Chen Xiaoxing teaching

[ors]

Yeah, I am sure you are right, but I had to add, I had some kind of similar play with a guy, who was totally misunderstood what tuishou is all about, and was trying his best to hit me like that guy with CXW. He was a kind of classmate of me and the whole thing was on a regular training session... I gave it up raised his hands and said all right, you win, let's change partners....

But that wasn't a kind of competition or challenge...

Örs

[BrianK]

ors: I understand the difficulties CXW has in trying to spread his art to international students he may see once a year. Still, those same difficulties are faced by Luo Dexiu, Mykhail Ryabhko (sp?), Li Tai Liang, Su Dong Chen, and others whose IMA seminar footage seem to show more "martial" stuff than the Chen guys. My teacher has been impressed when he's hosted Chen Bing, and I would like to make it to one of his seminars.

It seems to me the Chen curriculum leaves little time for fighting. I've heard tales of Chen Fake developing his skill through 30 reps of Lao jia yilu a day. I've heard CXW state how he developed his fajin capability by using every posture in Lao jia as a zhuang, till he could instantly fajin from any of them. These practices develop a great foundation for gongfu, but you have to learn to put it into action. It all seems like what Bruce Lee called "Doing something about fighting" as opposed to fighting. My perspective is limited by it being my perspective, however.

In CXW's defense, my teacher says the Liao Bai (is that the guy's name?) incident bothered him a great deal, and he has since grown quite leary of having certain things filmed.

Brian

[mrtoes]

"That video" says nothing to me, one way or the other. It's a minute of CXW and some other bloke playing with some very limited push hands under no set rules and under an unknown (or contested) context. I really don't understand the fuss about it personally?

The curse of the internet I guess...

Matthew.

[GrahamB]

That video didn't show him in a good light, but at the same time I totally appreciate what Ors is saying - if you want to 'push hands' but the other guy doesn't want to 'push hands' back then you get what was in that video. The other guy was a XingYi guy. He looked like a XingYi guy trying to do push hands - i.e. simply jumping in with strikes and pretending they are pushes. I don't think the video really says that much about either of them.

[roger hao]

Chris -
Sorry to say something critical then go away.
Your point is well taken - just seems like the wrong instance to
bring it up - based on those clips.

Andy -
Absolutely - I stand by my statement. If I see those postures
I instantly know that they have not absorbed even the most fundamental
lessons. Please re-watch the Tornado kick segment. No offense to the person
in white but he appears the fool. Chen Xiaoxing is asking him to try it and he scratches
his head. I have been doing that pretty well since watching the vid just to re-affirm
to myself.

[Chris McKinley]

roger,

No problem. RE: "Your point is well taken - just seems like the wrong instance to bring it up - based on those clips.". Why? My point is on a much larger, more general scope and scale than just what is on those clips. Even still, the clips are representative of my point, making it perfectly appropriate to bring it up.

Doc Stier ineffectively used sarcasm to make the point that, if certain modern Chen-style practitioners have some functional fighting ability, they most likely learned it from their teachers, ostensibly the current-generation Chen masters, implying a lessening of the point that those masters really don't exhibit any remarkable fighting ability in public.

I say "ineffectively" because a select few younger modern practitioners having fighting ability in no way requires nor necessarily even implies that the current masters themselves gave the fighters all of their abilities or even that they have the capability to do so. It's actually a separate consideration altogether and, I might add, a healthy one. Whether or not the current standard bearers actually have significant fighting ability commensurate with their reputations and simply don't ever publicly show it, or they simply don't have it and have been reduced to nothing more than shen fa experts...either way it's still very good that at least some of these younger Chen stylists have taken it upon themselves to develop some of that skill. Here's hoping that the trend catches on.

[Andy_S]

Brian:

SNIP
In CXW's defense, my teacher says the Liao Bai (is that the guy's name?) incident bothered him a great deal, and he has since grown quite leary of having certain things filmed.
SNIP

Rather a shame that his reaction was to grow leary of things being filmed, rather than refocussing his own training to do more interactive partner work instead of simply teaching/demonstrating apps.

Ors:

I largely agree with you: I don't think wrestling is the acme of Taiji skill. However, what wrestling does give you, is a format to test out certain skills in a competitive format, and work with an opponent's full-on force. If you can wrestle well, then add in the short fajings (elbows to head, punches to groin, etc) and add the qinna as the icing on the cake, you have a pretty decent close-range fighting method. As for pure wrestling: Watching Chen Ziqiang (who is about 5' 7" and weighs about 150 lbs, I'd say) effortlessly countering and tossing a 6 foor, 200 lb Aussie bouncer around - after letting the guy get first hold and put him in a disadvantageous position (!) - is impressive.

All this having been said, there is, IMHO, still a lack of kick-punch range fighting in the village method (and, of course, also a lack of ground fighting, but that affects all CMA).

What method does your teacher - or Feng Ziqiang - use to inculcate Taiji fighting?

Personally, I don't believe that doing set routines of PH gives you much in the way of combative skill though it builds some useful attributes in terms of sensitivity, timing, leading and following, and is a decent platform to practice qinna from. I also think think the current shuia PH tourneys are far, far superior to some of the PH tourneys we see outside China, in which a guy wins by pushing or pulling the other guy off his stance. The former are a fight (of sorts); the latter are not.

[ors]

Andy!

