that existed where i had been, they denied every style but there own. Its a pretty close minded group. I met a Chinese student who introduced me to a teacher of Fu Zhong Wen's Yang Taiji and been progressing ever since. I still do push hands with CMC groups and will do the form with them.

The CMC form is more square in posture, middle framed, and uses 'beautiful lady' wrist. Yang long form uses rounder postures, big frame, and willow palm style. both styles pivot the rear foot differently as well.

[Wuyizidi]

It may be because Zheng Man Qing was not a professional martial artist, and had no fighting reputation when he was in mainland.

He was a college professor. After escaping to Taiwan with the Nationalist government, he taught Song Mei Ling - wife of Generalissimo Jiang Jieshi (Chang Kai-chek) calligraphy, painting, and Taiji Quan. Song was a very powerful political presence herself. As it happens in life, a lot of people tried to get close to Jiang and Song by studying with Zheng. This is how he became famous in Taiwan. Later on, his fame in the West came from being the first to introduce Taiji Quan here. Again, the reputation is primarily of teaching rather than fighting (compare this to his contemporary Bruce Lee).

This is not to say his Taiji Quan skill is not good. We all know from plenty of examples that skill and fame are two separate things. Just because he became famous for reasons other than fighting does not mean he cannot fight. But 1) his professional background - academic rather than martial art, 2) low profile while on mainland - not known by most professionals, 3) the proliferation of other mainland lineages in the west today, and 4) the image we associate with early western students of Taiji, explain his under-appreciated status today. But one only has to touch with Ben Lo to know he had something real.


Wuyizidi

[everything]

It may be because Zheng Man Qing was not a professional martial artist, and had no fighting reputation when he was in mainland.

He was a college professor. After escaping to Taiwan with the Nationalist government, he taught Song Mei Ling - wife of Generalissimo Jiang Jieshi (Chang Kai-chek) calligraphy, painting, and Taiji Quan. Song was a very powerful political presence herself. As it happens in life, a lot of people tried to get close to Jiang and Song by studying with Zheng. This is how he became famous in Taiwan. Later on, his fame in the West came from being the first to introduce Taiji Quan here. Again, the reputation is primarily of teaching rather than fighting (compare this to his contemporary Bruce Lee).

This is not to say his Taiji Quan skill is not good. We all know from plenty of examples that skill and fame are two separate things. Just because he became famous for reasons other than fighting does not mean he cannot fight. But 1) his professional background - academic rather than martial art, 2) low profile while on mainland - not known by most professionals, 3) the proliferation of other mainland lineages in the west today, and 4) the image we associate with early western students of Taiji, explain his under-appreciated status today. But one only has to touch with Ben Lo to know he had something real.


Wuyizidi

+100.

Btw, touching with Ben Lo is to know Lo has sublime, everyone-would-say-it's-fake-on-youtube, skills. One can only guess about his teacher and his teacher's teacher and his teacher's teacher's grandfather. To me, it makes things more, not less, interesting if someone who is only a weak artsy professor non-fighter type can attain high skill levels. It gives more, not less, credibility to the idea that most martial arts are only accentuating the natural state of the strong beating the weak, and the fast beating the slow, but that taijiquan is different. To say "yeah yo ok, but he's notta fighter, he's a scholar" may be true but is missing the point entirely.

still, the problem remains wherein a gazillion tai chee hippies not only claim to have learned the art from this line, but are so stupid as to think they are qualified to frigging teach someone something about it. of course that is not confined to zmq, but is a pandemic of the entire tjq world.

[Chris McKinley]

I would think, if anything, CMC has been overcelebrated as the cat's pajamas of all things mystical and neijia-esque. His arrival and ensconcement as the guru du jour of hippiedom in the Flower Power era has pretty much influenced every consideration of him since. He is a textbook case of a cult of personality. Now, he also happens to have had some interesting skills. They are, of course, not mutually exclusive.

In the last ten years or so, discussion amongst actual practitioners of Taijiquan has started to take a more objective and critical eye to CMC's history, relative comparison to his peers, his teaching, and some of his students. As a result, he and some of his students are no longer walking on quite as much water as they once did. At the very least, it has been realized that others from outside his line are equally able to join him in loitering on the liquid veranda.

[Doc Stier]

still, the problem remains wherein a gazillion tai chee hippies not only claim to have learned the art from this line, but are so stupid as to think they are qualified to frigging teach someone something about it. of course that is not confined to zmq, but is a pandemic of the entire tjq world.

Quite so, but in all fairness to those who became instructors in the Cheng Man-Ching lineage with only a short term of study, the primary course of instruction usually consisted of simply teaching Prof. Cheng's Short Form via a 12 week course, which normally met only once per week. Although some students chose to take the course perhaps two or three times in order to receive further corrections and refinements on the Short Form, most students did not. They were often given the impression that the mere completion of the Cheng Man-Ching Short Form, combined with the rudimentary Fixed Step Push Hands method also presented, was all there was to Cheng Style Tai-Chi Chuan. So, once that material was comfortably in hand, they often assumed that they were ready to teach others. Period.

This was especially true for those who learned from teachers who were several generations downline from those who had directly trained with Prof. Cheng, as both the Short Form performance skill and the Push Hands skills diminished with each successive group of students who became teachers immediately following their completion of Cheng's Short Form. In an effort to provide some continuing instruction and correction for such individuals, a group of instructors from Cheng's Shr Jung Center in NYC, as one example, traveled around the USA to visit satellite training groups once each month for weekend workshops. But for most participants in these monthly workshops, it still wasn't enough to compensate for such a short term of study and training.

By comparison, teachers who had personally studied with Prof. Cheng generally had a much greater knowledge base and a great deal more physical material to teach by virtue of having studied and trained for many years time prior to becoming an instructor, not just for three to six months only. As such, they consistently produced far better students and instructors accordingly. Unfortunately for this style, this was the exception rather than the rule. Unless a student happened to live in Taiwan, NYC, San Francisco, or some other area where a direct disciple of Professor Cheng was living and teaching, the only opportunities would likely be to take the 12 week course and/or the monthly follow-up workshops thereafter.

Doc Stier

[everything]

that's too bad for the MA side. OTOH, if Cheng was interested in shortening the yang form so more people could learn some taijiquan, mainly for health, then a proliferation of multiple generations of healthy hippies could be considered a huge success. many alternative health people look at the chinese senior citizens practicing tai chi in parks every morning and think everyone else should do that. my mom couldn't give a crap about MA, but it would be nice if she did more form work.

if certain teachers intended to have a half-open door such that there is public awareness of an art, but the full art is hidden, I suppose it was a huge success. even if every hippie teacher and student knew what they are teaching/learning is not the full art,99% wouldn't get it out of lack of interest, motivation, practice, etc., anyway. so maybe ignorance and no-ignorance has the same result.

[kenneth fish]

Wuyizi is on the mark. Zheng Manqing was not only not that highly regarded in the martial arts community in Taiwan (for a number of reasons having nothing to do with his ability - his closeness to the Jiang family did not play in his favor, he tended to be a difficult personality and so on), he also managed to alienate the literary and artistic community. He fancied himself a poet, calligrapher, and artist, calling himself "wu jue" (peerless in five areas). Taiwan at the time was rife with renowned artists, poets, and calligraphers from the mainland, and Zheng was simply not in their league. He was, however, a tireless self promoter, and being associated with the Jiang's gave him a platform (and a moneyed audience). This caused further friction and alienation from the arts community.