Chen Short Form--linking form

[Bob]

Chen 36 movement linking form performed by Jason Tsou. Du Yu Ze line, I believe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V73CH1x_ ... re=channel

[SPJ]

Cool. Thanks for posting as always.

[count]

I liked the performance.

[kreese]

What is a 'linking form'?

[Bob]

Kreese, although I have the above form on tape from Taiwan in about the 1970s [my teacher's performance] I didn't learn it and instead learned 3 shorter abstracts of Chen's Yi Lu and Er Lu created by Liu Yun Qiao. My take on learning a linking form, a form that links it to its parent long form is so that one can practice from single moving postures to a subset from the long form to eventually the long form so that mistakes are easily corrected and cognitively speaking, learning complex movements in chained practices often enhances the spead and quality of learning. Many people when learning say the Chen's Yi Lu long form, learn it in 1/3 segements. The linking form is similiar accept it has an end in of of itself as a form whereas the 1/3 segments stop, unlinked, until you start the next segment.

[lindun]

I'm sorry not sure why this form is called chen style. too much baji flavor.

[count]

I'm sorry not sure why this form is called chen style. too much baji flavor.

Thank you, you are right. This is just a short form based on cannon fist form. The fajing is baji fajing. Have you ever seen Du Yu Tze show any fajing? Probably not. I think this performance is tailored for the audience.

[Andy_S]

The Taiwanese Chen stuff IS different.

Here, clearly, the guy's moves are Chen Taiji, but I agree that his shenfa is not. I am not sure where this comes from,though I would guess basic training in Baji, Longfist, etc, rather than Du Yu-tze's actual teaching.

When the Du form clip was posted, to me (a Chen guy with village lineage) his pace, shenfa and moves were very, very recognisable. OTOH, many people on this (and other) forums were saying "Wow, that's the real old Chen style, it looks really different from the modern village masters, etc, etc." Frankly, i just could not see it - I suppose we all see what we want to see.

The other thing that seems different about Chen on Taiwan is the multiplicity of forms and "abstracts." There are short forms in modern Chen Style for beginners too, but not many, and most people, if serious about the art, can go straight ahead and dive into the traditional long form. IIRC Dave/Formosa Neijia quit Chen Taiji in Taiwan as he was frustrated that the curriculum he had to master before he could learn the basic traditional forms (yi-lu ane er-lu) was so vast. (Dave, correct me if I am wrong.)

Anyone in Taiwan:
How are the "Taiwanese" (for want of a better term) Chen lineages doing these days in Taiwan? Are they still thriving, or is the community moving more in the direction of the modern village lineages?

[Bob]

I always wonder what people are seeing when they say a form has too much baji flavor in it.

Here are two clips which have been posted previously but illustrate well, in my opinion, what the baji flavor looks like slowed down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRIDAT4R ... re=related



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7o-C8PvVoU



If you can, go to end of the clip below and watch the same performer above do a rendition of Chen's taijiquan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6wK6heG ... re=related



I sincerely sit here wondering what gets "lost in translation". Fa jing is simply the release of energy, the frame is a Chen frame, the fajing reminds me of the Chen Zheng Lei clip I posted and for the life of me I wonder just what gets lost. I raised this question in a previous post and it seems like this is a good place to raise it again [none of this post is to be taken as argumentative---I really wonder how someone schooled in the baji foundation can make their Chen's frame appear with less "baji flavor" and more "Chen" flavor.

Open for suggestions.

[Formosa Neijia]

IIRC Dave/Formosa Neijia quit Chen Taiji in Taiwan as he was frustrated that the curriculum he had to master before he could learn the basic traditional forms (yi-lu ane er-lu) was so vast. (Dave, correct me if I am wrong.)

Anyone in Taiwan:
How are the "Taiwanese" (for want of a better term) Chen lineages doing these days in Taiwan? Are they still thriving, or is the community moving more in the direction of the modern village lineages?

To be honest Andy, one of the main reasons why I quit Chen style was that the "village" versions of the art dominate the style (at least outside Taiwan) and almost everyone who practices the art sees only what the village does as being legitimate. (As if there were only one way of doing things even in the village.)

I got sick and tired of fighting tooth and nail every time one of my teachers did something different from what was supposedly "the norm." What finally took the cake was seeing some small-circle guys from mainland China doing almost exactly what I was taught, but then the consensus was "it's okay for them but not for you."

