Jou Tsung Hwa in his Younger Days

[Bob]

"The late Master Jou introduced the Chen style to americans with his book -The Dao of Taijiquan: Way to Rejuvenation. Here he is in 1981 in Harlem demonstrating with his students. He was a very nice..." as quoted from poster.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzBVOiUB ... re=related

[Formosa Neijia]

The late Master Jou introduced the Chen style to americans with his book -The Dao of Taijiquan: Way to Rejuvenation. Here he is in 1981 in Harlem demonstrating with his students. He was a very nice...

A very nice what?

Dave C.

[Bob]

David:

I didn't write that---it's copied from the person who posted the clip.

[Franklin]

The late Master Jou introduced the Chen style to americans with his book -The Dao of Taijiquan: Way to Rejuvenation. Here
he is in 1981 in Harlem demonstrating with his students. He was a very nice man and an excellent teacher. He could really use the Tai Chi to fight with and had an great understanding of the art. That he is no longer with us is a great loss. R.I.P.

http://www.taichifarm.org/Grandmaster...

there is the complete description from the youtube page

thanks for the clip..

interesting to watch... hopefully more footage of him will come out...
my first taiji teacher recommended reading his book...


franklin

[Bob]

In 1983 I started learning Yang's taiji in Lexington KY from Tom Phillips, a student of Jou's at Rutgers. I had a very good experience with Tom and later went to Jou's Tai Chi Farm for 4 summers although by the time I had gotten to the Farm, Jou's teachings had become a bit unorthodox. Unorthodox as they may have seemed, they served him well. Unfortunately I never made it to any of the Festivals and I wish I would have taken some seminars from the late B.P. Chan.

[charles]

In his older days...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0bw90UMOVs

[johnrieber]

mister jou sure looked funny when he was doing form. but he had a sense of the art that was based equally on a high-level knowledge of geometry and vectors (i forget how many math textbooks he wrote before he started studying taijiquan at the age of 49) and stuff-westerners-generally-consider-abstract classical concepts, including chi. and yeah, he was eccentric as hell. but he had classics-level skills.

and he was a very good teacher. and while i don't have quite the grounds for comparison that some folks on this board have had, i've been around for a while.

i've felt him demonstrate stuff that would get me laughed off this board, if i got into it. and i didn't want to believe in any of it at the time. i was a weight-lifting tussler at the time. twenty-some-odd years going on thirty later, i have yet to feel anyone neutralize and issue as transparently and powerfully. and that's not even getting into the stuff that would get me laughed off the board.

if you want to have a handle on his deal, though: he considered the historical development of taijiquan as an evolution from the obviously martial (chen) to the almost invisible (hao). and his ideal was that the next stage was formlessness. he believed that formlessness could be achieved by relentless (and entirely it's-up-to-you personal) problem-solving training based on the classic forms, the classics themselves, and taoist energy cultivation. the latter he took very seriously toward the car-crash end of his life. he didn't sleep much. he worked.

i also give him props and thank-yous for breaking down a lot of your-style-my-style/your-school-my-school barriers, in terms of the sharing of taijiquan in the states and maybe the world. those chang san feng festivals brought a lot of TCIMA stylists from all over together in an unprecedented way, and we all enjoy the benefit of that today.