Thoughts about Chen - Yang TJQ and so on
Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2019 1:41 pm
haven't posted on here in years i think. Anyyways, from doing like 35 years of research for my book The Hidden History of the Chinese Internal Martial Arts (its on Amazon), over 300 pages.
I STILL am thinking about the formation of the Chen long form (Chen Fake and related) and the Yang long form that comes from Yang Chen Fu.
The story is Chen came first (not counting Zhaobao), Yang came from Chen and the rest came from that (Wu/Hao, Wu, Sun, etc, etc
All around Chen village area lots of villages have always had their own "village tai ji quan", which is usually nebulous snake/crane looking movements that have some kind of internal looking aspects to them. also, these places do have internal theory and stuff that looks like push hands, the whole county has internal theory that wound up being documented in the Taiji Classics eventually. You do realize that the material written in such books isn't specifically about Chen or Yang or Wu/Hao style TJQ but about INTERNAL martial arts in general (Which was also written about maybe first by Chang family Nei Jia Quan from Henan, pretty near Chen village).
But the Henan village Snake Crane TJ really doesn't look anything like Chen or Yang TJQ. not the forms, not the frame work just that it looks "internal", blah blah blah.
What makes Chen - Yang TJQ distinct is that all the postures/movements are placed on a frame (jia in Chinese).
This frame is Shaolin (don't scream, I proved this 20 years ago in many articles and in my book, step by step by step).
Every posture in the Chen form move by move follows the Shaolin Song Tai Tzu 32 Chang Quan form.
Since it is shorter, Chen not only repeats postures but adds more postures from Shaolin Tong Bei Quan, Shaolin Hong Quan, and Shaolin Rou Quan (A LOT OF ROU QUAN).
(you can read this http://www.bgtent.com/naturalcma/CMAarticle30.htm
and this http://www.bgtent.com/naturalcma/CMAarticleComparisonChart.htm
with PDF file of 11 x 17 charts showing all these styles side by side http://www.bgtent.com/naturalcma/images/TJQ%20Shaolin%20Tongbei%20table%20only.pdf
1. Okay, SO, the YANG CHENG FU long form very closely follows the standard Chen Lao Jia long form.
But should it?
What if, what if, the Chen didn't have anything really put together at the time that Yang family's TJQ was getting popular and they followed the Yang long form and retrofitted it?
Because, in some parts of the older versions of Chen Fake's Lao Jia, he has a few extra postures that are clearly found in the Tai Tzu Chang Quan form, but the standard Chen Lao Jia form just glosses past them, when he in fact makes a point of showing them clearly.
2. Also, after reviewing so, so many "Original" Yang, Imperial Yang, Palace Yang, and like 10 other ones claiming to have an older Yang Long form that was close to what Yang Lu Chan taught, NONE OF THEM at all use this Shaolin frame that Chen Fake/Yang Chen Fu TJQ does.
WOULDN'T they being "older" be MORE like Chen style, hence following the Chen postures closer? But NO, none of them do at all. What does this mean?
3. AND, the interesting thing about the Wu/Hao TJQ style is that it is even more like Shaolin than the Yang and Chen styles. Both the founders of Yang and this Wu style were friends and they both learned Shaolin Hong Quan first. That is a fact. I can see some parts of Hong Quan in the Wu/Hao Style added in that are not in the Chen/Yang (although there is plenty in there already) and besides that, the Wu/Hao TJQ style not only moves with the body mechanics of but also incorporates postures from Shaolin Rou Quan. I can clearly see it.
Also, 95% of the Wu/Hao long form follows the same frame as the Chen/Yang long form, they are all just variations of the same stuff.
Having learned Shaolin first and then the big 3 internal arts, i always notice when I doing something in the internal styles that I already know how to do.
And, of course, the founders of the internal arts, did learn Shaolin first, so they knew what they were doing when they framed the internal ideas onto the Shaolin postures
(plus the Shaolin Rou Quan is learned as varous Qi Gong sets first, which support everything that I have later learned in the big 3 internal arts.