It became like everything else in MA: THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!

BTW, great movie but bad way to live IMO.

The Du Yu-ze line that I went back to with my last Chen teacher had waaaaaaaaay too many forms. There was no way in hell I was going to stick around for all of those. Du was a walking encyclopedia for Chen style and my last Chen teacher was too. He was the first Taiwanese to be authorized to teach the village laojia and xinjia methods here in Taiwan. That was in addition to Du's laojia, xiaojia, huleijia/long fist. Too many "jias" for me.

The "Taiwanese" lines seem to be doing well these days, although the village has certainly made an impact here. They have the media machine behind them and that always helps.

IMO the Du line will suffer most because of the huge burden of forms. Lots of knowledge that people want to conserve, but for God's sake, when is enough enough?

Wang's line, which I also learned and really enjoyed, is almost dead. Two teachers are teaching it.

You know, maybe I'll go back and study it a bit more again.

Dave C.

[Andy_S]

Bob:

Sure, no argument, just discussion. I would say:

Stances. The stuff above seems to show a low horse to start with and then moves into bow and arrow stance, with the rear leg locked, or almost locked. "Village" Chen does more of a ZZ stance than low horse (with a low horse, one tends to stick your bum out and lean forward, which are no-nos as I have learned Taiji, but were OK in Mantis and LF. Moreover, the half-horse stance is much more rounded in the dang.

In the village style, you DONT want the knees to move inside the stance---you always maintain an outward, peng-type energy in the knee, ie slightly turned out, which kind of screws you into the ground, and gives you spring-force up and out of the stance when necessary. Here, OTOH, I see knees temporarily "collapsing" (as we would say) inside the stance at times. That having been said, the Hong Jun-sheng/Practical Method line DO, apparently, let the knees "collapse" inside the stance, so even within mainland lineages, there are different views on this.

The fajing in Chen style is more spirally than the above, which seems to have a much straighter articulation (this, of course, is a feature of the stance)

All in all, "my" style of Taiji is, I would say, more rounded and less "jerky." I am NOT saying the Taiwanese stuff is wrong...just different.

FWIW

These are all, of course, my own POV...I don't claim to speak for the village style.

[count]

Chen 36 movement linking form performed by Jason Tsou. Du Yu Ze line, I believe.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V73CH1x_ ... re=channel

For those that don't know, Jason Tsou has been training under various teachers from around 5 years old. I think it's 51 or 52 years now.

Some of his teachers are:

Mei Hwa Chuan, Yang Tai Chi and Chi-kung from
Wu Ti-Pang and Yang Bao-Chien
Hsing-I Chuan from Chang Yee-Cheng
Southern Hung Gar Chi Kung from Deng Kuo-Hua
Chen Tai Chi from Du Yu-Tse (a direct student of Chen
Yan-xi)
7- Star and 8-step Praying Mantis, Wu Tai Chi, and
various Chi Kung from Su Yu-Chang
Bagua Zhang, Baji Chuan, and Piqua Zhang from
Grandmaster Liu Yun Chiao
Islamic Long Fist from Adam Chi Hsu.

And of course, Chang Dong Sheng was his high school time, wrestling coach.

Quite a diverse background with many influences, I would say. There are many sides to Jason Tsou and it's hard to see them from a few youtube clips. But I still think this was an appropriate performance for the setting.

[Bob]

Andy, thanks! I really have lost my taste for intense arguing over a lot of these issues.

What is really interesting is that when you reach the higher levels of bajiquan, again this is only my perspective as taught to me by Tony just so anyone doesn't think I am speaking for Wu Tan(g), all the horse stance postures are executed out of a half horse/half bow stance.

Except for the xiao baji jia form, all of the other forms can have the horse stance changed to a half horse/half bow.

If I sat down and went through some of the big spear [da qiang] exercises, you would find half them executed out of a half horse/half bow and you might be shocked at the 80% correlation between the big pole exercises [as seen publicly by Chen Zheng Lei's vcd]. Also included would be the heng haa breathing.

Here is an interesting clip of Liu's first disciple, Dr. Leung, doing pao chui:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLfnCflP ... ature=user



Also, by no means am I arguing that baji and Chen's are substitutes but there are complementary bridges.

Thanks for the discussion.

[SPJ]

Just to share some thoughts.

