Yiquan - students of Wang XiangZhai

[I-mon]

Some great movement skill and interesting training methods [EDIT]. A beautiful video!



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5h36tD-AxYY&t=2617s

[nicklinjm]

Great video featuring several of the 1st generation students of Wang Xiangzhai. Can anyone identify the other teachers in the video (apart from Yao Zongxun)?

[Patrick]

At the end is his son Yao Chengrong.

[dacheng]

This is video about Yao Zongxun (it's funny hearing that he didn't do much sparring). Others who appear here are Li Jianyu (didn't do much sparring) and Tang Rukun (didn't do much sparring). At the end is Yao Chenrong - son of Yao Zongxun and one of those who did several years of intense sparring practice under him, at the time when sanda was being developed in China, so they had a lot of sparring training not only between themselves, but also the first sanda fighters in PRC.

[I-mon]

Andre! I'd love to hear more about the kinds of sparring and/or grappling practice that these guys did. Yao Chenrong I knew about, but not the others. What I'm seeing could of course just be my own misunderstanding of what they are training. I would be very interested to hear about whether or not these first and second generations of students did much practice with or against practitioners of shuai jiao or judo. Not trying to start another "IMA doesn't work in the octagon" flame war - as I said I think it's a beautiful video showing some very high level skills.

Simon

[dacheng]

As I wrote, Li Jianyu and Tang Rukun did not train much sparring.

Yao Chengrong's father Yao Zongxun was the main one stressing combative/sparring training at the time when he was Wang Xiangzhai's assistant in 1940s (and then when it became possible again - from late 70s until he died). There was a big impact on his yiquan from a Japanese instructor of western boxing. As for judo, Kenichi Sawai, who was 4 dan judo at that time was challenging him before accepting to learn from him. Also one of frequent sparring partners of Yao Zongxun was Bu Enfu, a champion in shuai jiao wrestling and western boxing in 1920s/1930s in China.

Anyway, the clip doesn't show any of san shou sparring, so I don't quite understand how any conclusions related to free fighting could be drawn from watching it.

[I-mon]

Actually I must apologise - I just watched it again looking for the bits I was thinking of when I wrote that, and I couldn't find them, so perhaps I got mixed up as I watched several yiquan videos during the week in which I posted it. Just edited my original post accordingly.

[nicklinjm]

As Andrzej mentioned, Bu Enfu, one of WXZ's senior disciples was a national champion in both boxing and shuai jiao. Apart from Bu, there was also Wang Xuanjie who studied shuai jiao with famous master Xiong Deshan before becoming a disciple of WXZ, and Zhang Entong (Tianjin disciple of WXZ) also had a lot of sparring experience against Chinese wrestling.