Chen Taiji, why the hate?

[D_Glenn]

I spent a weekend with CJC in the late 1990's learning new frame. I hadn't realized he passed. Sorry to hear that.


First, like many other martial arts/styles, Chen style Taijiquan isn't a single thing. Different lineages practice it differently and different teachers within one lineage practice it differently. One of numerous differences is the height of the stances and level of athleticism.

For example, at one seminar held at an Aikido studio with a suspended wooden floor, Ren Guangyi, one of CXW's leading disciples, after repeated foot stomps, lifted the nails holding the floor down: the studio owner would periodically go around the floor and hammer the nails back down. The first seminar our host held with RGY was the Chen sabre form. After the first day of the seminar, the host said he lay in bed that night praying that, as the host, he'd be able to walk the next day: it would look bad (lose face) if the host didn't participate in the seminar he was hosting. (None of the participants were used to that level of athleticism/low stances and found it physically difficult.) By contrast, Feng Zhiqiang eliminated most of the foot stomping believing it bad for one's health and eliminated most of the low stance training, citing "qi leaking out the perineum" from overly low stances.

By contrast, one of the funniest of memories I have was in the mid '90's at a tiger seminar with Pan Qingfu. (I and most of the seminar participants were students of one of Pan's disciples.) Pan would have us hold each stance as he went around the room and corrected each student's posture. One of the top medal-winning students was standing in a very low horse stance when Pan arrived to correct him: the student's horse stance had his behind lower than his knees. Pan looked at the student's posture and then put one hand on the top of the student's head and pushed downwards on the top of his head, crumpling the student to the ground.

Anyway, back on topic, my experience has been that within the wide variation within styles, there is some considerable overlap between individual practitioners of Yang, Chen and Wu styles. There are other practitioners of those styles were there is almost no overlap, with little in common in implementation and training. What many people know of Chen style practice is what they see at demonstrations, where the demonstrator wants to make the practice look as martial and exciting as possible - lots of explosive power strikes, stomps, fast, jumps, kicks, etc. Often, demonstration is done one way and training is done another. Often, people believe the daily practice is the same as the demonstrations: it usually isn't.

I think much of the "Chen hate" is what is captured in the old joke, as follows:

"How many Taiji practitioners does it take to change a lightbulb?"

"10. One to change the lightbulb and 9 to say, 'Oh, we do it differently in our school'."

I’ve been watching videos of a lot of Chen teachers for the last few months and I agree, just because they’re teaching Chen, doesn’t mean it’s all the same. I would say it’s roughly 30% who can actually FaLi. So the next thing I thought is, well maybe they just don’t want to put it onto film. But then I started noticing that they also don’t really demonstrate the Chansijin quality of the body, either. So I think that’s a litmus test on whether or not they ever learned it.

Around 98’ I had everything planned out to go to a seminar with Pan Qingfu but my girlfriend put the kibosh on that. When I was living in California and trying to visit as many kung fu people as I could, I almost drove up to, I think Monterey, to see him, but everyone said I would need an introduction and I never found anyone to do it.

[johnwang]

No John I can’t
Why would I it’s not what we train for

Do Yang Taiji guys train punch? If they do, do they train "power generation" during punch?

[Bob]

I've got "no bones to pick in this fight" Both styles serve a useful purpose in my practice including a slow practice of Chen taijiquan with no fajin expression. Sacrilegious statement and purely speculative on my part but they seem to me complementary phases of training. Again, either hard core practitioner of either style will surely take me to task for such an inference but I'm getting too old argue the points.

[wayne hansen]

Can’t see your point John you yourself practice a slightly modified Yang form

[GrahamB]

If we weren't concerned about what something was called, then none of these arguments would be happening.

[twocircles13]

As a Chen stylist, I am not much into self-loathing or hating the things I do.

