Yang Shou-Chung, Chu King-Hung and Erle plus Snake Style

[Andy_S]

YM:

Interesting stuff, you have been around! What is your personal take on things? Was early Yang style more like (today's) Chen style, more like (today's) Yang style or something different again? And I'd be curious to know about the different ways of practicing the frames, if you could extrapolate.

What I am getting at, is what training methods are now lost, or less practiced? If I recall correctly, Tian Zhaolin had some very interesting training methods - low stance training and vigorous stretching exercises - that are not widely seen in modern Taiji, particularly modern Yang-style Taiji.

Bao:

I don't believe Chen Fake changed things much: His form ("xinjia") is pretty much standard Chen with an exo-skeleton on it, to make the internal work more apparent and visible.

I'd be very curious to see what Chen style you have seen that looks like Hao style. I have been looking at this stuff for years and pretty well EVERY form of Chen style - not just Fake's own xinjia and Hong JS's "practical Taiji, which both come from Fake, but also laojia, which comes from Zhaopei, not Fake, well as all xiaojia ("small frame") and even the sub-sets of Hulei and Zhaobao look very similar to me in terms of stance, shenfa, tempo - the only differences are the techniques, and then, they do not vary to any great degree. Clearly, Fake could not have influenced all these different styles and sub-styles we have today. To me, this suggests that the Chen forms we have today are still pretty firmly rooted in tradition. (Hell, I'd go so far as to say that even a complete layman, someone with no knowledge of Taiji at all, could look at the various Chen styles noted above, and clearly differentiate them from the other major styles of Taiji.)

OTOH, there is a huge variance in Yang forms together with all the related lineage "your-shit-is-fake" controversy, which you don't hear much of in Chen style. This all makes one wonder whether some Yang people (who likely insist otherwise) are doing their material very, very wrong.

But I am not dogmatic about this, I am willing to listen to good sense, hence my enquiries to YM. And as noted, I would be fascinated to see a "Chen style" form that looks like Hao style if you have any video or pictorial reference.

[GrahamB]

Was early Yang style more like (today's) Chen style, more like (today's) Yang style or something different again?

It's interesting that nobody ever asks, was early Chen more like today's Yang style? Given the way the two evolved (Yang to even smoother and less stylised, Chen to even more twisty and more stylised), I think that's just as likely likely.

[Yuen-Ming]

Interesting stuff, you have been around! What is your personal take on things? Was early Yang style more like (today's) Chen style, more like (today's) Yang style or something different again? And I'd be curious to know about the different ways of practicing the frames, if you could extrapolate.

What I am getting at, is what training methods are now lost, or less practiced? If I recall correctly, Tian Zhaolin had some very interesting training methods - low stance training and vigorous stretching exercises - that are not widely seen in modern Taiji, particularly modern Yang-style Taiji.

Yes Andy, most of the training methods are lost or - as I mentioned - preserved more or less partially in those lines that remain unfavorable to become public. However it is the "ancillary practices" (various gongfa) that are the real core of Taijiquan and not the frames, which can and shall be performed only to "put together" all the results of the ancillary practices.

A real "Taiji body" can only be created by way of the various gongfa, and without those basics there is no amount (or quality, for what that matter) of "secret frames" that can give you proper skills that can be used in fighting.

With some luck and time one CAN, in fact, try to understand HOW the early generations used to practice (what, especially with regard to frames, is less important) by verifying among the various descendants of the early generations what are the (few) common characteristics and double checking with available written sources for corroboration. This information shall then be used to possibly help us to understand whether the direction our practice is taking is the right one.

YM

[nicklinjm]

YM, I know that you have done a lot of first hand research into this stuff and respect your opinions. When you mention the lines that are closer to YLC's original practice, are you referring to the lines still being carried on in Yongnian (e.g. coming from YBH down through Li Wancheng and Li Zhulin)? Or another group entirely?

And could you give an example as to the kind of gongfa that have been lost in modern-day Yang style?

[Yuen-Ming]

YM, I know that you have done a lot of first hand research into this stuff and respect your opinions. When you mention the lines that are closer to YLC's original practice, are you referring to the lines still being carried on in Yongnian (e.g. coming from YBH down through Li Wancheng and Li Zhulin)? Or another group entirely?

And could you give an example as to the kind of gongfa that have been lost in modern-day Yang style?

