Chen Old Boy Shows Nice PH Apps

[Bao]

Also before offering him money you should have first invited him to dinner and got him drunk, then you could ask him to teach you.

+1. Not all chinese drink, but to offer money can be perceived as insulting and/or work as a barrier. In China, you really need to make friends with a person before you ask about something.

Today in China, even if you want to bribe someone you must become friends and offer your money as a friend. Then he/she does not need to have any moral concerns as gifts from friends are not really bribes.

[mrtoes]

You're assuming that Andy mentioned money at all, sounds like he didn't get that far?

Stories like this (and plenty of others besides - lots relating to Chen village) remind me that one of the best decisions I ever made was deciding not to go to China to train martial arts

More power to those who found good training but I suspect I would have had better luck walking around the Taklamakan Desert trying to find fallen meteorites...

Chap in the video looks like he has good skills - thanks for posting!

Matthew

[Bao]

You're assuming that Andy mentioned money at all, sounds like he didn't get that far?

Stories like this (and plenty of others besides - lots relating to Chen village) remind me that one of the best decisions I ever made was deciding not to go to China to train martial arts

More power to those who found good training but I suspect I would have had better luck walking around the Taklamakan Desert trying to find fallen meteorites...

Chap in the video looks like he has good skills - thanks for posting!
Matthew

What I read was:
He seemed reticent and declined, though our offer was politely phrased and we would have paid whatever rate he asked for.
The point is that he probably would not asked nor cared about money. Probably it's more about relations, mianzi or maybe he was reluctant to teach at all. But money is not the right approach. Also, in some asian traditions, teachers believe that if you want something, it's not enough to ask. If you really want something, you need to earn it. Or at least show that you will make sure that you will do anything to earn it.

Anyway, this seems to be an interesting fellow. The real Tai Chi is found in the small, not in the large. It's always like this.

[windwalker]

You're assuming that Andy mentioned money at all, sounds like he didn't get that far?

Stories like this (and plenty of others besides - lots relating to Chen village) remind me that one of the best decisions I ever made was deciding not to go to China to train martial arts

More power to those who found good training but I suspect I would have had better luck walking around the Taklamakan Desert trying to find fallen meteorites...

Chap in the video looks like he has good skills - thanks for posting!

Matthew

Maybe, maybe not.

I think going to theorigin place of a cultural practice helps in ways that may not be apparent at fist.
Finding a teacher if one is not known to begin with can be a hit or miss, a large part depends on ones own clarity, experience and
understanding what one is looking for.

[Strange]

its very nice
by that i mean one would have to have a deep and clear
understanding to be able to explain the meaning of the 8 characters
in such an simple and unassuming manner.

ime, not all ppl with good kungfu are good teachers

[Andy_S]

TBH, I can't recall the exact conversation, but we expressed interest and said something along the lines of "…and of course we would be very willing to pay for the time you put in," or words to that effect. I am not sure how that was phrased by the interpreter, who, incidentally, also seemed a bit disappointed by his refusal. And bear in mind, that we (the school, collectively) had paid to bring the guy over.

RE: This
SNIP
as long as you think of it as a problem that can be solved with money you are not thinking about it from the point of view of a typical Chinese person.
SNIP

...well! Let us just say we have had different experiences. A very senior retired Korean businessman once said to me: "We Koreans are socialist capitalists. Chinese are capitalist socialists!"

Anyway, make of this what thou wilt. Having grown up in the UK and lived most of my adult life in Asia, I am NOT a Confucian traditionalist in any way, shape or form. I much prefer the ease, transparency and predictability of modern social culture - even if it is capitalistic.

Although, there again…. the prices being charged at the Chen Village Taiji school these days do make me wonder if the old ways are the best! Although I should also add that a friend of mine lived, ate, slept and trained there, completely free of charge, for over a year. He was a student of my teacher, who the Chens have known for years; they saw his seriousness, and being aware of his poverty, never asked him to pay a penny.

Money is a tricky thing.

[leifeng]

Don't get me wrong money is one of the factors but there are many other factors regarding the Chinese etiquette. Maybe if you go to a teacher with a million dollars and tell him to cut the crap and teach you everything he knows it might work on many of them but as long as we are talking about small amounts of tuition fee there is very little chance of getting anything useful from them without going through a process of Chinese etiquette.

[Mart]

Andy thanks for the welcome and for taking the time to share your experience.

Also, first round on me all around.

