roger hao wrote:Unless we go back to living in caves I doubt we will see
physical prowess or conditioning at the level of even recent past.
johnwang wrote:Just compare the horse stance, we can find a big difference between current generation and previous generation.
- My teacher's teacher could finish his dinner while staying in horse stance.
- My teacher could watching Beijing opera while staying in horse stance.
- I can still finish a beer while staying in horse stance.
dspyrido wrote: I can find many old CMA books on forms but nothing that shows the other stuff I've heard anecdotally. As a parallel it is pretty easy to find a description of old school European strength guys daily training program.
To write clearly is to think clearly. So even if no one reads any of our writings, it would still benefit us to clarify, summarize our thinking on the subject. Also, when we try to transmit knowledge to others, we’re often discover the inexactness and lack of detailed understanding in even the basic things. A classic example is translation: when I read a sentence written in classical Chinese, I don’t have to have precise understanding of every word to know what the whole sentence means. But when I do a literal translation, I’m force to look up the word and find the most appropriate translation.
For complex subjects, any body of of knowledge, in order to be truly useful, needs to be as complete, accurate, and systematic as possible. This blog represent my attempt to achieve just that in my own martial art development.
Wuyizidi
The Manchurians are an ethnic minority at the northeastern border of Ming Empire. They were an autonomous vassal state that had to pay annual tribute to Ming. With Ming government overthrown and country still in chaos as the peasant rebels still trying figuring out what to do, an opportunity arose for them to raid the country. But clear-sighted and ambitious Prince Dorgon rightly saw this as not just another big score, but an rare opportunity to take over the entire country.
There was great opposition as the native Han ethnic group opposed rule by foreigners. Those opposition died down fairly soon as Qing Dynasty was blessed with many brilliant, enlightened rulers, in sharp contrast to Ming Dynasty.
The Manchurian did not repeat the key mistake the rulers of short-lived Mongol empire made – trying to make a much larger, more advanced civilization conform to the social, economic, and agricultural systems of a less advanced nomadic culture. Instead, they eagerly adopted Han ways, so the native population did not feel a constant cultural clash that reminded their differences and fueled dissent.
One tradition the Manchurians did not abandon is the way its male members lived in constant readiness for war. Made up of 8 tribes/clans, the male of each of the tribes were not to have full-time occupations that would prevent them from being called up for war/raid at a moment’s notice by their clan leaders. For most of its 261 year history, Qing Dynasty enjoyed uninterrupted peace and prosperity.
For all this time, the entire male population of the ruling ethnic groups lived off rich government stipends, and had nothing but free time on his hands. These man are known as Sons of Baqi (Baqi Zidi 八旗子第). Baqi – eight flags representing the eight tribes of Manchuria.
Since they can’t have full-time professions, they had full-time hobbies. During this time, every conceivable leisure-time activity: arts, crafts, falconry, gardening, cuisine, … cricket-fighting, everything got pushed to absurdly high, refined levels.
This included, for a people whose entire way of life (and very idea of manhood) centered around horseback riding, wrestling, and hunting, a natural and abiding interest in martial art.
It is during this time Shuaijiao reached its zenith, as Manchurian, Mongolian, and Han styles merged into a much larger, more detailed skill.
The Manchu emperor has his own wrestling team of around 438 people, divided into two camps. Throughout the year the camps competed with each other, had frequent exhibitions, traveled with emperor during hunts, and most importantly, faced off against the Mongolian king’s wrestlers in annual contest. Membership and promotion in the team depended entirely on one’s performance in all these events.
The 438 of professional wrestlers at Shan Pu Ying (善扑营) belong to but one of the three capitol city garrisons. The one where Yang Luchan, Liu Zhijun, and Song Mailun taught at – Shen Ji Ying, had over 2,000 instructors/weapons experts who led the training of 30,000 strong palace guards.
Bill wrote:Once Universities came to be then knowledge was shared openly.
Taste of Death wrote:John, these arts are passed down from hand to hand. It is not about secrets. You can't learn sports over the internet, why do you think you can learn cima that way?
johnwang wrote:Taste of Death wrote:John, these arts are passed down from hand to hand. It is not about secrets. You can't learn sports over the internet, why do you think you can learn cima that way?
That's the old way of thinking. By using the modern way of thinking, one should be able to learn from just
1. words,
2. picture.
3. video.
IMO 3 > 2 > 1.
One night, he was awakened by the sounds of "Hen" (哼) and "Ha" (哈) in the distance. He got up and traced the sound to an old building. Peeking through the broken wall, he saw his master Chen, Chang-xing teaching the techniques of grasp, control, and emitting jin in coordination with the sounds "Hen" and "Ha."
He was amazed by the techniques and from that time on, unknown to master Chen, he continued to watch this secret practice session every night.
He would then return to his room to ponder and study. Because of this, his martial ability advanced rapidly. One day, Chen ordered him to spar with the other disciples. To his surprise, none of the other students could defeat him.
windwalker wrote:We had some "visitors" Mike, the shifu feeling they where from
one of the local chinese gangs. Had us remain in our horse stance,
usually done for 20 min prior to our normal training.
This time we remained in it until they left, almost an hour...guess they got board.
windwalker wrote:
For all this time, the entire male population of the ruling ethnic groups lived off rich government stipends, and had nothing but free time on his hands. These man are known as Sons of Baqi (Baqi Zidi 八旗子第). Baqi – eight flags representing the eight tribes of Manchuria.
Since they can’t have full-time professions, they had full-time hobbies. During this time, every conceivable leisure-time activity: arts, crafts, falconry, gardening, cuisine, … cricket-fighting, everything got pushed to absurdly high, refined levels.
This included, for a people whose entire way of life (and very idea of manhood) centered around horseback riding, wrestling, and hunting, a natural and abiding interest in martial art.
It is during this time Shuaijiao reached its zenith, as Manchurian, Mongolian, and Han styles merged into a much larger, more detailed skill.
The Manchu emperor has his own wrestling team of around 438 people, divided into two camps. Throughout the year the camps competed with each other, had frequent exhibitions, traveled with emperor during hunts, and most importantly, faced off against the Mongolian king’s wrestlers in annual contest. Membership and promotion in the team depended entirely on one’s performance in all these events.
The 438 of professional wrestlers at Shan Pu Ying (善扑营) belong to but one of the three capitol city garrisons. The one where Yang Luchan, Liu Zhijun, and Song Mailun taught at – Shen Ji Ying, had over 2,000 instructors/weapons experts who led the training of 30,000 strong palace guards.
johnwang wrote:windwalker wrote:We had some "visitors" Mike, the shifu feeling they where from
one of the local chinese gangs. Had us remain in our horse stance,
usually done for 20 min prior to our normal training.
This time we remained in it until they left, almost an hour...guess they got board.
When I was in high school during the 3 months summer vacation, we trained in an elementary school school yard. A group of local gang members came and watched us. We all stopped open hand training and started to train double edges sword, single edge knife, long staff, spear, and Guan Dao. After that day, that group local gang never came back.
Return to Xingyiquan - Baguazhang - Taijiquan
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 87 guests