How do you structure a class?

[everything]

it's the same in all sports, probably all arts, isn't it

there are a few "standard" combat sport formats. in mma, not everybody has the same skill sets or strengths/weaknesses. if "internal" were to ever be "great again", some very young person would have to have the main "basic" external mma skillsets AND strong "internals" all together. so extremely improbable for so many reasons.

[Bao]

Subtraction, not addition, is crucial for real skill development, imo.

Of course!

All arts strive towards reduction and simplification.

[Trick]

the spear was probably yang luchans only ”deeper” weapon knowlede.
Dao and later Jian was added, probably after he left the royal court

YLC was born in 1799. When he was young, people still carried with them weapons and used them for defense. The jian was standard knowledge for anyone in his position and he carried it with him on missions. It’s true though that the dao was added later. The broadsword doesn’t need any “deeper” knowledge. It was more of a battlefield weapon, too clumsy to carry with you all of the time, and too clumsy to be used everywhere. People preferred to rely on the jian as it can be used in small spaces and even indoors.

sorry going off topic - but, ”missions”? Sounds exciting storys i never heard before about.
Maybe youre thinking about Yang “the invincible”....Ye - YangYe ?

[Bao]

sorry going off topic - but, ”missions”? Sounds exciting storys i never heard before about.
Maybe youre thinking about Yang “the invincible”....Ye - YangYe ?

YLC was never a servant. The Chen guys worked as bodyguards. They hired YLC because he was big, strong and had a good background in martial arts.

[GrahamB]

I love it when people talk about stuff that happened 150 years ago with absolute authority, as if they were there.

[Bao]

Lol!

Graham always knows best. Even when he doesn't know how to present any counter-arguments


That Yang Luchan, people in the Chen clan and other Tai Chi masters worked as bodyguards is mentioned in several old classical Tai Chi books.


Example from 
Taiji Boxing explained by Dong Yingjie:

”In the western part of Beijing, there was a rich man whose mansion was like a whole town and people nicknamed it “the mini-prefecture of Zhang’s house”. He was a huge fan of martial arts, keeping more than thirty bodyguards in his home. So when he heard of the famous practitioner Yang Luchan of Guangping Prefecture, he sent his friend Wu Luching to go invite him to the mansion.”


There's a reason why Yang Luchan taught imperial bodyguards and why Wu Jianquan later was appointed head martial arts instructor to the palace bodyguards. They were trained bodyguards and had the practical experience. A lot of other Tai Chi masters and other IMA masters were bodyguards. Sun Lutang even had a bodyguard school in Beijing, this is confirmed by his daughter Sun Jianyun in interviews. Several of his teachers, as Li Cunyi, Li Dianying and Tian Jingjie worked as bodyguards. Sun writes about all of this in his own books.


There are many other examples, all well documented. This is what many of them did and this is how IMA evolved. So fiction and myths about YLC as a "servant" don't make sense in the historical context. But if you understand the context and have some knowledge about YLC's students and the people around him, nothing else makes more sense that he also worked as a bodyguard. It's all well documented. The modern Chen family version of history is commonly preferred in popular Tai Chi literature, but this version in fact invented in a fiction novel.

[GrahamB]

I mean you can write whatever you like Bro, but nobody really knows what YLC was actually doing in Chen village. All we have are a bunch of conflicting stories, which you're adding to. In fact, there's no actual evidence he was in Chen village at all, but you know, carry on presenting "facts".

[twocircles13]

the spear was probably yang luchans only ”deeper” weapon knowlede.
Dao and later Jian was added, probably after he left the royal court

YLC was born in 1799. When he was young, people still carried with them weapons and used them for defense. The jian was standard knowledge for anyone in his position and he carried it with him on missions. It’s true though that the dao was added later. The broadsword doesn’t need any “deeper” knowledge. It was more of a battlefield weapon, too clumsy to carry with you all of the time, and too clumsy to be used everywhere. People preferred to rely on the jian as it can be used in small spaces and even indoors.

