Chen ZiQiang push hands invitational to Perth, AU (2019)

[marvin8]

taiji voyage
Dec 16, 2021

Martial arts culture places high value on sparring etiquette. Hit as hard as you want to be hit. This is just the golden rule.

Guests in any culture usually defer to the host, and take a passive stance to the host's direction.

These are basic things any person should understand regardless of whether they're studying martial arts. The guest in this case has shown his attitudes to these basic moral ideas through his actions.

Several other technical notes -

Push hands rules forbid neck holds. This is because clinching technique is so effective that nobody would use or train anything else.

The hosts do not hold the neck once. The guest seems to exclusively use neck hold and leg trip techniques. As a matter of fact, in his last throw he starts with his hand on the opponent's neck and immediately slams him onto the concrete.

The guest stands over his fallen opponent, and then chooses to step over across his opponent's face. This is very bad manners.

The guest chooses to use vertical throw which forces the opponent to fall backwards. Usually this is not an issue, but this is a stage made of concrete and the ground below the stage is also concrete. The guest showed blatant disregard for whether the host can brace for such impact and whether the host would be seriously injured or whether his life would be put in danger from head trauma.

The guest brings an energy level which is clearly much higher than everyone else.

The guest in this situation shows a gross disregard for his partner's safety.

He operated outside of the ruleset at the host's event, slammed the host onto the cement floor repeatedly, at one point stood over his host and nearly grazed his face while stepping off.

This is not a competition with reward money. This was an event to allow the guest to market himself for his own commercial interest. Instead, he decided to endanger the host's health. The message this sends is - he cares more about his apparent superiority than the welfare of those around him.

The host on the other hand, did not complain once despite the fact that he was being slammed repeatedly on the concrete and was fully compliant on letting the guest showcase what he had to offer.

The lack of respect the guest showed to the host, the organizers and the audience ruined the purpose of the event.

In the video, the organizers put a premature end to the event because of the danger that the guest put the host in.

What are your thoughts?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4WhHuP1U6Y

FuReel
Premiered Dec 13, 2019

Hi everyone welcome to this SPECIAL EPISODE of the FuReel Podcast.

We are joined by 8 GingMo'ers to talk about our experience from a Tai Chi event we went to. I won't say much more and let you enjoy the podcast.

Here is the video of the event we are talking about. Watch this first before you listen to the podcast
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1798739253590940


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFOtSpeLNO0

assojingang
Dec 13, 2019

Chen Ziqiang, 20th generation of Chen style Tai Ji Quan.
Headcoach of Chenjiagou Taijiquan School.
Exhibition of a mix of Xinjia Yilu and Laojia yilu at the first Australia/China Tai Chi cultural exchange conference.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHFX-J4IogI

[Appledog]

Push hands rules forbid neck holds. This is because clinching technique is so effective that nobody would use or train anything else.
...The lack of respect the guest showed to the host, the organizers and the audience ruined the purpose of the event.
...What are your thoughts?

Push hands rules forbid locking and butting and wrestling and shoving and yanking or even breaking form as all demonstrated in the first 30 seconds of the first round. But if we are going to allow certain kinds of rules in order to make the event more interesting then the only thing I could say in Chen's defense is he might not have been aware of the rules. In the beginning I think he seems to have asked a few times what kind of push hands the other person wanted to play. So I think there might be some miscommunication here. But beyond that, Chen is well known to be a roughhouser and his elders have spoken about this in the past stating it is not their style of push hands and have stated it is a somewhat lower level of push hands than other kinds.

I would put some of the blame on the judges or organizers for not reminding him of the rules. To allow this to go on and on, then stop the event, seems a bit premature.

What do I think personally? Chen Fa-Ke said it is unacceptable to hurt your partner in push hands practice. We should take extra care to watch out for our friend's safety. Categorically, once the wrestling starts, that is exactly what this kind of thing becomes -- wrestling, and not push hands. There are reasons why this is allowed but it is not my cup of tea. If you ever have the chance to push with this guy or anyone similar just explain to them you want to focus on the push hands part and that you do not know or care to practice wrestling. And if you lock up like that, just tap immediately because you've already broken your form. Take responsibility. You lost.

