Odd Article on Chen Xiao-wang in KF Magazine

[Andy_S]

Very odd article from KF magazine on Chen XW. Many factual inaccuracies - but also some interesting material on Chen's own development.

Linky:
http://ezine.kungfumagazine.com/magazin ... rticle=822

Some comments:

Chen village is not "tiny:" To walk from Chen Xiaoxing's school to Chen Zhousen's school takes 15-20 mins. ie by the standards of rural China (or even rural England, where I grew up) it is a pretty large village.

Article states that there is only one Taiji school in village. Thisis blatantly untrue: There were three when i was there last year (not including two in the Huleijia village across the 'muddy ditch" - though they are basically the homes of the masters) I wonder if this was a mistranslation in the article? There is only one elementary school there.

There are plenty of dusty old houses left in the village, there are very few modern houses that I could see; Bar the Taiji schools, the supermarket and Zhou Tien-cai's marble mansion, most village houses look pretty old. All are made of mud brick, with enclosed couryards. Chen Xiao-wang's old cottage (a very poor place) is in a tiny plot in the very centre of the village; it is derelict, and may well have been demolished by now.

Chenjiagou is not "in the shadow of the Shaolin Temple" Shaolin is about 50 miles away. The area around Chen village is completely flat - no mountains are visible, even in the distance

Less than 20 foreigners a year visit Chenjiagou? When I was there a German group were just leaving; there was a Brit (been there a year) an Aussie (been there several months) a South African (two months) plus our group (7) from Seoul. Another Brit turned up on the weekend, there was a Russian who was there for the day, and when we left,another group of S Koreans were arriving. This was in the space of two weeks, and in just one of the two big schools! (Chen XX and Wang Xian have very large schools; Chen Zhousen's is a bit smaller)

Push hands has not died down: On Monday, I was speaking to Hans Oh, who had competed in the Wenxian competition last year. Chen XX has an in-house team of guys who compete in PH.

Sanda is barely practiced in the village, as far as I could see: When I asked Chen XX about this, he admitted there are very few people doing it. I also asked a xiaojia master if he did any combative training beyond PH, and he said no. What there is, is modern sanda - there is a wushu coach who teaches Shaolin and Sanda - at Chen XX's school.

Also, Chenjiagou is pretty easy to get to: From Wenxian, there are buses, taxies, etc. Everybody in Wenxian knows Chenjiagou - it is less than 10 minutes away by road.

The bit about Chen himself, at 64, suddenly making a jump in skill is interesting: Pity the article did not analyse it more: He says he has eliminated mistakes and become more efficient since a knee op in 2001 - but if this is so, what was he doing prior? He now claims to do Laojia 1-lu 20 times ever morning, back to back "without getting tired." If true, this is remarkable.