I don't know too much about Feng laoshi's methods. I only know, what my teacher teaches, and that is a quite interesting method. I have some understanding in it but not too much, I have to say, but I think (since I have seen it some other schools as well) it is quite a traditional way. Firstly we train the set tuishou routines naturally. After a while we begin to practice a more free kind of tuishou, what is called moushou, or "smoothing hands" (I think). In this we are allowed to use more and more technics and the distance of the the two bodies are increasing, as the skills developed. First the bodies are connecting later the arms more later we keep a distance betwwen us. This way we goes to a play what is called "lan cai hua" what is soemthing like controlled fighting or "semi contact" fighting, and at the end san da with protectors, what is not teached in the avarage groups of my teacher's yet.
This way you can develope the needed shenfa in a close ranged continous contacted play which is later evolving into a more free, wider play with the keeping of this shenfa.
I have to add, that this moushou in a relatively higher level (where the foot technics and throw technics are also involved) can be very similar to the shuai tuishou, you can see in a competition.
My teacher said that the "small step" from moushou to lan cai hua is quite important. In the first you can learn how to allow your partner's force comming in to your body, while in the second you not allowe this happen any more....

Something like this. For more details come to Hungary! Just kidding. Is it similar to your school's?

Cheers!

Örs

[ors]

Oh! And I think that Chen Ziqiang is very good indeed! Very impressive! Just as his father...

Örs

[BrianK]

Andy: I agree that becoming more secretive is not the right approach, and does nothing for the reputation of Chen TJQ when the standard bearer "turtles up" under criticism. Master Chen comes from a different culture than I, and I don't pretend to have his perspective. Still, when we live in a time in which many other MAs put their goods up publicly, it can certainly look like a copout.

[Andy_S]

Ors:

Sounds like a good approach, though IMHO, there should be full-power shuia PH in there at some point too. We do set patterns, then move to shuiao PH. There is no out-of-contact fighting or sanda in the Chen XX method or our school (though I hear a lot of Chen people saying, "Eventually, you move from PH to sanda...well, I have yet to see it). This is a shame and a hole in the training. We occassionally do application drills, though there is more emphasis on wrestling techniques. Outside the formal class structure, I and a few of the senior guys (with other MA exp) also practice qinna from grabs, entries, bridges, etc, and generally play around. Nobody gloves up and goes for it though, and I (at 43) am a bit beyond that myself: My MT days are behind me.

I last visited Hungary in 1993, but if I come again, you can be sure I will contact you.

BrianK:

I don't think it is a copout by the teachers: They don't really claim to teach a fighting art, they claim to teach their clan's Taiji, which is - in the 21st century - a very different thing. I am not sure why Chen XW is showing these rather silly. from-out-of-contact qinna moves - you'd have to ask him that yourself. I did not mean that Chen XW was being secretive, I meant that he was unwilling to change his own training methods toward something more combative. And indeed, he - and the other major village masters - make a very, very nice living teaching a non-combative curriculum globally.

The broader problem I see is:
(1) Students of Chen Taiji expecting eventually to get something from these men which is simply not there;
(2) Students believing with zero empirical basis that they have the goods when they blatantly dont. A recent, popular Eng lang book about Chen Taiji talks a lot about how it is the real Taiji combat art, and has an appendix with reams of stories of fighting Chen masters, but has not got a single detail (let alone a chapter) on how fighting skills are meant to be developed.

I should add that I am only talking about the 19th generation village masters. Chen Yu in Beijing is a different kettle of fish as far as apps go (though I have seen no sanda) and as noted, the younger, 20th generation peeps in the village have a strong enough background in shuia PH to form a very respectable fighting foundation.

When I was in the village last year, a friend and I had scheduled some shuia PH privates with Chen Zijun. I think Chen Ziqiang, who was teaching a class at the same time, was pretty surprised that foreigners were interested enough to pay for technical instruction this - though he was happy to wrestle with them. After our lesson was over, a South African girl (who had a solid MA background) and who had been at the village school for several months invited me to do some wrestling with her just so she could show Chen Ziqiang that she was interested in fighting. After he saw that she was, he took her onto the floor and started working with her.

The above having been said....I am pretty sure that Chen XX could defend himself, if necessary, against most of what one realistically expects to encounter on 'da streetz:' He has power, technique, sensitivity.

But he is not a fighter and does not compare to those who are.

[GrahamB]

Andy - do you deliberately put double-entendres into everything you write? You cheeky sausage.

[Andy_S]

Graham Old Fruit:

No, it was nothing intentional, it must have been a Freudian slip that - somehow - squeezed through a crack. As a hack yerself, you will be aware that the scribbling game is a slippery slope that requires a firm hand and a solid grip on the fundamentals, so I am a bit concerned; in fact I am all a-quiver.

Seriously, what have I done this time?

[GrahamB]

You've really got to stop slipping them in there old man!

[BrianK]

Andy: I agree that CXW might look into training his art in a more combative manner. Maybe between sets of lao jia yi lu, er lu, xin jia yi lu, er lu, jian, dao, double jian, double dao, dadao, gun, qiang, extended zhan zhuang sessions, single push hand, double push hands, da liu, picking flowers freely, chan su jin sets, etc., he might want to work in a little sparring. His system is pretty massive to not include even a little san da.

I disagree that Chen shi TJQ is not presented as martial material. My early Chen training was Chen Quanzhong lineage stuff, and I was told the Chen method was more systematic than other IMAs, and their internal body method could be applied to fighting more quickly for that reason. I was told that properly developed chan su jin could easily overcome any "dumb" force in a grappling situation. There was a little false advertising (though I haven't heard as much of that from CXW line guys).

Brian