Hello Nick,

I did not mention "lines that are closer to YLC's original practice" but just mentioned "descendants of the early generations", which of course by that name can be anybody
The lines you mention are public so, while they have preserved a few of the original frames and a few gongfa, they have mostly lost the skills because they did not put enough effort. Once one generation loose the skills, even having the "form/frame" preserved, there is basically no way to make it work again no matter how much effort one puts into that practice - because skills can only be passed "hands on" by somebody who have them.

Early pratictioners were really like scientist with their skills, and managed in just a few generation to create very specific exercises able to build specific skills for tendons, bones, muscles, every part of the body, every possible "mechanical" skill, mental abilities etc. Many of these gongfa, we have discussed a little in a previous thread with Ken Fish, when explained on paper or even in person sounds either very simple or some kind of common gymnastic. To be done with all their "rules", however, they become extremely complex to be performed and additionally they have to be done over and over for a long time.

YM

[Bao]

Bao:
I don't believe Chen Fake changed things much: His form ("xinjia") is pretty much standard Chen with an exo-skeleton on it, to make the internal work more apparent and visible. I'd be very curious to see what Chen style you have seen that looks like Hao style. I have been looking at this stuff for years and pretty well EVERY form of Chen style - not just Fake's own xinjia and Hong JS's "practical Taiji, which both come from Fake, but also laojia, which comes from Zhaopei, not Fake, well as all xiaojia ("small frame") and even the sub-sets of Hulei and Zhaobao look very similar to me in terms of stance, shenfa, tempo - the only differences are the techniques, and then, they do not vary to any great degree. Clearly, Fake could not have influenced all these different styles and sub-styles we have today. To me, this suggests that the Chen forms we have today are still pretty firmly rooted in tradition. (Hell, I'd go so far as to say that even a complete layman, someone with no knowledge of Taiji at all, could look at the various Chen styles noted above, and clearly differentiate them from the other major styles of Taiji.)

I understand your point and have noticed the same. But I do come to other conclusions and I do believe that the modern look of Chen style have influenced Zhaobao and Hulei as well. Chen style is said to be "original" tai chi style, so everybody wants to look like they practice the original stuff, right? If Hulei looked too different, more people would object to their claims. Standardisation and influence from modern practice is something that all styles have in common.

Most Yang style has been standardized and look pretty much the same. Influence from CMC, Wushu tai chi and and "Beijing style" variations has very much wiped out a lot of qualities you can see from older pics/vids and other styles. Most yang stylists follow ridiculous rules like "move upright", "don't use shoulders" etc. The more dynamic shenfa, leaning and other trades are practiced today by only a few. And I do believe that most Chen style follow a similar trend of standardization. I am not saying that the large frame that you can see today wouldn't be there in the old days, but there would probably more variations of body use and shenfa in earlier Chen practiced. Remember also that "style" were not as "fixed" or standardized before the 19th as they are today.

OTOH, there is a huge variance in Yang forms together with all the related lineage "your-shit-is-fake" controversy, which you don't hear much of in Chen style. This all makes one wonder whether some Yang people (who likely insist otherwise) are doing their material very, very wrong.

You are perfectly correct. 99% of Yang style follow new trends or are practiced wrong.

I would be fascinated to see a "Chen style" form that looks like Hao style if you have any video or pictorial reference.

Hao/Wu comes directly from Xiaojia. If you imagine xiaojia with small movements and a compact frame it would look very similar to Hao. I don't think you need any vid to be able to imagine what that would look like. After having watched a demonstration from a teacher in China, I can't hardly watch youtube vids when people doing this form with large frame and even wushu-ish variations. When I watched this teacher, it was so clear, in my mind at least, that this form was about developing and practice a more compact structure. But every form he did had it's own shenfa. He did them all very different. Of course, he could have been influenced from other styles. I don't know. But it was fascinating nevertheless to see a Chen practitioner practicing with such a range of different shenfas and expressions. And that also confirmed my view a bit, that style thinking is not good because it narrows your mind about what tai chi is and limits your view on how shenfa should "look".

[Bao]

Was early Yang style more like (today's) Chen style, more like (today's) Yang style or something different again?

It's interesting that nobody ever asks, was early Chen more like today's Yang style? Given the way the two evolved (Yang to even smoother and less stylised, Chen to even more twisty and more stylised), I think that's just as likely likely.

I think you are perfectly correct. They would be more similar but also have more variations in regards to frame, practicing with different speeds/ heights etc. Because style thinking was not as strict back then, I also believe that Tai chi and tai chi practice was something more complex than today. My opinion only.