@Bao, I typically applaud unorthodox hypotheses, especially ones providing greater insight into a subject. However, like all hypotheses, they must withstand scrutiny and be validated, as well as, being well-supported.

I’ll challenge a couple of points in your earlier post. It is generally accepted In Chinese arms history, as evidenced by period writing, art, and surviving artifacts, that the Jian was obsolete on the battlefield and common use by the Yuan Dynasty (1279–1368) in favor of the Dao. Carrying a Jian became the status symbol, one that went in and out of fashion. A quality Jian was expensive to make, so they tended to be carried by gentry and scholars, wealthy ones, which, even with elevated view of Yang Luchan, he was not.

Many of the Jian of this time were very short with 12-16” blades. As you allude, they might do in a pinch in an indoor self-defense situation, but they would not have been carried by caravan escort bodyguards, which is what this part of the Chen family provided.

There is some evidence, in martial art circles, Jian forms were retained to teach specific skills, agility, precision, and so on. In most teaching traditions, they were an important part of training, but they were rarely carried for use or worn.

The Dao was the most commonly used sword, and there were several popular designs. If a bodyguard carried a sword at all, it would have been a dao. The leader of a caravan bodyguard detail, would likely have carried a Dao, but his men, for the most part, would have carried spears or a few spears and dao. Dao were not inexpensive.

The dao of the Qing dynasty, before the Boxer Rebellion, would be thought of by most people aa a saber. While heavier than most Jian, it was a balance of strength, power, and agility, and most Jian form training was directly applicable to it.

So, I find it highly unlikely that Yang Luchan would have carried a Jian.

[GrahamB]

I think TwoCircles is correct- Jian was not used by people for body guarding in the Ching, or on the battlefield much after the Yuan.

https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/28168

The Dao filled its role as a close combat weapon.

I don't want to shatter any closely held beliefs about bagua palm-circling bandit-fighting, spear wielding kung fu masters from wuxia novels, but firearms were widely used by caravan guards, obviously. Why wouldn't they be?

Ching Dynasty caravan guards:

[windwalker]

some examples shown by a friend of mine a collector of Chinese swords

[twocircles13]

That Yang Luchan, people in the Chen clan and other Tai Chi masters worked as bodyguards is mentioned in several old classical Tai Chi books.


Example from 
Taiji Boxing explained by Dong Yingjie:

”In the western part of Beijing, there was a rich man whose mansion was like a whole town and people nicknamed it “the mini-prefecture of Zhang’s house”. He was a huge fan of martial arts, keeping more than thirty bodyguards in his home. So when he heard of the famous practitioner Yang Luchan of Guangping Prefecture, he sent his friend Wu Luching to go invite him to the mansion.”

That Yang Luchan was already a bodyguard is a pretty big assumption from this text. Zhang was a fan of martial arts and Yang had won a number of public leitai matches. It is likely that he invited him just because Yang was a talented martial artist.

Additionally, there are some timing issues with Yang having worked with the Chen Changxing’s or Chen Gengyun’s escort service. Chen Changxing only taught taijiquan after he retired. Chen Youben, who was the village’s primary taijiquan teacher, even taught Changxing’s son, Gengyun, because of Changxing’s absence from the village.

While you attribute Yang’s working as a slave to Chen sources, most of the histories that I have read come from early Yang sources and are only corroborated by Chen sources. Slave is probably a mistranslation; indentured servant is probably better. Yang sources say he was indentured to Chen Dehu, who was the owner of the herb shop in Yongnian. This name is not found in Chen family records, but it could be a courtesy name that was not recorded. It was not Chen Changxing. Chen sources also say that Yang worked as a household servant until the head of the household [Dehu] died. Because one of [Dehu’s} widows was of an age with Yang Luchan, his continue employment in the house would have been inappropriate. He was released from his indenture. According to Yang sources he returned to Yongnian and later moved to Beijing, so I am not seeing where he could have worked as a bodyguard.

[twocircles13]

I think TwoCircles is correct- Jian was not used by people for body guarding in the Ching, or on the battlefield much after the Yuan.

https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/28168

The Dao filled its role as a close combat weapon.

