My version of the Chen Pan-ling taiji

[taiwandeutscher]

Alibert's form looks more like Chen style Laojia yilu, but I did'nt like his fajin, too stiff, all in all also too flowery for me personally, especially after I watched him totally unable in fixed step ph. Thought too much show and no apllication of shenfa in basic partner contact. No resemblence to CPL Taiji, what so ever.

Also, his students (stuff and sabre with the scabbard in hand all form long) where nice to watch, but I wonder again, what the stuff guy could do against another stuff, as I have some stuff partner experience mayself.
.
Here his sites, not sure about vids there, please have a look yourself:
http://www.thierryalibert.com/
http://www.thierryalibert.com/nouvellesa.html

[Formosa Neijia]

Hermann,
Thanks for that. I wasn't sure who he was. I might have been standing next to him at one point, not sure. I saw many more foreigners this past time than before.

Dave C.

[cloudz]

From what I've seen of the clips, he does the 'old yang' that the WTBA/ Earle Montague promote.

I was wondering from your post (taiwandeutscher, has that been accepted/ confirmed as a genuine Yang Haou Shou form now ? (in taiwan or any where else)

any info, anyone has on that, would be much appreciated. There are a few movements/ sequences that are same/similar in the cpl form.

Problem is the way some peeps performs this form it is quite difficult to make out what they are doing sometimes....

[John Kavanagh]

Hi Dave and all,

Yes he has learned Erle's form and possibly from Erle at some point. His large two person fighting set if also exactly the same as Erle's and so whether it belongs to the hao Hu line is a moot point...It's very close to Yang Jwing Ming's two person fighting set...In fact, it's quite strange that the does not acknowledge Erle as a teacher given the virtual replication of Erle's form and indeed the uniqueness of Erle's form and claims etc...

Erle's form is in my opinion a variation of CPL's it's almost exactly the same for 99 of the moves a few angles more from the YCF frame and there are two distinct sequences in the final 'third' that seem to be variations on a Chen village form...but for the most part, 99 of the 128 moves are CPL's I would say...

I have contacted him and he more or less confirmed that he has learned from this source- there are other influences thrown it...eg in some of his early videos the applications showed a large influence from his karate fighitng days- expertly done, but with quite that influence...the newer videos look a little more internal...

All for now-John

[taiwandeutscher]

From what I've seen of the clips, he does the 'old yang' that the WTBA/ Earle Montague promote.

I was wondering from your post (taiwandeutscher, has that been accepted/ confirmed as a genuine Yang Haou Shou form now ? (in taiwan or any where else)

any info, anyone has on that, would be much appreciated. There are a few movements/ sequences that are same/similar in the cpl form.

Problem is the way some peeps performs this form it is quite difficult to make out what they are doing sometimes....

Cloudz,

as I knew of his form promotion as Yang Luchan's in Europe, I specially asked him after his performance and he said "Yang Shaohou". Taiwanese fo Xiong Yanghe lineage standing next to me didn't like what they saw, though he got a price for his performance.

And again, compared to Dave's CPL, I could not see any similarities.

[Formosa Neijia]

Cloudz,

as I knew of his form promotion as Yang Luchan's in Europe, I specially asked him after his performance and he said "Yang Shaohou". Taiwanese fo Xiong Yanghe lineage standing next to me didn't like what they saw, though he got a price for his performance.

And again, compared to Dave's CPL, I could not see any similarities.

This is an important point since Taiwan is basically a treasure trove of pre-1949 Yang and Chen style taiji. Chen Pan-ling, Xiong Yang-he, Wang Zi-he, and others were all well versed in variations of early Yang style. I would look to them as examples of pre-modern Yang before anyone else.

Dave C.

[Daniel-san]

.

[cloudz]

Thanks,

I've been around the block and back again with this one.. I don't support the idea that Earl made the form up.

My main reason being that I learnt the form in London from another group. What they practiced and taught
was too in depth, including another set that comes after that form to have been plaguarised from Earle.. Though when a classmate of mine spoke to him about it that is what he accused our group of.. Watching my teacher perform the advanced set of this style (fast, really fast), completey blew away any notion of it being made up by Earl or our stuff coming from him.. As far as I know he hasn't a clue about that set..

My best guess is that both my teachers teacher (another Westerner) both learnt from the same guy in London. Which would explain why no one in Australia ever came across his mysterious teacher and there is no record of him there. Probably(very likely) not the personage he claims him to be either. The only tie in with Earl is that my teachers also trained in the Yang family TJQ that CKH taught when he had a a school in London.

It's possible that the form is a hybrid that came out of the Nanking comitee era, possibly influenced strongly by cpl or even something from a student of his - who knows. I've heard some CPL guys in America note it as a CPL memorial form..

[Formosa Neijia]

It's possible that the form is a hybrid that came out of the Nanking comitee era, possibly influenced strongly by cpl or even something from a student of his - who knows. I've heard some CPL guys in America note it as a CPL memorial form..

A CPL memorial form? Not from him or his sons.

Dave C.

[cloudz]

Yea, it was second hand info so I wasn't at all sure what to make of it. I met Marnix Wells at the British Open a few years back and asked him about it, he told me about a student of Earls in Ireland who had done some research and found these CPL guys in America ..

[John Kavanagh]

Hi all,

I'm probably the student of Erle's that Marnix is talking about and he has it a little mixed up I'm afraid...

Erle always claims his form comes from an elderly gentleman whom he calls Chen Yiu Chun - Wade Giles version as far as I know. By a remarkable co-incidence, this is the name of Chen Pan Ling's main teachers- the man in fact who took on teaching duties for CPL in Japan with Wang Shu Jin when that style moved to Japan. Chen as a result of being a University graduate in Japanese had the language skills that Wang did etc...

