dedicated to the discussion of the chinese internal martial arts of xingyiquan, baguazhang, taijiquan, related arts, and anything else best discussed over a bottle of rum
Came across this today, which touches on the idea of convergent evolution in martial arts.
From the video description:
In this video, I discuss “the common origin myth”. It’s widespread throughout the martial arts and the myth is essentially the false assumption that common methods must have a common origin. In truth, common methods most often evolve independently due to common combative problems and common physiology. <SNIP>
In a similar vein, we see a sort of linguistic bastardization today in any kind of competitive market, and there's no reason to believe it wasn't similar in the past. Someone will introduce a feature or term, and everyone else in the industry will suddenly adopt the same language to describe their own stuff that may or may not be similar. In that way, something like Pao Chui might be considered a sort of generic term, much like jibengong. Somebody starts practicing a form that emphasizes explosive movement, and they naturally call it the same thing as other forms that do the same, even though the origins and mechanics of the movements themselves may be totally unrelated.
I'm not saying that's definitively the case, but until issues of convergence and linguistic convenience are addressed (in addition to the credibility of sources), any argument for common ancestry should be considered questionable.
Your right there yearning k Chen came up withe the English translations for the names of the 108 Everyone used the same names Some like parting wild horses mane give a false impression of how it is meant to be used Others come along and try to fit the name to an application So the misunderstanding grows Those who have been taught the right name and its use then have a secret which grows with time
Don't put power into the form let it naturally arise from the form
yes, agreed that the mechanics of the two styles are different, or at least they have become different by today, regardless of what that website is saying. (Didn't say I agreed with everything that website was saying).
What I am saying is that the actual named postures of the Chen Pao Chui and postures in various Baji Quan sets seem to be alike. These postures are not found at all in any other style's Pao Quan, only between the Chen Pao Chui and Baji Quan. Plus, Shaolin Pao Quan are just a subset of their Hong Quan system.
In the following Da Baji set, you can see very very similar to Chen Pao Chui's (42 postures): 11. Chopping Hand 12. Overturning Flowers and Waving Sleeves 13. Hidden Fist Strike (very common in many Northern KF styles) 14. Dragging the waist and hitting with the elbow 16. Fair Lady Works the Shuttles 17. Riding Dragon Backwards 21. Wearing a Frame 25. Palms Wipe the Brow 26. Yellow Dragon Stirs the Water 32. Whole Cannon Punches 34. Double Forearm Strikes 35. Left and Right Forearm Strikes
Besides all those,you can see in the various sets 19. Wrapping Fire Crackers and the following sequence repeated in the sets 20 Pose Holding the Beast's Head 21. Wearing a Frame 22. Overturning Flowers and Waving Sleeves
Something I saw in a discussion group in 2003: "In 1994, over a Chinese dinner and translator, Su Yu Zhang explained to me how baji and Chen's taiji were similar. Another lineage holder told me that they took one of the major Chen writings on the system and compared the trained energies (I'll avoid Jings) to baji and concluded they covered the same ground. My own teacher learned his Chen's taiji from Wong Meng Bi (also Du Yu Zi) who learned from Chen Fake in the 1930s or earlier. Wong Meng Bi referred to his Chen's taiji as xiao jia, however, its flavor does not resemble the current xiao jia frame as demonstrated by Chen Peishan. My tearcher was attracted to Wong Meng Bi's form because its expression of power looked like baji. The movements have a great deal of large and small circles but none is flowery and it looks rather plain.
I have always felt a strong kinship between Chen's taiji training and system with what I know of baji and my understanding is that Liu had tons of respect for the system. He didn't try to steal Chen's taiji or put it under the baji thumb, but in the 1970s, when there was virtually no hope of reunification between the mainland and Taiwan, he thought to preserve a great art. He created 3 levels of Chen's short forms based on his observations and discussion with Chen Fake, a zhao bao master who was his friend, and Du Ye Zi. He made the short forms to preserve the essence and so that others could learn it in a relatively quick time and not become discouraged at having to initially learn a long form. My teacher taught some of these forms at 5 colleges in Taipei and yes, I have seen them on film during that time.
Wong Meng Bi, in referring to his form as xiao jia may have been referring to it as small circle form. You rang the bell because my teacher kept saying, FOR YEARS, he likes these forms because the circles are smaller although they 85% follow the frame of Du Yu Ze and Wong Meng Bi. Also he felt the small circle movement to be more akin to the baji system.
Many people don't have the skill nor realize the that baji is full of small circle movements: You will find this in the da baji form (although translated as big frame, it contains small circle movements).
For example, if you take two movements found in the da baji form (which are also played as single moving postures) Shen or Chen (Taiwanese accent really screws up my low leve pinyin) Shou (played forward and backward) it resembles, in movement, repulse the monkey or winding hand) or Hen da 3rd movement in da baji. These all have small circle movements but if the practitioner is unskilled, they usually butcher the movment by playing from the wrist rather than waist and arm.