I was mesmerized and infatuated with taijiquan the first time I visited a Yang style studio in 1985. I learned a couple of Yang forms and practiced them, but I was moving a lot, so it seemed I was always looking for a new teacher. I don’t remember exactly how it happened, but I got Gene Chen’s contact information and called him up. We talked for perhaps an hour, when we had to pay for long distance. I sent him a check, and he sent me the video below. I was hooked.



In 1988 or '89, IIRC, finding a Chen Style teacher was a search for a unicorn, but a few months later, I found a teacher 100 mi away. I have been studying Chen Style ever since. The ironic thing is that my Chen style path has never taken me through Chen Village or to CXW. The forms I have learned have come primarily through the what is now called the Beijing Branch of Chen Taijiquan through those who studied with Chen Fake. My teacher since 1999 has been Chen Zhonghua, which has given me access to Feng Zhiqiang’s and Hong Junsheng’s perspectives on Chen Fake’s teachings.

Hong understood Taijiquan theory deeply. He was very strict about push hands. He would often yell, “Stop!” during push hands practice and ask what movement from the form each student was using. Hong would then sometimes teach a pair or the class what they could be doing better. Chen Zhonghua is not as strict, but he still does this in push-hands classes.

I am not always a fan of what comes out of the Large Circle side of the Chen Village. They are the self-proclaimed and government-endorsed representatives of the style and a major center for martial-arts tourism. They’ve emphasized some things that are minor and gloss over other things, which are important in my understanding.

A good example is the "Wang Yan Smackdown” video that recently appeared on another thread. As soon as the opponent started trying techniques on him, Wang could have just neutralized them. They were not well executed and should not have been a threat. After letting the opponent see that nothing he tried worked, Wang could have compromised his opponent’s structure, so that he could hardly keep his feet and knocked him down a few times.

Instead of a demonstration of great Chen Taiji push hands, Wang pulls in Shuai Jiao techniques to make sure that he can win. I’ve see this enough from Chen Village push hands that I don’t pay much attention to what they do anymore. And competitive push hands in China has little or nothing to do with taijiquan anymore.This is not saying anything against Shuai Jiao. It’s just not Taijiquan. If you are going to do taijiquan, do taijiquan not something else.

This is the primary reason I dislike competitive push hands. If a competitor does not know how to win with taijiquan, instead of learning taijiquan better, they often draw from another art or sport. I learned some judo when I was a kid. It was fun. I had fun learning Indonesian ground fighting. Shuai jiao and Mongolian Wrestling look like lots of fun. But, you can’t learn taijiquan better from these sports. You can learn a lot, just not taijiquan.

I’ve push hands with some of the competitive push hands guys in China, and geez, they are fast and strong. But, that was not sufficient reason for me to quit studying taijiquan. It did however open my eyes to consider what taijiquan needs to do.

[Bao]

I don't really understand the obsession of "style". If you look at the generations of Yang Cheng fu, Chen Fake, and of their students, many would jump from teacher to teacher, lineage to lineage and style to style. "Style" was not really a "thing" back then. What this practically means is that all lineages and schools teaching genuine traditional Tai Chi are all mixed up and teach the same things, though their focus and curriculums may vary a lot.

If you get down to the core there are no styles in Tai Chi, but the expression of the core principles can vary a lot. Hate and jealousy only concern the surface, the shallow and superficial.

What I don't like is a few people presenting different schools and organizations. But it's not because of what "style" they teach or how, I dislike them because they are crooks and hypocrites, and I would dislike them regardless what "style" they represent.

Do Yang Taiji guys train punch? If they do, do they train "power generation" during punch?

That something looks strong doesn't mean it is powerful. I have practiced and sparred with people from many different martial arts. The people who had the by far strongest, most powerful punches I have ever felt were from Yang style Tai Chi people.

But again, it's not about style. It's about how you practice, how the practice shapes the body in the long term, and how well you learn to use your body.

[twocircles13]

I don't really understand the obsession of "style". If you look at the generations of Yang Cheng fu, Chen Fake, and of their students, many would jump from teacher to teacher, lineage to lineage and style to style. "Style" was not really a "thing" back then. What this practically means is that all lineages and schools teaching genuine traditional Tai Chi are all mixed up and teach the same things, though their focus and curriculums may vary a lot.

