Chen Taiji ala Adam Hsu/KurtWong/Paolo Line

[Bob]

I want to also be very careful in what I say and how it is interpreted. I was not around nor have I ever met Liu Yun Qiao personally.

It is my understanding that when the Wu Tan Development Center was created, it was implemented as a part of a larger Government program to preserve all the cultural treasures of China. Many of you have worked with organizations and program implementation and you know what looks good on paper sometimes gets drastically changed in its implementation due to personalities, politics, and resource constraints.

My limited understanding is that the Wu Tan Development Center, "the altar upon whice we bring all the traditional martial arts" was to go well beyond the baji/pigua/bagua/mizong/liuhe tanglang of Liu Yun Qiao. If you have old copies of the Wu Tan magazine, you would clearly see this reflected in the variety of Masters that the issues covered.

The intent of Wu Tan i.e. Liu Yun Qiao, was not to co-opt other systems from their masters nor disregard the disciple lines of other systems. This was an honest attempt to preserve what the Guomindang thought was surely to be lost under the rule of Mao Ze Dong [an assumption which proved not to be true although many of Taiwanese/Chinese martial artists continue to believe this regarding who really has the traditional martial arts and what has been watered-down on the mainland}

The initial intent of Wu Tan was not to treat this collection as a commercial endeavor where martial arts careers could be made in the public forum. That is not to say you wouldn't charge people to learn---you do that as a marker of the value of the material and the value of your own time and efforts---but the idea of a commercial enterprise was not, in my understanding, a primary objective; meaning it was not being transmitted to disciples for purpose of creating a global martial arts enterprise profit driven---non-profit? Hmmm not a bad idea but not part of the original plans.

Many people forget that Liu had retired from a military career and money, although important in running an organization, was not a career objective.

As stated above by Count, Liu started teaching rather late in life---and rather reluctantly at that.

As with any organization, CMC, Chen Village, politics, personalities, power, all too human, constrain and alter the course of the mission and vision of the original organizational intent. Wu Tan has been no different---so often I refer to Wu Tan(g) from my relationship with my Master, Tony Yang, [I am tu di] because Wu Tan is a conglomerate and not a monolithic, uniform, organization. It has many twists, turns---and although it finds its roots in Liu's baji/pigua/bagua/mizong/liuhe tang lang it also has many branches which have dropped many seeds with new roots. The original tree has long been dead. What we see indeed are the roots of new trees sprouted from seeds of the old tree planted in a different time and place.

Sometimes it is hard to understand how the new trees look so different from the leaves of the old tree.

As a side note, I wrote this earlier with the intention of responding to Edededed's commentary and not in response or in conflict with Count's post.

[edededed]

Thanks for the commentary, Bob - I do agree that I never saw anything commercial in the collection of styles in Wutan. (I do think I remember hearing somewhere that the old Wutan magazine costed money and did not make any, though.)

[Bob]

This is the clip I was looking for with regard to Tu Zong Ren. Originally posted by David, and I understand that he keeps this flavor separated from what he learned from Master Du.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kY_cq0D9 ... re=related

This is a performance of a combined Chen style form by Du Yu-ze (杜毓澤) disciple Tu Zong-ren (涂宗仁) in Tainan, Taiwan on Jan. 28, 2007. The event was the opening of the 中觀陳氏太極拳協會成立大會, a Chen style taiji organization in Tainan. The form Tu laoshi is performing is one that he has coreographed and is drawn from both laojia and xinjia, yilu and erlu. For more information and class schedule, please visit http://www.taijiren.org/ (Chinese).

[taiwandeutscher]

Yeah, I was there, and it was really f... cold and windy for southern Taiwan, still Master Tu's form had it's own flavor. And he is a nice person, playing around with us after his performance for over an hr.

He got the Du material, also lots of village stuff (official representative for Chenjiagou in Taiwan) and can improvise with all this, as seen above.

But he also clearly differentiates between all the forms and their different flavors, so you can study some 8 forms with him.

Only problem: He is based in Taibei and his tuitions are worth considering only for long term stays.