Chen Weiming's student Lin Pingyao Taiji

[Bob]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HHzL-0brVc

Chen Weiming's Taij



Interesting pushing hands below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cORKE2HivB0

Su Qingbiao Yang's old frame compact boxing + push hands performance

[Bao]

Liked his performance very much. It's smooth, continuous and you can evidently see how he uses his back.

[Bob]

Chen Weiming's form is interesting - many years back I spent about a year learning from someone with a direct line into the Yang Cheng Fu line - I
absolutely make no claim to having any deep level training in that line but I recall many of the subtilties of the alignment and posture requirements.

However, if you look closely at Chen Weiming's form you can see subtle differences which gives one an insight as to how Yang Chengfu's art changed and evolved - e.g. brush knee and the palm strike or play pipa

[wayne hansen]

Didn’t Chen also train Ba Kua with Sun

[Bob]

He may have but don't know how long or how deeply skilled he was and whether it influenced his taijiquan - good question

[wayne hansen]

I remember reading he was one of Suns best students

[Bob]

You are correct Wayne - according to Barbara Davis's translations of Chen Weiming Taiji Sword and Other Writings Chen Weiming studied both bagua and xingyi under Sun Lutang and it appears that this occurred in Beijing, however, Chen Weiming established his taijiquan school in Shanghai and studied under Yang Chengfu in Shanghai. Although there is no reference to Chen Weiming being one of Sun Lutang's better student. I suspect you are correct in his skill level otherwise it would have been more difficult for Chen Weiming to become a disciple of Yang Chengfu.

As a side note - Chen Weiming met General Li Jinglin in Shanghai and commented on Li Jinglin's Wudang Sword being almost the same as Yang Chengfu's sword with some minor differences. The taiji sword from Liu Yunqiao that I learned came from General Zhang Xiangwu. Zhang Xiangwu was under Li Jinglin's command as I understand it. Their sword, according to my old notes, came from Song Weiyi.

[wayne hansen]

It is interesting how different the Wu sword and other weapons are from Yang
I would love to know their history

[Trip]

An excerpt from Chen Weiming's preface
in his The Art of Taiji Boxing

I heard about the Taiji Boxing of the Wudang school when I was young, but I had not yet met anyone who knew the stuff. In 1915, I traveled to Hebei and got to meet Sun Lutang of Wan county, and I learned Xingyi and Bagua from him.

I heard my colleagues say that a Mr. Yang of Guangping inherited Taiji, and so in the autumn of 1917, I visited Yang Luchan’s grandson, Chengfu, meeting him informally, and I asked him, “People say the Yang family’s Taiji is the best but that you don’t lightly teach it to people. Is that the case?”

Yang smiled and said, “It’s not that I don’t teach it to people. I teach it to people who want it. My grandfather received it from the Chen family of Henan, and now it is about to be returned to a Chen. If you want it, I will not keep it from you.”

Thereupon I learned from him (Chengfu) for seven years, and his oral instruction in the postures of the Taiji Boxing solo set, as well as the large and small rollback, I have committed to writing in order to transmit it to the world.

https://brennantranslation.wordpress.co ... -quan-shu/

[Bao]

Yang smiled and said, “It’s not that I don’t teach it to people. I teach it to people who want it. ...If you want it, I will not keep it from you

I've read the book, I but didn't remember this quote. It's sort of funny, YCF had hundreds of people in his groups, but even he had a hard time finding good students who wanted "the real deal" or were dedicated enough to learn the whole art.

[origami_itto]

Bruh the taijiquan masters have been making the same complaints about 95% of Taijiquann students and teaching for at least the last 95 years.

[Bao]

Yes of course. Regardless of whatever it says something about why they taught the masses in one way and had only a few indoor students. The problem is that many half assed students use their teachers in marketing purposes. It’s the same today. Ppl attend seminars, mostly for beginners, or the average practitioner, and market themselves as a student of that teacher. That is one reason why the material can differ quite a lot from one teacher to another.

… Just rambling …

[Trip]

Yang smiled and said, “It’s not that I don’t teach it to people. I teach it to people who want it. ...If you want it, I will not keep it from you

I've read the book, I but didn't remember this quote. It's sort of funny, YCF had hundreds of people in his groups, but even he had a hard time finding good students who wanted "the real deal" or were dedicated enough to learn the whole art.

Thanks for the reminder!
Thumbs up for teasing this nuance out of my post.

[Pennykid]

I'm curious about Lin Pingyao's dropping into his forward steps. I thought one of the hallmarks of Yang Taijiquan is the "walking like a cat" idea.