It's like learning Latin first, which makes learning the Romance languages more efficient and effective.
Same analogy applies.
Anyways, any insights, thoughts on these 3 points?
I STILL am thinking about the formation of the Chen long form (Chen Fake and related) and the Yang long form that comes from Yang Chen Fu.
The story is Chen came first (not counting Zhaobao), Yang came from Chen and the rest came from that (Wu/Hao, Wu, Sun, etc, etc
All around Chen village area lots of villages have always had their own "village tai ji quan", which is usually nebulous snake/crane looking movements that have some kind of internal looking aspects to them. also, these places do have internal theory and stuff that looks like push hands, the whole county has internal theory that wound up being documented in the Taiji Classics eventually. You do realize that the material written in such books isn't specifically about Chen or Yang or Wu/Hao style TJQ but about INTERNAL martial arts in general (Which was also written about maybe first by Chang family Nei Jia Quan from Henan, pretty near Chen village).
But the Henan village Snake Crane TJ really doesn't look anything like Chen or Yang TJQ. not the forms, not the frame work just that it looks "internal", blah blah blah.
What makes Chen - Yang TJQ distinct is that all the postures/movements are placed on a frame (jia in Chinese).
This frame is Shaolin (don't scream, I proved this 20 years ago in many articles and in my book, step by step by step).
Every posture in the Chen form move by move follows the Shaolin Song Tai Tzu 32 Chang Quan form.
Since it is shorter, Chen not only repeats postures but adds more postures from Shaolin Tong Bei Quan, Shaolin Hong Quan, and Shaolin Rou Quan (A LOT OF ROU QUAN).
(you can read this http://www.bgtent.com/naturalcma/CMAarticle30.htm
and this http://www.bgtent.com/naturalcma/CMAarticleComparisonChart.htm
with PDF file of 11 x 17 charts showing all these styles side by side http://www.bgtent.com/naturalcma/images/TJQ%20Shaolin%20Tongbei%20table%20only.pdf
1. Okay, SO, the YANG CHENG FU long form very closely follows the standard Chen Lao Jia long form.
But should it?
What if, what if, the Chen didn't have anything really put together at the time that Yang family's TJQ was getting popular and they followed the Yang long form and retrofitted it?
Because, in some parts of the older versions of Chen Fake's Lao Jia, he has a few extra postures that are clearly found in the Tai Tzu Chang Quan form, but the standard Chen Lao Jia form just glosses past them, when he in fact makes a point of showing them clearly.
2. Also, after reviewing so, so many "Original" Yang, Imperial Yang, Palace Yang, and like 10 other ones claiming to have an older Yang Long form that was close to what Yang Lu Chan taught, NONE OF THEM at all use this Shaolin frame that Chen Fake/Yang Chen Fu TJQ does.
WOULDN'T they being "older" be MORE like Chen style, hence following the Chen postures closer? But NO, none of them do at all. What does this mean?
3. AND, the interesting thing about the Wu/Hao TJQ style is that it is even more like Shaolin than the Yang and Chen styles. Both the founders of Yang and this Wu style were friends and they both learned Shaolin Hong Quan first. That is a fact. I can see some parts of Hong Quan in the Wu/Hao Style added in that are not in the Chen/Yang (although there is plenty in there already) and besides that, the Wu/Hao TJQ style not only moves with the body mechanics of but also incorporates postures from Shaolin Rou Quan. I can clearly see it.
Also, 95% of the Wu/Hao long form follows the same frame as the Chen/Yang long form, they are all just variations of the same stuff.
Having learned Shaolin first and then the big 3 internal arts, i always notice when I doing something in the internal styles that I already know how to do.
And, of course, the founders of the internal arts, did learn Shaolin first, so they knew what they were doing when they framed the internal ideas onto the Shaolin postures
(plus the Shaolin Rou Quan is learned as varous Qi Gong sets first, which support everything that I have later learned in the big 3 internal arts.
It's like learning Latin first, which makes learning the Romance languages more efficient and effective.
Same analogy applies.
Anyways, any insights, thoughts on these 3 points?