Post Clips of your WU (JQ)

[Muad'dib]

nah. i don't get offended anymore. I'm not a five year old, and even my five year old can take that shit. where you at anway? Maybe as a break I can call you and we can discuss the differences.

[Buddy]

Dammit Dan, I can't keep up with name changes. I don't change mine because I have actually forgotten my sign in name. Buddy I can remember. I was merely observing not criticizing. When I think of anything these day to do with "internal" arts, I think 1. Choreography 2. Structure. Continuity and 4. Intention.
I think of these as levels and things happening simultaneously.

[Muad'dib]

Sorry buddy, I think I'll be keeping Zhong Kui for the duration. There has to be someone to beat the ghosts out. Besides, its nice to be sort of immortal, ya know?

[edededed]

Hmm... gotta learn some taiji one of these days...

[Martin]

Chris,

Just FYI, they do have what they call 'square form' in Shanghai, but only from the Wu Gongyi line.

[cdobe]

Chris,

Just FYI, they do have what they call 'square form' in Shanghai, but only from the Wu Gongyi line.

Thank you, Martin. I didn't know that any Wu Gongyi lines survived in Shanghai. I was under the impression that after it was impossible for some time to openly teach MAs, the style was reintroduced exclusively by the Jianquan Academy that was led by Wu Yinghua and Ma Yuehliang. Recently I heard about some Shanghai lineages though, that also bypass the teachings of the Wu/Ma family and come down directly from Wu Jianquan.
I guess, I fell for the same fallacy that Popper describes with the story of the black swan. I was seeing so many white swans over the time (Shanghai practitioners who come from Ma), that I didn't expect any black swans to appear.

Thanks for the info
Chris

[kreese]

Awesome hair.

[Muad'dib]

haha, that's the middle point between going to grow it real long, or time to cut it short again. I usually don't "maintain" a certain length. (unless you are referring to Martin's pic.)

[kreese]

You gots style, man. You certainly gots style.

[CaliG]

very smooth and controlled. why the lean in wu style? i've always wondered about that.

You can try it out on your furniture or your car. How would you push it? I feel that it is more "natural" to exert forward force in this inclined position. Another name for this is the "ox plow stance" and if you look at how people used to plow their fields in the old days with an ox or horse, you see that they were in the same body position. So it seems to be a very functional and economic way to exert force forward (and downward btw).
In Yang style there are also some people like Dong Yingjie and Yang Shou-Chung who used an inclined body posture. So they didn't think it was a violation of Taiji principles either

It's also harder to get under someone and throw them when they have that forward lean. You could always do some type of headlock throw but that's partly where push hands comes in, if they go for a headlock you push them away. Of course everything has its pluses and minuses.

For me the lean makes it easier to move forward quickly like a runner about to sprint, also as a way to defend against grapplers who may try to grab my legs (if you just bring your front leg back you're already in a sprawl), in push hands it helps because you're not giving your opponent a completely vertical surface to push against and in sanda it minimizes your opponent's targets like in fencing where you try to keep your torso as far as you can from your opponent's range not to mention you're a shorter target.

Check it out...

[Martin]

No problem Chris. There's quite a few Wu Gonyi line people in Shanghai. My friend's Wu style teacher, Xu Guochang (徐国昌) learned from Wu's tudi, Ding Desan (丁德三). I saw an old VHS clip of Ding once - looked like he had quite good content in his movement... Here's a pic:



The Mas are really nice. I used to live in the neighbouring alley to them

[CaliG]

That's true Shanghai attracts people from all over China.

I too saw a lot of different Wu styles in Shanghai. But obviously the "Shanghai" Wu community is the largest.