If you get down to the core there are no styles in Tai Chi, but the expression of the core principles can vary a lot. Hate and jealousy only concern the surface, the shallow and superficial.

What I don't like is a few people presenting different schools and organizations. But it's not because of what "style" they teach or how, I dislike them because they are crooks and hypocrites, and I would dislike them regardless what "style" they represent.
...

But again, it's not about style. It's about how you practice, how the practice shapes the body in the long term, and how well you learn to use your body.

While I’m online for the present. I mostly agree with this.

Whereas, you can’t really learn taijiquan from other arts and sports, you can learn taijiquan from other “sub-styles” of taijiquan.

In fact, I was struggling with some practices my teacher had taught me. We had a push hands weekend and a Yang stylist friend took time to show me an important practice he had learned from his teacher. It was the key for me to understand what my teacher was trying to teach me. The next time my teacher saw me he was quite pleased with my progress, and, in many ways, this combination revolutionized my understanding of taijiquan.

[origami_itto]

I don't really understand the obsession of "style". If you look at the generations of Yang Cheng fu, Chen Fake, and of their students, many would jump from teacher to teacher, lineage to lineage and style to style. "Style" was not really a "thing" back then. What this practically means is that all lineages and schools teaching genuine traditional Tai Chi are all mixed up and teach the same things, though their focus and curriculums may vary a lot.

If you get down to the core there are no styles in Tai Chi, but the expression of the core principles can vary a lot. Hate and jealousy only concern the surface, the shallow and superficial.

What I don't like is a few people presenting different schools and organizations. But it's not because of what "style" they teach or how, I dislike them because they are crooks and hypocrites, and I would dislike them regardless what "style" they represent.

Do Yang Taiji guys train punch? If they do, do they train "power generation" during punch?

That something looks strong doesn't mean it is powerful. I have practiced and sparred with people from many different martial arts. The people who had the by far strongest, most powerful punches I have ever felt were from Yang style Tai Chi people.

But again, it's not about style. It's about how you practice, how the practice shapes the body in the long term, and how well you learn to use your body.

The softest guy I know, like soft to the point where it's sucking you in, is a chen guy.

Ultimately, it's in the individual.

A lot of people online look down on Yang style as "non-martial" or "just for health" or whatever, I dunno. I think we get to resenting that. A lot of people then try to make their Yang more like what they think Chen is to feel like they're doing real fighty stuff and real martial art. Start obsessing over fajin and dantien. Wind up completely missing the mark on both.

[D_Glenn]

I think the best Yang Taijiquan Chinese people are the ones who also studied traditional Xingyiquan, where the Dantian is of huge importance and the ability to FaLi is the core of the movements.

[D_Glenn]

I found an article written around 2004, I’m reluctant to post the link because there’s stuff written in it that Graham and the usual suspects might use as an ad hominem fallacy argument. It’s about some history of Chen Taijiquan, in it I came across this interesting paragraph:

“ Everybody knew that Chen Mao Shen’s Kung Fu was extremely good, but nobody had ever seen him practice in public. Some people tried to test him. One day 5 or 6 well seasoned Tai Chi practitioners attacked him suddenly, hoping to catch him off guard. They all rushed in to grab him. What they could not see was how he folded his chest and dantian, releases his energy with “fa jin” and threw the all to the ground.”

[origami_itto]

I found an article written around 2004, I’m reluctant to post the link because there’s stuff written in it that Graham and the usual suspects might use as an ad hominem fallacy argument. It’s about some history of Chen Taijiquan, in it I came across this interesting paragraph:

“ Everybody knew that Chen Mao Shen’s Kung Fu was extremely good, but nobody had ever seen him practice in public. Some people tried to test him. One day 5 or 6 well seasoned Tai Chi practitioners attacked him suddenly, hoping to catch him off guard. They all rushed in to grab him. What they could not see was how he folded his chest and dantian, releases his energy with “fa jin” and threw the all to the ground.”