Even the opening block of the moving one punch is a full body but very small circle--its so subtle but yet so important and is directly trainable from turning over the da qiang (big spear exercise). Someone who plays this well will show the full body chan si jing but its so small and subtle you need a trained eye to see. But the way we store energy in the waist movements is similiar in some movement but in other movement quite different (accordian like in the waist movement Xu-jing to fa-jing). Maybe we can say that baji looks more less like a punctuated performance of lao jia and more in flavor to pao chui. "
So something is going on. Chen Pao Chui doesn't seem to have any similarity to any Henan Pao Quan styles, which it should, since it's Yi Lu Lao Jia set is posture by posture and strings of postures directly found in Shaolin Tai Zhu Quan and Xie Xing Quan, among others.
You cannot find any Pao Quan sets from any Henan styles that do anything remotely like Chen Pao Chui.
Why is there no Yang Pao Chui? The only thing that comes close is the Li family Pao Chui from the Wu Hua style, if it is authentic, and it looks very different from Lao Jia Pao Chui, Xin Jia Pao Chui, and even the Xiao Jia Pao Chui that you see today from Chen style.
Last edited by salcanzonieri on Mon May 20, 2019 1:58 pm, edited 4 times in total.
its long concluded that Chen material originally came from Tong Bei, for a lot of reasons, including Chen Xin's book,
Don't remember what Chen Xin's book has to do with this, but Tongbei does not have the most clear history...
this was the 2010 Post/thread about the origins of the Chen style. For those that were asking before, we were discussing the Li family records that were found in China and some other records.
Somewhere on one of the pages, Andy S notes similarity between Chen Pao Chui with Baji (coincidence)
I disagree with your logic-- it sounds to me like you're arguing that if a notebook and a bicycle are both blue, there must be some relationship between the two. That's fine, I'm happy to leave it alone, as the internet is plenty big enough for the both of us. Unless you want to have some sort of taiji death match over it, which I'm totally down for. (I don't want to fight, I just miss the old days of internet forums, where every conversation ended up in some kind of silly challenge.)
salcanzonieri wrote:Why is there no Yang Pao Chui?
Here's a fun story I heard: Chen Changxing had a much younger wife, and when he died, no one in the village liked the idea of Yang Luchan hanging around Chen's still young and pretty widow. A lot of people had a problem with him as an outsider learning their family stuff, anyways, so when Changxing died they basically got together and kicked him out of the village, and told him not to come around any more. They also told him he couldn't teach their art to other outsiders, so he had to modify it into something that wouldn't be recognizable as Chen family boxing. Thus, Yang style was born, and that's also why there is no Yang Pao Chui. Yang style was a re-invention of taiji, not a progressive evolution.
I don't know or really care if the story is true-- I just like it. It does, however, illustrate how a very normal human interaction could upset the apple cart of historical verisimilitude.
What is pao chui ostensibly for? Other than the comment about looking "fighty" to outsiders? If its purpose is clear, then do those styles share the same purpose for doing it?
Other than having some fencing sports, LARP, or moviemaking, no one actually knows any more what it's like to go into the battlefield with spears and swords from actual experience. But the speculation seems to explain some things (like xingyi 5 elements).
amateur practices til gets right pro til can't get wrong / better approx answer to right q than exact answer to wrong q which can be made precise / “most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. Source of all true art & science
Bhassler wrote:Chen Changxing had a much younger wife, and when he died, no one in the village liked the idea of Yang Luchan hanging around Chen's still young and pretty widow. A lot of people had a problem with him as an outsider learning their family stuff, anyways, so when Changxing died they basically got together and kicked him out of the village, and told him not to come around any more. They also told him he couldn't teach their art to other outsiders, so he had to modify it into something that wouldn't be recognizable as Chen family boxing. Thus, Yang style was born, and that's also why there is no Yang Pao Chui. Yang style was a re-invention of taiji, not a progressive evolution.
I don't about the wife, but I read an interview with Benjamen Wu and he said -
In general, there are five modern Tai Chi Chuan family styles, namely Chen, Yang, Wu, Wu/Hao, and Sun and all of them are directly or indirectly derived from the Chen Style. Wu Quanyou, father of Wu Style creator Wu Jianquan was a student of Yang Style creator Yang Luchan and his son Yang Banhou, who specialized in the small frame Yang Tai Chi Chuan. There was an understanding that Wu could not teach the Yang Style to others. Wu Jianquan honored the code and created Wu Style Tai Chi based upon the Yang’s small frame but with a new emphasis of an angular movement.
If Yang told Wu he couldn't teach Yang style, then Chen may have told Yang he couldn't Chen style. That would explain why the differences are superficial.
The method of practicing this boxing art is nothing more than opening and closing, passive and active. The subtlety of the art is based entirely upon their alternations. Chen Xin
DamonHwang Published on Jun 13, 2006 A different BajiQuan, performed by Damon W.J. Hwang (黃偉哲) in Feb 2002, Taipei - a memory to my dearest Master Liu, Yun-Chiao who died in 1992. （西元2002年2月2日 - 劉雲樵先師仙逝十週年追思紀念會在 台北世新大學 的表演） *** Warning *** This is a show only, not the original practice. Do not follow the video for your actual exercise.