1. If we learn several things from several teachers, the learning would influence one another. The answer would be yes. However, we still would focus on certain aspects of the task or practice at hand.

2. In general, Ba Ji focuses on downward sinking power. So in the first clip, Jason did the stomping foot in Buddha's warrior hitting the mortle (sp?) or jin gang dao zhui. The whole body sinking down, yes, we would say it is the body method of ba ji. In Damon's Ba ba ji clip, even thou they were modified to fit the space of the stage and the time length of the music, but you may still see predominantly downward power of the whole body at work even thou in a smaller scale.

Tai Chi focuses on silk reeling rotating out of dan tian. then your stomping feet may be more localized or the qi or power sprung out of your dan tian and dissipated toward all 4 limbs.

how to say the differences?

Ba Ji would be like a thousand kilo dropping or qian jin zhui 千斤坠. Your whole body is heavy and drops.

Tai Chi is more focused dropping of the foot like the pestle hitting or crushing something in the mortle. or only your foot is heavy like the head of the pestle, the rest of your body is lighter. or the foot drags down the rest of your body. and not the whole body is pushing down the foot.

3. as for the forms, it is quite common that we may cluster or string some postures with similar fuctions together and call them the linking or interlink or chained forms. The main thing is that they are functionally linked or several moves may work together one after another. or they are interchangeable. usually, they are shorter and more focused practice of just a few things and not the whole spectrum or longer strings of postures/forms that include a lot of other things.

---

[count]

Just to share some thoughts.

1. If we learn several things from several teachers, the learning would influence one another. The answer would be yes. However, we still would focus on certain aspects of the task or practice at hand.

2. In general, Ba Ji focuses on downward sinking power. So in the first clip, Jason did the stomping foot in Buddha's warrior hitting the mortle (sp?) or jin gang dao zhui. The whole body sinking down, yes, we would say it is the body method of ba ji. In Damon's Ba ba ji clip, even thou they were modified to fit the space of the stage and the time length of the music, but you may still see predominantly downward power of the whole body at work even thou in a smaller scale.

Tai Chi focuses on silk reeling rotating out of dan tian. then your stomping feet may be more localized or the qi or power sprung out of your dan tian and dissipated toward all 4 limbs.

how to say the differences?

Ba Ji would be like a thousand kilo dropping or qian jin zhui 千斤坠. Your whole body is heavy and drops.

Tai Chi is more focused dropping of the foot like the pestle hitting or crushing something in the mortle. or only your foot is heavy like the head of the pestle, the rest of your body is lighter. or the foot drags down the rest of your body. and not the whole body is pushing down the foot.

3. as for the forms, it is quite common that we may cluster or string some postures with similar fuctions together and call them the linking or interlink or chained forms. The main thing is that they are functionally linked or several moves may work together one after another. or they are interchangeable. usually, they are shorter and more focused practice of just a few things and not the whole spectrum or longer strings of postures/forms that include a lot of other things.

---

Peter,

1. Diversity is a good thing. It contributes to the growth of the arts. Without it, many ideas would be lost. Many already have been lost due to narrow-minded practitioners.

2. In general, all these methods have the same concepts of energy and applications. It's the training methods that you don't see in a form performance. Personally, I probably don't practice the same forms the same way twice. I try refine and improve the technique every time I think about it.

Also, I was taught about 'Wu Tan' styles, and I know a bit about their history. I also trained the same methods. For Tai Chi, we might train specific silk reeling and the random circles to develop specific attributes. Later, the training might not be seen on the outside, but is always there on the inside. We might think about the balance of yin and yang, one minute and the next, think about a destructive way to hurt somebody. But the big picture comes from all of it at a point in time.

3. In our system, we have linking forms. They tie 'all' the forms together with the basic exercise and training methods, and combine them into one form or way of training.

This form, Jason is performing here, I never heard it called a linking form. It was just called the 38 short form. I only learned 2 forms from Chen Tai Chi, so I'm definitely no expert, but as far as what came from who, and why, at Wu Tan, it's a long history. It would be a shame if someone made judgments based on a you tube clip, either way. As far as talking about things in public, I consider the source and their actual experience with the subject. Peoples opinions and criticism are only worth the time they took to make up their mind. I appreciate your perspective and the discussion. Your in the same area as Jason. Have you been by for a visit? Direct contact is the best way to see what the guy is doing.

Just a few thought about your thoughts, thanks for the discussion.

Jeff