As many know, the family tree and where one sits in it and the specifics of rank are still a very important component to the culture of martial arts.
And rightfully so, as through it we can see who was taught by whom. In Chen taiji there is a lot of theory to digest alongside the physical practice with it’s precise guidelines.
Rank in lineages of Small frame and big frame is a complex topic.
In this case, Chen Xiaoxing is above Chen Lifa in the political sense of the taiji organization. Chen Lifa however has a very clear Small frame lineage which some may consider above that of aforementioned master, but was the guest on the visit to your school, Chen Xiaoxing was his host.
The fact that your school footed the bill is not the most crucial factor.
It’s acceptable if one isn’t familiar with all forms of etiquette (especially as a foreigner, as long as one has a sincere heart), however, if one is it certainly can go a long way to building a solid respect based relationship with someone from the start.
Did you all eat together as a group around a table?
If so did you take notice of where Chen Lifa and Chen Xiaoxing were seated?
You don’t have to answer on the board but it could help you to better understand the respect the two masters exhibit for each other. It’s probably not important though as it seems they are good friends having travelled and demonstrated together trying to further promote the art of Chen taiji.

To Leifeng, if I may rephrase your, “you should have got him drunk”, which to some eyes may read slightly disrespectful, it sounds cheap, to “you should have had a drink together to seal a friendship”. Although similar have a different ring to it. Drinking culture isn’t bound to one place or people, it should mean something and in my approach with others it does.

From my experience, the meat is in the form, the applications are in the form, the flow etc. As a system it should be noted that Small Frame is a style, with myraids of applications from many different angles and distances. Push hands is but one component. A recommended approach may have been to agree to learn the form posture by posture, ask for him to demonstrate it’s application, and then how it could manifest in push hands. The reason for this would be to separate the two systems and put him in a position as the teacher and thereby allowing him to become more comfortable and familiar with you, and also giving him more freedom to the amount of contact he feels comfortable with. Easing into a relationship.
I know in our minds we think of it as business, x amount of dollars for x product.
And as it was a short trip with a time constraint it makes perfect sense. However the bigger picture here is the promotion of the Small Frame style. The opposite of conservatism. There is a lot of openness in the story. The two teachers travelled together, demonstrated together, and don’t have any problem teaching the same students.

Small frame and large frame although similar are distinctly different. So as long as one can recognize that, respect that, keep the two separate and so forth there is no problem. Doing some push hands with the master just kind of muddles it up so serves little in regard to the promotion of said style. As example, if teacher agrees, knocks you around to impress upon you the greatness of his style that is not the
武德 wude approach. By not agreeing to your offer he displays respect for the styles and your teacher. That’s all.

May I point out that the push hands patterns are generally the same in small frame and big frame with a few exceptions.
Being that Chen Xiaoxing is the teacher of your teacher this component of the style should be officially taught by them unless he is openly invited to do so by CXX.
It might be hard to understand but I can see how from his view why he didn’t see the value in just teaching push hands.

Back to the topic video, there isn’t anything amazingly new or different concept wise to something else we have seen before. In it he’s teaching one aspect of the concept of following and borrowing. There is a naturalness, and economy of motion to his movement of entering which is quite nice to watch.

Regards,

Martin

[Bao]

SNIP as long as you think of it as a problem that can be solved with money you are not thinking about it from the point of view of a typical Chinese person.SNIP
...well! Let us just say we have had different experiences. A very senior retired Korean businessman once said to me: "We Koreans are socialist capitalists. Chinese are capitalist socialists!"
...
Money is a tricky thing.

Perhaps it didn't get through or you don't care Reading my posts... Couldn't care less. But you really don't get the point. In China, even money is about "guanxi". You can not offer someone money if you don't have a strong connection or even friendship with someone. First, to get anything, you need to build a relationship. Without this, you can't do anything.

武德 wude approach. By not agreeing to your offer he displays respect for the styles and your teacher. That’s all.

Probably just so simple.

It might be hard to understand but I can see how from his view why he didn’t see the value in just teaching push hands.

But .... you learn from feeling skill. Touching someone who is skilled when he use skill, if so only for two minutes, is more important than one thousand words and more rewarding than watching one thousand demonstrations. Any great teacher should understand this and offer students to feel their "jin".