[origami_itto]

So on the one hand, if your skills are up to snuff you should be able to handle whatever heat they're bringing. Realizing of course there may be a skill gap you can't bridge.
But if the skill gap is there, the senior should be gracious unless the junior is just being a rude little shit and needs a reminder. But even then, gracious.
When I am working with someone that starts to get this aggro I just lose, let them push me out. I keep my zhong ding, neutralize what I can, attack when I can, but I don't fight to stay in, when I'm in trouble and might need to escalate I just pull out under my own power mostly and they have nothing to play with. They usually either chill or get bored. I find i can soak up a lot of it without necessarily matching their aggression.
This looks like they went there to advertise and demonstrate the superiority of Chen jia, not make friends.

[denchen]

Sure the teacher knew what was coming, made me laugh hearing his voice from the sideline when asked up on stage;
"No no, you do the demonstration".

It's important not to lose face but could have been more gracious.
Level of contact in ph or sparring should be dictated by the less experienced and absorbed/countered by the other,
if both are to gain.
What would have been more impressive was a relaxed beat down but actually ime Chen relies on a lot of shoulders,elbows,bumps and
nasty stuff to make it work outside of drills in free play.

[robert]

I've done a number of workshops and private lessons with CZQ and haven't found him to be aggressive. Every time he comes, we do a three-hour session on push hands. We train on a wooden floor and just do the patterns and qinna. Part of that is likely the host. Another person has hosted Chen Bing in the past and they arranged for push hands training to be at a school with pads on the floor and we worked on push hands with qinna and throws. The way I've been taught push hands in Chen style after learning a pattern or two we incorporate qinna, throws, and applications. I think it's sad, but typical for the hosts to blame the guest if they weren't clear about what they wanted to do.

At the beginning of the panel, around 4:40 the woman says: "there had been a bit of a conversation about, did we think there would be any push hands that would happen, there was a comment that said no, because there's concrete there probably won't be any push hands and then right at the last minute there was an invitation for a bit of a demonstration, an exhibition that was not aggressive, it was all very friendly..."

They discussed the fact that they were on concrete and decided not to do push hands. How can they then say they're surprised by what happened? I look forward to training with CZQ in the future.

[everything]

"Sir, this is a Wendy's."

dunno about the teacher or what happened here, but if someone wants to show "superior" wrestling outside the scope of ph drills or demos, why not find the absolute best comps in the local area? just random jacket wrestling tournaments should have some good ex HS or even college (or even USA NCAA D1) level grapplers. they will be far better athletes and grapplers on average.

[wayne hansen]

This is Perth WA
Is not like the states where wrestling is big
Wrestling is not part of the school curriclum
I don’t think the Village guys come off well here either in manners or skill
The locals are too polite and timid
I think if there was a second encounter they might come off better

[everything]

i guess the offending guest is from China? should be lots of good grapplers available. I guess possibly/probably it's too hard to "not lose face" if you have a famous name and want to go work on wrestling with actual wrestlers. "beating up" ph hippies makes you "lose face" more, though. lose-lose situation.

[Quigga]

The teachers also could have some balls and step up to the challenge. Oh, oh, me first!

Yet if you have the arrogance in you to break someone's arm or similar over losing face, I got the the fitting song for you.

[Bhassler]

I think it was a setup from the start. I could have predicted exactly what would happen just knowing who was involved and what lineage they were. If it was not outright politics, the best that could be said for the organizer is that he's a complete idiot.

[Doc Stier]

With all due respect to Teacher Chen, in every other major TCC style, what was demonstrated there would be seen as competitive wrestling, not as tui-shou (push hands).

Additionally, there is no martial virtue (wu-de) in aggressively dominating compliant and less skilled partners with excessive forcefulness, and with little or no concern for the partner's safety or potential injury.

