.taiwandeutscher wrote:Many older TW teachers and masters (from other arts) really don't have much good to say about ZMQ, especially because of his connections to the ruling KMT clique in those days, and the change to a more sohisticated health game for well-offs
The first two teachers to bring Cheng style Tai Chi to the region were Huang Hsing Hsien and Yue Shu Ting
who had both come from China via Taiwan.
In pro-Communist China they had both served as Guomindang
officials and it was Yue who took Huang to meet Cheng Man Ching in Taiwan. Both Yue and Huang had
originally studied Shaolin arts and owed their faith in Tai Chi to having been bested by Cheng in challenges,
Huang was the first to arrive and he settled in Singapore, while Yue arriving a year later, started teaching in
Penang in the north.
Both teachers established their reputation not by extolling the health benefits of the
art, nor by engaging in intellectual discussion, but by convincing the local martial artists that Tai Chi was a
viable and effective art. It is worth noting that nearly all of Yue's leading students came from a background
in other arts and all gave them up to practise Tai Chi.
. Master Lau Kim Hong tells how his teacher Lu Tong Bao would 'spar' with his students, inviting
them to attack him One at a time, whereupon he would punch, kick and throw them to the ground. In these
sessions students would suffer strains, sprains and even broken bones.
Thus it was from the time of its arrival in the region, Cheng style was established as an effective fighting art fit to rival the arts already
popular.
A tradition was also established of hard, physical training. The curriculum taught by those early
teachers consisted of form, applications and pushing hands. Weapons were also taught.
Then after Cheng's
visit in 1958, when he taught a set of qigong exercises designed to develop internal strength, these too
became an important part of the syllabus.
wayne hansen wrote:Once again
Old ladies telling stories
Lu tong Bao and chock seng Kam both masters who took on everyone
Thai boxers,Silat ,hard Kung fu
Both owe their art to yap Sui ting who bowed to CMC
Thé skill may have come directly from Yap/Yue but he gave credit to CMC
Note that none challenged CMC openly when he was living
So their students to talk of it now is irrelevant and childish
windwalker wrote:To Yang Zhenduo, the Cheng Manching style would appear weak and collapsed. To the Cheng stylist, the Yang style might appear too overextended or external.
https://www.taichiandqigong.com/article ... ng-styles/
Comparing different frames
WYN – I call Cheng Man Ching my older martial art brother. Why is that? That’s because he was a vowed student of Zhang Qinlin, who was also my teacher. What he studied with Zhang Qinlin was tuishou and neigong.
In the beginning Cheng Man Ching invited Zhang Qinlin, who had been living in Shanzi province, to Nanjing. He arranged for him to teach for three months. Then, in Nanjing, with Zhang Qinlin, Cheng practiced and studied tuishou for three months; the most important things that he asked Zhang Qinlin to teach him were tuishou and neigong.
nicklinjm wrote:A lot of what is being discussed here has already been covered authoritatively in the article "Yang - One Family Across the Straits", translated here. https://discuss.yangfamilytaichi.com/viewtopic.php?t=4263
In a nutshell, Cheng Man-ching (CMC) did much of his initial training in Ye Dami's Wudang school, alongside Huang Jinghua and Pu Bingru, only later 'graduating' to become one of YCF's private students in Shanghai. It's also pretty clear that CMC learnt the neigong side of the art from Zhang Qinlin, not YCF directly. My impression is that while he was still on the mainland he wasn't considered one of YCF's main disciples who was entrusted with teaching in YCF's name, unlike say Li Yaxuan, Dong Yingjie, Wu Huichuan, Fu Zhongwen etc. However, he seems to have made great strides in his practice following his moves to Taiwan.
Formosa Neijia wrote:Chen Pan-ling put him on his ass after getting tired of Zheng's nonsense. None of the main Taiwan taiji community considered him in high regard and his reputation seemed to come from mainly teaching people like CKS's wife and getting press from Robert Smith, etc..taiwandeutscher wrote:Many older TW teachers and masters (from other arts) really don't have much good to say about ZMQ, especially because of his connections to the ruling KMT clique in those days, and the change to a more sohisticated health game for well-offs
You're really holding back. Didn't someone with interesting sideburns have an encounter with him?
Appledog wrote:Qu Shujin is not in any way an authority on the shanghai crowd. His portrayal of the players in the shanghai crowd is countered by the player's own words. For example he tries to paint Hu Yaozhen as a disciple of Zhang Qinling and claims Hu Yaozhen had no disciples but that Feng studied with him for 'a short while' after he and Chen Fa-Ke begged him to teach them Yang family neigong. It's such a transparently obvious article I'm surprised you got taken in by it enough to call it 'authoritative'.
But as for what's true I will comment again on what I said earlier. Zhang Qinlin studied daoist qigong. Outside of the yang family. This is admitted in Qu's work. Now, why would he want to do that if he got everything from the Yang family? Does this imply anything? No, not really, but it's an interesting aside that in many of these stories you will see people going back to the source and trying to reintegrate. I wonder if it's because internal development is actually quite difficult and time consuming.
Unlike most others posting on this thread, apparently including you, I actually met and interacted with Cheng Man-Ching on several occasions, as my late father-in-law was dating his daughter, and saw him perform both with and without weapons a number of times. I also personally witnessed a few of his gang control encounters on the streets of New York's Chinatown back in the day.
As such, with all due respect for your impassioned opinion, I think you go too far to say that Cheng was "a taiji practitioner of very average talent", or that Cheng was "a poser". Compared to other teachers in NYC at that time, guys like Wm. C.C. Chen, C.K. Chu, Donald Ahn, Herman Kauz, and others, Cheng Man-Ching consistently demonstrated a level of knowledge and skill well above and beyond what most would consider average. That's why many of them studied with Cheng for varying periods of time.
Graculus wrote:For further background info you might like to check this thread from 2009 (18 pages worth ):
https://rumsoakedfist.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5082&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&sid=78fde05265cea3e80cefdf317c8dd22b
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