[Mart]

Hello Bao,

What you wrote regarding the need for a relationship in regards with gift exchanges is quite accurate, but as you also know there are exceptions for all general rules. For example, were I to be visited by an honored individual whom I have never previously met I and prepared a welcoming present would be considered a generous and acceptable act. This would be an example of an exchange prior to a grounded relationship.
I think I understand what you mean though in regards to exchanging gifts to encourage a favor. There certainly does have to be some degree of trust before posing the intention.
In Andy’s story, as you mentioned yourself, none of this is really important though as money was not the issue at hand, the situation was quite different. Also, Andy being interested in the art of taiji, a grand student of his friend Chen Xiaoxing had already the appropriate introduction. Here wanting to pay money for lessons is an honorable gesture which shows respect to the value of the material IMO. The most plausible reasons why he declined I think was evident in my previous post, he is not his teacher. Andy’s teacher is responsible for teaching push hands, otherwise it’s just playing around. Nothing wrong with that either just not what he was interested in doing as it wouldn’t be conductive to the study or promotion of Small frame. Were they to also learn small frame however then the relationship would take on another dimension. Learning push hands is a more conservative aspect of the art I do contend.
I reiterate, I think that it’s very progressive for both teachers Chen Xiaoxing and Chen Lifa to travel together and be content teaching the same students their respective styles of taiji.

Can I feel your Jin?
Sure one has to feel one’s teachers’ skills in order to learn to first replicate them. This is usually the first annoyance a new comer brings too though. Once we get passed that game actual learning can usually commence. I am not sure what your concept of jin is but being able to fajin from all parts of the body in the postures is a kind of jibengong. Chen Lifa’s performance speaks for itself on his ability to fajin, he is obviously very connected, I would be interested to learn the how to myself then just feel.
Being tried or tested by other people has all sorts of funny sides. Perhaps some of you reading this have been tested by others before, if one is being tested that means that said person is either not completely convinced or just wants to test. Then one has to decide how much to give to convince said person. Not something I personally care much for, how about you? Remember Andy is not a beginner without knowledge of push hands. I’m sure he thought it would be a great opportunity to get pointers from another master, rightfully so too, but why if he doesn’t have the same reference points ie: small frame alignment and body mechanics.

If one wants to learn something/anything from said person there are multitudes of ways for that to occur on different levels. The live free play testing game is not the best approach from a first time meeting in my opinion. I’m sure that testing wasn’t the implied meaning by either Andy, his mate, or that which you wrote about feeling but without prior ground in a relationship it can easily veer to that direction.

Contact is a very big part of the learning process, I fully agree. By suggesting to remove push hands from the onset doesn’t dismiss the concept of contact. It only removes a sense of challenge in the atmosphere and replaces it with a desire for learning. We may very well have different experiences regarding both. For an example the Chen Ziqiang videos do a fine job to exemplify what it means to be asked to do push hands. There is much more critical information which is necessary in order to learn the foundations of proper movement. Working through form work in a detailed and precise way is very much like a laboratory, push hands is the testing range, (this isn't an absolute rule but push hands on first meeting is often interpreted in this way). Of course if one just wants to learn techniques then that’s fine too, mind you if you want variations of what you have already learnt (large frame) then it makes even more sense to learn the mechanics of the movements through the small frame form.
Furthermore, if you require just a feel this can be accomplished in a normal class setting without needing to exclusively focus on push hands for the entire duration of the class.
Wanting to focus on improving push hands is a fine endeavor but there very well may be others in the younger with this as their forte that may be better suited to be play with. Chen Lifa would offer more in terms of refined movement.
Focusing on the teacher’s skill instead of what I want has been more useful for my own self improvement.

It would have been best to have agreed to his terms, that would not only have been a compromise but more importantly a starting point for the relationship to develop.
A teacher for one day, a teacher for life.

Andy, later when you visited the village and he popped over for a hello shows respect and a form of friendship. You didn’t do anything wrong, just wrong circumstances on that one particular occasion in my opinion. You were sincere and had good intentions, I’m sure he recognized that and the respect you displayed.

I think there is a lot to be gained from stories such as these, although I haven’t had the privilege of meeting either of the teachers in the story I would believe them both to be of good character, possessing strong martial ethics and moral fiber.

I appreciate the discourse.

Regards,

Martin

[Bao]

Can I feel your Jin? Sure one has to feel one’s teachers’ skills in order to learn to first replicate them. This is usually the first annoyance a new comer brings too though. Once we get passed that game actual learning can usually commence. I am not sure what your concept of jin is but being able to fajin from all parts of the body in the postures is a kind of jibengong. Chen Lifa’s performance speaks for itself on his ability to fajin, he is obviously very connected, I would be interested to learn the how to myself then just feel.
Being tried or tested by other people has all sorts of funny sides. Perhaps some of you reading this have been tested by others before, if one is being tested that means that said person is either not completely convinced or just wants to test. Then one has to decide how much to give to convince said person. Not something I personally care much for, how about you? Remember Andy is not a beginner without knowledge of push hands.

