Posthumously Released Tsui Sheung Tin Videos

[Bao]

Quite funny how what people admire in him is what they would call tofu tai chi

+1

... and performed on willing students that freezes in stiff postures and offer no resistance ....

On the other side, I really like these clips. The small adjustments and knowledge on structure. In fact, some of these clips show better tai chi than most tai chi vids out there.

he trained some taiji briefly before training ving tsun, according to what i've been told though (i'm a student of Lit Leung Yiu) he was adamant that it had no influence on his wing chun...

Interesting. I wonder what kind of tai chi he studied and how deep he went into it.

And btw, there was no "tuishou" earlier, but "dashou" or "striking hands". Tai chi also use "tie" (chi in chisao) or stick as main principle. On advanced levels, tuishou and chisao might be closer to each other than people think.

[Spncr]

... and performed on willing students that freezes in stiff postures and offer no resistance ....

To some extent I would agree. Many of the people in the videos are definitely more capable at offering resistance than most and the way his VT is practiced leaves little room for that resistance to show, but I assure you if you touch hands with even one of his decent students you will feel a great "resistance". OTOH I think most of his students have tried as hard as they can for for years to stop him from doing basically everything at one point or another, that they end up resigning to "half-assed" attempts just to feel and try to understand the skills being demoed. I know this is the case with me and my Sifu at least, the harder I try to stop him, the more tense I become... and I dont like being tense! So now a days I just offer enough to feel what he's doing. My Sifu insists that we was never able to do anything unless Mr.Chu (as he called him sometimes) let him.

Here's a short clip of someone much larger than him supplying greater resistance. If you dig around youtube, that whole seminar is available and in it he uses the same guy in this clip to demo another move or two on.

[Bao]

OTOH I think most of his students have tried as hard as they can for for years to stop him from doing basically everything at one point or another, that they end up resigning to "half-assed" attempts just to feel and try to understand the skills being demoed. I know this is the case with me and my Sifu at least, the harder I try to stop him, the more tense I become... and I dont like being tense! So now a days I just offer enough to feel what he's doing.

My question was a rhetorical and general one. There are many reasons why people don't try to make it hard for a teacher and the most of the reasons are that they are there to learn. But the question I asked is asked very often when similar staff is shown from tai ch people. "Lame attack", "non-resisting opponent" etc etc. But again and just like you, people wants to understand and feel what a teacher is doing and not sabotage a class.

[Spncr]

Yah, im sure other people have different reasons of their own too. Also, the cameras arent rolling all the time (in the case of my teacher, never,) and the times where people are actually applying pressure or even attacking thus are seldom captured

[Young Grasshopper]

No one did the Siu Nim Tau (Sil Lim Tao) form like he did... Maybe Ip man.

[Spncr]

[Spncr]

[Spncr]

[Spncr]

[Spncr]

[Spncr]

[Spncr]

[Spncr]

[Andy_S]

Effortless power! I liked the one when he did a WC arm movement and said, "Just use this and add a body turn." To me that was very Tie Chee - as someone once said "WC is about keeping the body still but moving the arms, while Tie Chee is about keeping the arms still but moving the body." An over-generalization, but broadly correct, I think.

Interesting to that WC seems so effective for small, weedy-looking little chaps. Or was it simply because Yip Man was a small, weedy little chap that he (brilliantly) modified the method?

Hung Ga and Choy Lay Fut are two other southern style that seem better suited to chunkier gents, but AFAIK WC's ancestor - Southern White Crane - is not particularly noted for small statured practitioners...?

[Bao]

Effortless power! I liked the one when he did a WC arm movement and said, "Just use this and add a body turn." To me that was very Tie Chee - as someone once said "WC is about keeping the body still but moving the arms, while Tie Chee is about keeping the arms still but moving the body." An over-generalization, but broadly correct, I think.

IMHO, the interesting part is the contact point and what happens when you issue energy. Upon issuing, how the arm moves forward and how much the center rotates has very little to do with style and rather depend on posture, angle and distance. Styles have different ways to approach how to bring power from the center of the body. The mechanics might look different depending on what stance and posture that a style prefers. But upon contact and issuing jin, how the center of the body acts, is virtually the same regardless style. This is especially true if we speak about the arts we consider as "IMA" and those who could be considered as related to them.

I like this teacher very much, very much so because he shows that mechanics are more important than "style" and trancend style.