He stayed there for many years and taught Bruce Frantzis the form in Tokyo in so far as I know - I believe that Bruce may not have had a major amount of contact with Wang himself but learned much more of the form and/ or over a much greater period from Chen. You can see a fairly oddly placed acknowledgement of this at the end of 'Opening the Gates' where BF acknowledges that most of the swings etc came from these two sources...
Chen was also a major teacher of Marnx's and a group of Westerners.

Anyway, Chen decamped or moved to Califorina on the inviation of one of his students Joe Deisher :http://www.taichisage.com/
Chen is still alive to my knowledge and teaching occasionally in California and is now in his late 80s or early 90's. I spoke with Joe about what form Chen is teaching now and he said to me that it is a MODIFIED CPL form in the sense that is ONE THIRD the number of moves approx longer than CPL's
99 move form but preserves that frame with add ons if I remember what he said correctly. Interestingly, Erle's form has 128 moves, almost exactly one third longer than CPL's and preserves more or less all of CPL's...
It's a strange and interesting co-incidence it seems to me- same name, same core form...and so on.

I have also spoken to someone who saw a group in London practing the same form as Erle's so it may not be his own creation...it was a former student of Erle's - Mike Kaniewski and I'm not sure if he posts here or not...but he's an extremely credible source and a talented Martial artist who has worked with Paul Whitrod and Alex Kozma...

That may help further the 'mystery'! -John

[edededed]

Wang Shujin's assistant teacher who taught in Japan was Zhang Yizhong (Wade-Giles: Chang I-Chung), not "Chen Yiu-Chun" ("Yiu" does not exist as a Wade-Giles syllable).

[shmirsh]

I think it would be relatively easy to misspell Chang I-Chung as Chen Yiu-Chun - especially if one's level of Chinese were not that great and/or there were changes of pronunciation of name across dialects and/or the writer was not trained in wade giles (or any other form of romanization)...

[cloudz]

Hi all,

I'm probably the student of Erle's that Marnix is talking about and he has it a little mixed up I'm afraid...

Erle always claims his form comes from an elderly gentleman whom he calls Chen Yiu Chun - Wade Giles version as far as I know. By a remarkable co-incidence, this is the name of Chen Pan Ling's main teachers- the man in fact who took on teaching duties for CPL in Japan with Wang Shu Jin when that style moved to Japan. Chen as a result of being a University graduate in Japanese had the language skills that Wang did etc...

He stayed there for many years and taught Bruce Frantzis the form in Tokyo in so far as I know - I believe that Bruce may not have had a major amount of contact with Wang himself but learned much more of the form and/ or over a much greater period from Chen. You can see a fairly oddly placed acknowledgement of this at the end of 'Opening the Gates' where BF acknowledges that most of the swings etc came from these two sources...
Chen was also a major teacher of Marnx's and a group of Westerners.

Anyway, Chen decamped or moved to Califorina on the inviation of one of his students Joe Deisher :http://www.taichisage.com/
Chen is still alive to my knowledge and teaching occasionally in California and is now in his late 80s or early 90's. I spoke with Joe about what form Chen is teaching now and he said to me that it is a MODIFIED CPL form in the sense that is ONE THIRD the number of moves approx longer than CPL's
99 move form but preserves that frame with add ons if I remember what he said correctly. Interestingly, Erle's form has 128 moves, almost exactly one third longer than CPL's and preserves more or less all of CPL's...
It's a strange and interesting co-incidence it seems to me- same name, same core form...and so on.

I have also spoken to someone who saw a group in London practing the same form as Erle's so it may not be his own creation...it was a former student of Erle's - Mike Kaniewski and I'm not sure if he posts here or not...but he's an extremely credible source and a talented Martial artist who has worked with Paul Whitrod and Alex Kozma...

That may help further the 'mystery'! -John

Cool!

Mike Kaniewski and i trained together with Alex Kozma and he is the guy that told me that Marnix might be able to shed some more light on it. i remember him telling a little of what you've recounted about the teacher with similar name.

The group he is talking about is 'me' so to speak, as we compared our forms when we got to know eachothers backrounds. I was still training with that group at the time. I'm pretty sure it was Mike who mentioned you to me first actually, which I recounted to Marnix when I asked him if he could shed more light on it. This all happened some time ago so excuse my poor recollection there.. I didn't think it 'important' to recount my exchanges with Mike about our training.

Mikes a super nice guy, he posts here occasionally.

The group in London taught both Japanese and Chinese styles. My teachers teacher spent time in Japan. They taught aikijutsu and kenjutsu. The school went my the name of Zenkyoshin.. So I guess it's possible that our version had some connection with Japan.

One of the biggest difference I remember was in execution. We did our form a lot less 'flowy' than Earles group.I could tell from my exchanges with Mike that although we were doing the same form pretty much (not identical) we weren't really doing it the same way so much.. In terms of the style it was performed.
Cheers
George.

[Formosa Neijia]

Erle always claims his form comes from an elderly gentleman whom he calls Chen Yiu Chun - Wade Giles version as far as I know. By a remarkable co-incidence, this is the name of Chen Pan Ling's main teachers- the man in fact who took on teaching duties for CPL in Japan with Wang Shu Jin when that style moved to Japan. Chen as a result of being a University graduate in Japanese had the language skills that Wang did etc...

Thanks, John. I just want to be clear that Zhang Yi-zhong wasn't one of CPL's teachers. IIRC Zhang was a student of Wang that was teaching Wang's material, including the taiji form Wang learned from CPL. However, Wang apparently made changes to the form perhaps resulting in their version of it:


Full disclosure: I learned my form from Chen Yun-ching, CPL's son, so that I'm naturally biased in that direction.

Dave C.