As such, imo, this type of demonstration would seem to be primarily intended to gratify the teacher's ego and to intimidate everyone who agrees to interact with him so he can accomplish exactly that.

That said, did he actually succeed in making himself look good or bad on the whole, all things considered? I would say the latter, but what do you think?

[Quigga]

I don't like the smug look on his face the instant they start pushing. Chen's face

Yes yes I get all the livelihood and reputation, been close to homelessness many times

But if you actually had to gather and incorporate the knowledge during times of suffering, you'd view it more as a gift for all instead of a pissing contest

You in general

[Formosa Neijia]

Two things:
1. some of the Chen village people are real assholes. One of the "four Buddha attendants" is a literal gangster that uses thugs to beat people up. I've been saying this for years and no one wants to believe it because they haven't dealt with it directly. Some of them are incredibly arrogant and won't miss a chance to show it. Many of these recent videos show "push hands bullies" whose whole job is to go around intimidating others, throw teachers out of prime teaching spots in the parks, close down other schools, etc. At the 50:00 mark in the podcast Gawain Sue says they told him this is how it is in China.

If you have experience in this style of PH you know instantly whether or not the opponent also has such experience and ....every...single...time I've seen these clips, the Western opponent has ZERO such experience and is a lamb being led to slaughter. The reaction in all these clips is way over the top, the level of force being used is excessive and deliberate. CZQ and his ilk did this on purpose. He got in there because the student wasn't slamming the Westerners fast or hard enough. Watch the clip closely and you'll see every single time, the Chen people have a superior position and the other side doesn't even know it. The Chens even pause occasionally because they expect the opponent to react and the opponent doesn't. the Chen guy kind of doesn't believe it because in China PH tourneys no one would just allow that to happen and then goes through with the technique with a lot more power than is necessary.

2. This is Gawain Sue from the southern mantis branch taught by the controversial Henry Sue and his brother Malcolm. Malcolm invented this combined style that incorporates taiji into it. Look at the podcast where they talk about the incident. These white hippie libtards in the school think the Chinese are all about peace, love, and being at one with the TAO and instead they got subjected to a very different but real aspect of Chinese culture. Call it "enlightenment by concrete." The woman on the right is especially annoying with her "we practice to maximize human development" bullshit (she says she's a therapist so she views everything through therapy) and as she goes on and on about it, Gawain Sue at the 47:00 mark says he's about to cry. This is the problem with taiji in the West -- it's nothing but hippy-dippy bullshit. This taoist/Cheng Manching crap permeates and ruins taiji and people keep getting shown this over and over and over and they still don't get it. The conclusion of the podcast is they still aren't hippy enough.

[Quigga]

Not saying you don't need a good stream
Flow is important in a pissing contest

Thanks for sharing Neijiosa

[Formosa Neijia]

With all due respect to Teacher Chen, in every other major TCC style, what was demonstrated there would be seen as competitive wrestling, not as tui-shou (push hands).

Granted this was called a push hands demo so the level of force is off the charts but moving push hands tourneys have real honest-to-God throwing (throws ARE in taiji too!), not the fairy crap you see here in the States and the rest of the West.

Additionally, there is no martial virtue (wu-de) in aggressively dominating compliant and less skilled partners with excessive forcefulness, and with little or no concern for the partner's safety or potential injury. As such, imo, this type of demonstration would seem to be primarily intended to gratify the teacher's ego and to intimate everyone who agrees to interact with him so he can accomplish exactly that.

That said, did he actually succeed in making himself look good or bad on the whole, all things considered? I would say the latter, but what do you think?

Was Genghis Khan concerned with wude? It's all Sun-tzu: you feed the enemy a line of bull about wude this and wude that to disarm them then go in and slam them with superior force.

What's missing is how this will be played in China -- "look! We just destroyed another group of pansy Westerners!" This will make the rounds of Chinese social media and will play VERY WELL there.