I used "Jin" for lack of a better word. I like to translate "jin" as "quality" not energy. Faijin is quite far away from what I speak about. So is "testing" skill. There are many kind of qualities, and in practice, the "Jins" are not as separate or distinct as in theory.

It's very interesting, but every single high level practitioner have a very distinct "feeling". And every one of them "feels" different from each other, like voices are different, or that people walks and moves different. But this is something you need to "feel" to understand. There's a difference in lightness/heaviness, solid/empty, connection etc. etc. IME, if you want, you can learn a lot from just touch hands with a teacher, regardless it's about tuishou, applications, qinna demonstration, throw, sparring or anything else. If you have a chance to feel how a skilled teacher feels like when he use his developed "shenfa", body method, you should always do anything to get this chance. When I visit teachers or practitioners, I have no real interest of learning more forms, techniques, exercises or theory. I want to learn by feeling first hand how they do something.

Sadly, people listen too much on teacher's voices and often, when people listen, they don't really listen. They don't judge by themselves and let their teachers judge what is right. Sometimes there's a gap between what teachers say and how they do things. BUT IF you have touched skill, there's no question about that you have really touched skill. If you have someone with skill in front of you, then you should care more about how this teacher do things, how he feels upon touch, not care too much about listening to his words. We learn by acting, reacting and doing. Not by wondering, pondering and worrying. In Tai Chi, the most important kind of knowledge is, IME, not by imitating someone on distance or listen to some words, but transmitted by touch.

[Andy_S]

SNIP
Perhaps it didn't get through or you don't care Reading my posts... Couldn't care less. But you really don't get the point. In China, even money is about "guanxi". You can not offer someone money if you don't have a strong connection or even friendship with someone. First, to get anything, you need to build a relationship. Without this, you can't do anything.
SNIP

Oh God, here we go...

Bao, I have been practicing Asian MA since 1984. I have an MA in Asian Studies from SOAS. I have lived in Northeast Asia for the last 16 years. And my wife is Korean. And FWIW, I just returned from a reporting trip in Northeast China (Shenyang, Dandong, Jian, Yenji, Hunchun) where my camera crew and I managed to get some VERY interesting material about cross border trade with North Korea. We did not obtain this through a lengthy relationship-building process - we were only there for eight days! - but because we paid a fixer to leverage HIS relationships for us.

Culture (ie learned behaviour) is important - especially in Asia, where the culture of individualism is not as strong as (IMHO) it should be, and there is a huge amount of group-think and associated pressures and stresses. However, culture is not everything. Economics also exists - even in MA. For better and/or for worse.

Martin:

I appreciate your thoughts and very largely agree with you. But being 48 years old, I am less and less willing to invest time and/or money unless there is a guaranteed return.

If you want to teach me - great. If you don't want to teach me - OK, I appreciate your honesty, rather than pretending to teach me BS.

In that sense, I can't complain about the guy's behavior (though we gave him quite a nice vacation). The fact that he now has clips on YouTube suggests that perhaps he is more open to teaching (I have never come across any mention of students of his). I hope that is the case as I am pretty sure he has real skills.

[Bao]

Oh God, here we go...
Bao, I have been practicing Asian MA since 1984. I have an MA in Asian Studies from SOAS. I have lived in Northeast Asia for the last 16 years. And my wife is Korean. And FWIW, I just returned from a reporting trip in Northeast China (Shenyang, Dandong, Jian, Yenji, Hunchun) where my camera crew and I managed to get some VERY interesting material about cross border trade with North Korea. We did not obtain this through a lengthy relationship-building process - we were only there for eight days! - but because we paid a fixer to leverage HIS relationships for us.

Yes I know about your travel and work. And I have worked with China for the last 15 years, for chinese companies and helping western companies doing business in China. (And my wife is chinese as well). China is not general Asia and China is not Korea.

Culture (ie learned behaviour) is important - especially in Asia, where the culture of individualism is not as strong as (IMHO) it should be, and there is a huge amount of group-think and associated pressures and stresses. However, culture is not everything. Economics also exists - even in MA. For better and/or for worse.

You still don't understand .... I never said that money is not important, but very much the opposite. China is one of the most capitalist, corrupt countries in the world and a lot of people are extremely greedy and selfish. But relationships is a very, very complicated manner, and before offering some one money or something else you need to understand the cultural and social codes... Who? When? What? .... It's not easy.

I am not writing about this to give you a lecture or to tell you that you did any wrong or anything like that. I have no clue about the situation there or what kind of relationship. I am just trying to make some general points for people here that are interested in China and the modern culture. I am just truing to make a point across that Chinese social codes are often much more complex than what the surface says, and it's easy to make mistakes. ... I am not Chinese, but anyway...