[daniel pfister]

Daniel, you put all your faith in one person simply because he can beat the shit out of you which means you still have a lot to learn from him. Once you get to a level where you can compare with his skills than maybe you have more reasons to look elsewhere too.

Again, not a good policy, IMO. Just because someone can kick my ass, doesn't mean they're capable of teaching me to kick other people's asses, or that the system they've trained in is worth studying. But to your second point, yes, I was talking about a point where one is ready to start comparing different practices. I never advise people to learn more than one style of Taiji (or anything else for that matter) at the same time, especially if they are new to IMA.

[daniel pfister]

Was early Yang style more like (today's) Chen style, more like (today's) Yang style or something different again?

It's interesting that nobody ever asks, was early Chen more like today's Yang style? Given the way the two evolved (Yang to even smoother and less stylised, Chen to even more twisty and more stylised), I think that's just as likely likely.

I think you are perfectly correct. They would be more similar but also have more variations in regards to frame, practicing with different speeds/ heights etc. Because style thinking was not as strict back then, I also believe that Tai chi and tai chi practice was something more complex than today. My opinion only.

I seem to recall having a poster of some older pictures of Chen Fake (I think) where he was often in the long bow stance similar to the way Yang stylists do it now, keeping one leg almost straight. I must have the posters around somewhere, they where printed by Lion Books. I couldn't find the ones I was thinking of on the internet, just the mose 'common' photos of Chen Fake. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

[extrajoseph]

Thank you for all the interesting comments and the correction of my Chinese grammer. One of the things I tried to varify by knowledgeable practitioners here, at the beginning of the thread, was not whether Taijiquan has a fixed frame/routine or not, but whether the Snake Taijiquan, as being taught by Robert Boyd et al, is in fact passed down by YSC or a made-up by a later generation as mentioned by Howard Choy in his blog.We seem to have drifted off topic lately but it is still enjoyable to read. Thank you.

[Yuen-Ming]

Again, not a good policy, IMO. Just because someone can kick my ass, doesn't mean they're capable of teaching me to kick other people's asses, or that the system they've trained in is worth studying.

Sure Daniel, but the point was about learning from more than one teacher at the same time.
If one realizes that one's master who can "kick his ass" is not capable of teaching him, for any reason that may happen, the choice in any case is not about adding another master but finding a new one. Again one single master/school.

YM

[kenneth fish]

YM: Thank you for confirming what I suspected about Yang's early system - in the context of a Chinese martial arts system, it really makes sense - even "straight forward" systems like Xingyi and Wing Chun have numerous forms, drills and "gongfa", along with practical applications training (as opposed to push hands or two person sets).

[Ian C. Kuzushi]

YM,

Just wanted to say thanks. As always, great sharing!

[Andy_S]

Bao:

SNIP
Hao/Wu comes directly from Xiaojia. If you imagine xiaojia with small movements and a compact frame it would look very similar to Hao. I don't think you need any vid to be able to imagine what that would look like. After having watched a demonstration from a teacher in China, I can't hardly watch youtube vids when people doing this form with large frame and even wushu-ish variations. When I watched this teacher, it was so clear, in my mind at least, that this form was about developing and practice a more compact structure.
SNIP

Sure, I have seen Hao style. But to my eyes, it bears virtually no physical resemblance to Chen xiaojia.

And we have pretty old photos, from the (I think) 1920s, of Chen Xiaojia people demonstrating moves, and they look pretty well identical to how it is done today in terms of size of frame, length of stance, etc. In fact, although it is called "small frame" it, and its very close relative, Zhaobao, tend to have the longest stances of the Henan Taiji systems. So AFAIK, all historical indications are that the xiaojia we have now is pretty close to the xiajiao of nearly 100 years ago.

I think there are certainly big frame and small frame Taiji styles, and while one should be able to do both, some styles concentrate their training more around one frame or the other. Chen (or rather, all the Henan Taiji styles in the Wenxian area) it is safe to say, is a large frame style. This includes, as noted, the so-called xiaojia/small frame: The name is a misnomer, as is the laojia and xinjia nomenclature. In fact, the last great master of Chen Taiji, Chen Fake, made the intricate, smaller details of movement in his (xinjia) form bigger, and so more easy to see, recognize, imitate and train. I don't know of anyone saying this was a step backwards in terms of technical development.

