Doc Stier wrote: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 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?
I think CZQ comes off looking like a goon, mostly because he is a goon.
Formosa Neijia wrote: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. :D
Sue has an official branch of Chen Zhonghua's Practical Method school-- you can find him listed on the website. As you yourself have pointed out, CZH's guys do well in push hands tourneys, and typically show well against people who do the village style. CZQ's guys weren't being too nice-- they didn't throw Sue's guys because they couldn't. CZQ got embarrassed that his guys couldn't do anything, which is exactly what Sue wanted. As I said, it was a setup. CZQ made it worse by jumping in himself and beating up students when his own students weren't up to the task, which gives Sue the double benefit of having his students look more competent than CZQ's and also getting to take the high road as the "victim". It's a bunch of political bullshit between arrogant teachers with potentially clueless students as the fodder.
I've also heard stories about certain famous members of the Chen family. I don't generally repeat them because it's all hearsay, but I will call CZQ a goon because I met him and, in my opinion, he is a goon.