Dan Farber Published on Jan 4, 2008 GM Liu Yun Qiao performs some baji quan movements. Liu learned from Li Shu Wen, an expert in baji and piqua. Category Sports
Let me see if I understand this correctly. It is not okay to put out unsubstantiated speculative bullshit about Chen style.
It is perfectly okay to protect Chen Style by spouting unsubstantiated speculative bullshit about Yang style. That's some funny shit. But, hey...I get it now.
Trip wrote:Let me see if I understand this correctly. It is not okay to put out unsubstantiated speculative bullshit about Chen style.
It is perfectly okay to protect Chen Style by spouting unsubstantiated speculative bullshit about Yang style. That's some funny shit. But, hey...I get it now. :)
It's okay if you say "this is unsubstantiated speculative bullshit", but maybe not if you say "this is academic research" or "this is fact". The latter are (or at least should be) subject to a different level of scrutiny to be taken seriously. The former was never meant to be.
It is just DISCUSSION because this is a discussion group. Where people can speculate about anything, right?
It's just interesting. So what?
People think about things and have questions. These are mine:
No one can find any similarity (postures, postural movements, sequences of movements) with any Pao Quan from anywhere in China with Chen Pao Chui, why is that? No Pao Chui in Yang TJQ, why? Why Baji Quan looks like it has postures, postural movements, sequences of movements much more like Chen Pao Chui than any Pao Quan styles, even those from Henan?
Those, I think, are something worth exploring about.
AND one of my Baji teachers was Charles Chen (RIP) and we discussed my book when I was writing it. AND he did say there was too much coincidence between the two styles for some reason. Why? Who knows?
Last edited by salcanzonieri on Tue May 21, 2019 8:36 am, edited 1 time in total.
if we're free to speculate, then I'm in (because I know nothing about any of the forms called pao chui).
Chen Wangting supposedly did some work protecting merchant caravans, so we might assume he must've had some practical skill and used it. You would acquire various skills and not care about internet arguments. Maybe some of that came from these other arts people cited, who knows. A label might just be used separately by different arts.
No pao chui in yang? Looking at some random videos, it looks like it has to do with weapons, not empty hands, as someone above mentioned. As time goes by, there isn't any real practical need for the ancient spear and sword skills because combat no longer happens like that. By the time Yang Luchan is teaching the Imperial Guard, rifles had been in use in the American Revolution and are replacing muskets on the battlefield (1850s). The Chinese invented crossbows in the 7th C BCE and high explosive bombs in 10th C CE. The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) had cannons and land mines. If you're teaching a sort of soft empty hand art in the palace, the spear and sword is already obsolete technology - are people doing "fencing"? - but empty art "push hands", much like full on wrestling, is educational and fun in many ways and relatively safe and maybe good for teaching intellectual elite bureaucrats. It makes sense you don't do the obsolete weapons forms unless you like LARP or history or whatever. Even with xingyiquan (whose 5 elements just make sense intuitively if you pick up any long pole), no one seems to do the 5 elements with a spear (unless you like LARP or history or whatever).
amateur practices til gets right pro til can't get wrong / better approx answer to right q than exact answer to wrong q which can be made precise / “most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. Source of all true art & science
everything wrote:if we're free to speculate, then I'm in (because I know nothing about any of the forms called pao chui).
Chen Wangting supposedly did some work protecting merchant caravans, so we might assume he must've had some practical skill and used it. You would acquire various skills and not care about internet arguments. Maybe some of that came from these other arts people cited, who knows. A label might just be used separately by different arts.
No pao chui in yang? Looking at some random videos, it looks like it has to do with weapons, not empty hands, as someone above mentioned. As time goes by, there isn't any real practical need for the ancient spear and sword skills because combat no longer happens like that. By the time Yang Luchan is teaching the Imperial Guard, rifles had been in use in the American Revolution and are replacing muskets on the battlefield (1850s). The Chinese invented crossbows in the 7th C BCE and high explosive bombs in 10th C CE. The Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) had cannons and land mines. If you're teaching a sort of soft empty hand art in the palace, the spear and sword is already obsolete technology - are people doing "fencing"? - but empty art "push hands", much like full on wrestling, is educational and fun in many ways and relatively safe and maybe good for teaching intellectual elite bureaucrats. It makes sense you don't do the obsolete weapons forms unless you like LARP or history or whatever. Even with xingyiquan (whose 5 elements just make sense intuitively if you pick up any long pole), no one seems to do the 5 elements with a spear (unless you like LARP or history or whatever).
Since the Yang long form comes from the Chen Yi Lu, which comes from the Shaolin based material (as many researchers have proofed over and over), the form can be done with a staff or a broom stick easily, just like any Shaolin based form can be done.
Break the staff /broom stick in half and you have 2 'swords', which you can do the yang long form with as well (like any Shaolin form too).
Last edited by salcanzonieri on Tue May 21, 2019 11:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