As noted above, if you could point me to a legit Chen master practicing a form/frame of Taiji that looks more like Hao style than 21st century Chen style, I would be very interested to see it. I understand that the "next door neighbor to Chenjigaou," the Hulei style, has several "ways" of practicing their forms, but even then, all the stuff out in public seems to be big frame: The differences being in height of stance and amount of fajing executed.

To finish, I have never heard of a "small frame" Chen form/style/substyle, bar the xiaojia, which, as noted, is, if anything, bigger in its frame than other Chen styles! And to the best of my knowledge, there is no controversy over this matter, which is very different to Yang style, where there is much contention of the legitimacy of rare or secret "small" and "middle" frame styles.

Graham:

SNIP
It's interesting that nobody ever asks, was early Chen more like today's Yang style? Given the way the two evolved (Yang to even smoother and less stylised, Chen to even more twisty and more stylised), I think that's just as likely likely.
SNIP

What makes you say Chen is more twisty than it used to be? Chen Xin's book is 100 years old and in that, he makes clear how much silk reeling there was in the drawings and descriptions. (I admit, there are people today who ARE over-twisting and twining, but they tend to be performance wushu peeps, not the traditional Chen peeps in the Chenjiagou, Beijing, Shandong and Xian lineages)

Moreover, the oldest photos of Chen style that we have (referenced above and below in this post) are, if anything, larger framed and more twisty than today's Chen Taiji. Which is also the case with Yang style, incidentally: The earlier photo set of Yang Cheng-fu show him in longer and more athletically challenging postures than his more famous later form set of photographs.

But the main reasons I think that today's Chen style is more likely to be more similar to old Yang style, is simply because it is more physically demanding than (most) Yang style we have today, and we know from old wives tales that (IIRC) Yang LC's sons tried to kill themselves because the training was to physically demanding and painful. Moreover, Chen style today includes fajing training and pole training as pretty basic material, whereas many (not all) Yang lineages either don't do this stuff or keep it as "advanced" or "secret" training.

I grant you, there is almost certainly lost or undisclosed material in Chen style today...for eg, there is no secret "neigoing" training that I have heard about in Chen style, and I also think Wu style has better application training than the vast majority of Chen stylists.

But even so, I tend to favor gongfu training over apps training, and that is where Chen seems to have the edge over (most) other styles of 21st century Taiji.

Graham and Bao:

As for old Taiji being more complex than today's material, I am of the opposite view. My guess is that there would have been much more practice of basic gongfu building blocks and hard, heavy physical practice than the intricate, slow-mo forms training that is at the heart of most Taiji today. I also tend to believe that Taiji forms were played at a faster pace than those of today.

I also don't believe that the old Yangs and Chens would have been into the philosophical or mystical sides of the art much if at all: I'd guess their discussions were more bio-mechanical, tactical and technical than esoteric (unlike the classics we have today which are pretty fluffy). This is why I would be interested in YM's manuals...perhaps YM could, without giving away any secrets, let us know whether the material in these manuals was:
Technical
Tactical
Bio-mechanical
Philosophical
Esoteric
Other?

The above is all IMHO...YMMV.

Daniel:

I used to have the whole poster of Chen Fake doing his form. IIRC, all his postures and stances were pretty well identical to the way the art is done (by Chen stylists) today, albeit he was a very spidery guy, with long, long limbs.

There are older pics (I believe the oldest pics) of Chen Taiji from the 1920s, but they are of xiaojia ("small frame") not dajia ("big frame"). For whatever reason, xiaojia and its close relative Zhaobao tend, to this day, to have longer, lower and slightly less rounded stances than the more common dajia. Are these the pics you are thinking of?

FYI, it is mainly the Zhaobao guys who are famous for their "under the table" form routines. Interestingly, that kind of super-low stancework would lead one to a painful skill said to be trained by the early Yangs: They could drop into a split or half split stance and pick up a coin on the ground with their mouths. Next time you are in 'sparrow ground dragon' or 'snake creeps down,' try it...it makes me crack, creak, wince and whine.

[daniel pfister]

There are older pics (I believe the oldest pics) of Chen Taiji from the 1920s, but they are of xiaojia ("small frame") not dajia ("big frame"). For whatever reason, xiaojia and its close relative Zhaobao tend, to this day, to have longer, lower and slightly less rounded stances than the more common dajia. Are these the pics you are thinking of?

Must be, they sure looked old enough to be from the 20s, very grainy. I'll dig'em up.