There's a saying, can't remember where I ran across it, but might seem familiar to some here. "They don't know my medicine from the shape of my gourd"

Or there's a song by Modest Mouse "The Ocean Breathes Salty"

that is that and this is this
Will you tell me what you saw and I'll tell you what you missed

You worry about Li and fa jin, but 5 or 6 men can easily hold down a man much stronger than them, no matter how much Li (muscular strength) he has developed.

You focus on the EFFECT, they fall down, and the SHAPE "folded his chest and dantien" but ignore the CAUSE.

The cause is the Yi directing the release, informed by Ting jin. Without this aspect then all the force in the world is a blind strike.

An error here is to read the description and put too much detail into our reconstruction of the events. Too easy to arrange them all the way that best fits our preferred scenario.

[D_Glenn]

Folded his Chest and Dantian, is a translation of XiongYaoZhedie, the name given to the body mechanic of rounding the lumbar and concaving the chest.
The 5 or 6 guys is irrelevant to the part I highlighted and the point of me posting it.

[origami_itto]

Folded his Chest and Dantian, is a translation of XiongYaoZhedie, the name given to the body mechanic of rounding the lumbar and concaving the chest.
The 5 or 6 guys is irrelevant to the part I highlighted.

Oh yeah that part, hollow the chest and round the back, right there in the classics. Often conflated with sink the front rise the back. Different instructions.

I've really been looking into the action of the pelvis and tailbone in grasp sparrow's tail. There's clearly levels to it, like the basic form instruction I feel like doesn't mention it, but the more you get into the internals and properly sinking throughout the movement, the lumbar/pelvis movement becomes more clear. The spinal wave then becomes more obvious as well.

The only real difference I can see in what you're saying is that we are more about letting it happen than making it happen. Hard to really express the nuance.

Could just be a difference in emphasis. Somebody told me that with Taijiquan the qi is in the dantien, with xingyi it's in the hands and with bagua it's in the feet. Don't know if I buy that per se but it's one way to look at it.

[Bao]

I think the best Yang Taijiquan Chinese people are the ones who also studied traditional Xingyiquan, where the Dantian is of huge importance and the ability to FaLi is the core of the movements.

I practiced Bagua (3 different styles) for about 15 years and Xingyi (Hebei) for at least 10 years.
I threw away my Bagua because everything I found there, I found in my Tai Chi, it was a waste of time.
I threw away my Xingyi because I found the power generation through my Tai Chi much stronger, it was a waste of time.

I still highly appreciate the training methods and body mechanics in both, they are great arts. But you need to find a focus.
For Xingy, it's first in higher levels when you can scale of the apparent outer force, and make the body mechanics hidden, you can reach real power.

The fali and apparent external movement in Xingyi is just basic practice, a first stage only. It starts by adding a lot, and then you remove everything unnecessary. In Tai Chi, the beginning stages are quite simplistic, but the more and deeper you get into the art, the more layers you can add on top of your foundation. In higher levels, body mechanics of Xingyi, Bagua and Tai Chi have more things in common than differences. Practicing the differences is good to learn more about your own body, but in the end, you need to personalize and adapt any art to your own body in the way that is the best way for you.

Ultimately, it's in the individual.

A lot of people online look down on Yang style as "non-martial" or "just for health" or whatever, I dunno. I think we get to resenting that. A lot of people then try to make their Yang more like what they think Chen is to feel like they're doing real fighty stuff and real martial art. Start obsessing over fajin and dantien. Wind up completely missing the mark on both.

Can't disagree.

You need to focus and first become really good in your main art/style/school. Later when you know your stuff well, you can study more without being confused.

Could just be a difference in emphasis. Somebody told me that with Taijiquan the qi is in the dantien, with xingyi it's in the hands and with bagua it's in the feet. Don't know if I buy that per se but it's one way to look at it.

Probably the most stupid thing I ever heard about IMA.