I don't want to shatter any closely held beliefs about bagua palm-circling bandit-fighting, spear wielding kung fu masters from wuxia novels, but firearms were widely used by caravan guards, obviously. Why wouldn't they be?

Ching Dynasty caravan guards:

These pictures may be a little later than the caravan escorts of Yang Luchan’s time, say 1820-1840. The guns at his time in China would have been single-shot muzzle loading old flintlock muskets or, unlikely, state-of-the-art percussion-cap, muzzle-loading rifles. After an initial volley or two, conflict would have gone hand-to-hand, which would have been spear, or bayonet, and saber. But, even these days were numbered. By the 1870s repeating brass cartridge rifles made a lot of prior fighting technologies obsolete.

[GrahamB]

Indeed. Most likely single shot, but they still existed. But the narrative that guns were what came after traditional kung fu styles is a strong one... and totally wrong. The "golden age" vibe is strong on this forum....

"I literally cannot count the number of martial arts films that I have seen which revolve around the introduction of firearms and how they destroy the “old order” of things. Inevitably the hero beats the bad guy with the gun one last time, but the writing is on the wall. The age of hand combat is drawing to a close. In the “age of the gun” there is simply no way to defend yourself with your hands. In fact, there is no way for the individual to defend himself against the industrialized aspect of society.

I despise this narrative. It is not just that it gets the actual history of Chinese martial arts wrong, but it creates a vision of an unreal past. Once you have internalized this vision it becomes impossible to understand the true history of Kung Fu even if someone stops to explain it to you.

It is a powerful narrative because it speaks to a lost “golden age” that has just slipped out of our grasp. It captures the sorts of struggles that individuals feel in their own lives. This is the story of a world that is passing you by. Unfortunately it is now the only version of 19th century history that most individuals in China are familiar with. If you ask them about the martial arts they will all tell, first we used traditional hand combat, then guns came and we modernized.

Historically speaking, this is totally backwards. First the guns came, and then the modern martial arts developed. What we see in China is quite similar to the puzzle that made life difficult for Perrin when he discussed Japan.

Firearms have been a fact of life in China since the 1300s. At first they were difficult and expensive to manufacture, but the government employed large numbers of hand cannons, field artillery pieces and even massive rocket launchers from an early period. If you are curious about what early military gunnery looked like you should check out the Fire Dragon Manual. At the start of the Ming dynasty Chinese firearms were probably the most advanced in the world. So what happened?"

https://chinesemartialstudies.com/2020/ ... al-arts-2/

[everything]

seems like some kind of "binary" argument even though all the "data" shows the reality of the present is still not "binary". people kill and hurt each other with tanks, guns, knives, cars, whatever. people still also "fight" and kill or hurt each other empty-handed. most of the murders are probably not done by "martial arts" enthusiasts. at the same time people pursue skills in all of the above. one doesn't preclude the other whatsover. the "data" and common sense probably say surely it was then as it is now. how could it be otherwise. AI is a "technology" that can defeat humans at chess or pretty much any game. doesn't stop humans from playing games.

[Trick]

guns and ammunition was most probably then as now restricted to military and law-enforcement.
any local gong-fu man carrying such weapon was most certainly carrying a snatched/stolen weapon, and as such such scene was most certainly not common at all.
perhaps guns came more in circulation among civilians from when the few small battles the ”boxers” managed to brake through and shortly overpower som eight-nation alliance garrison, tben also certainly some quality bladed weapons too were captured which probably was scarce among boxers who mostly only had hay-pitchforks and shovels at hand.

dao and jian as additional methods to taiji boxing probably are post boxer rebellion and later, some speculate they are in the taiji curriculum to understand taiji-boxing better, maybe so , maybe they are there to primarly give a more outer spectacular splendor to taijiquan.

Dao - gives the sense of having battlefield root/soldier.

Jian - gives the aura of nobleness/nobleman.

One could simply attract a broader spectrum of students.