Bruce Franzis - Hsing I & I Chuan - 11 CD set...

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Re: Bruce Franzis - Hsing I & I Chuan - 11 CD set...

Postby Bao on Thu Mar 28, 2019 1:24 am

so I'm not sure how he learned high level anything. And lastly, who ACTUALLY believes that he learned most of it through Qi transmission??


Just look at him and what he does. Is he a good example of what he speaks about? When he speaks or show things, does he look relaxed? Balanced? Calm? Have you ever watched him perform anything of the "advanced" stuff he is talking about? Have you ever watched anything from him that looks particularly advanced? Maybe I've missed something or maybe I am not advanced enough to "get it" ( ;D ), but nothing I've ever watched him do on vids has impressed me.

I know a group that invited him a few times to teach, but especially the women absolutely hated him and how he treated people. So if he got something trough Qi transmission, I have a strong feeling that Wude was not amongst the things he received.
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Re: Bruce Franzis - Hsing I & I Chuan - 11 CD set...

Postby GrahamB on Thu Mar 28, 2019 4:24 am

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Re: Bruce Franzis - Hsing I & I Chuan - 11 CD set...

Postby xingyijesse on Sat Mar 30, 2019 7:19 am

I think it's very telling that the kindest things people say about him is that they "picked up a few things that helped" like Jess did earlier. That seems very strange for so many people who spent a lot of time with him to say the same thing. He bills himself as the best master but people only get tips and tricks? To the gentleman who said Liu's Palm changes were 'different', with respect they aren't just different, it's exactly the same as a totally unrelated style. You can look at a video of Di Guoyang doing the 7th change and it's almost EXACT. Brice shared a vid of someone doing a totally different style and called it Cheng style
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Re: Bruce Franzis - Hsing I & I Chuan - 11 CD set...

Postby D_Glenn on Sat Mar 30, 2019 10:05 am

edededed wrote:I remember reading on the Web somewhere how Frank Allen (one of Bruce's earlier students) visited Zhu Baozhen, who shared memories of Liu Hongjie with him. Liu Hongjie was apparently Liu Zhenlin's top student, and Zhu also learned with Liu, which was the linkage. (I don't think Liu Zhenlin took disciples, i.e. he was just teaching people who baishi'ed to others, as many do.) This is the only time I have heard of bagua people knowing him Beijing, but one is better than none!

Liu Hongjie's palm changes looking different does not mean much - most Cheng styles only really share the first 3 or so palm changes anyway. Yin styles differ much more.

It would be interesting if anyone in Wu style knows of Liu Hongjie, too, but with most of the old masters passed away now, it is probably too hard to find. Maybe Frank found more in his travels.

I don’t know the exact details but my teacher said something along the lines that a young Liu Hongjie had done something, like trying to study under two teachers at the same time and getting caught, but not being a naturally talented fighter made him no threat, so he was tolerated has a hanger-on or a fan boy in the bagua community. So Liu Zhenlin opting to teach him totally makes sense.

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Re: Bruce Franzis - Hsing I & I Chuan - 11 CD set...

Postby xingyijesse on Sat Mar 30, 2019 5:42 pm

Do you remember who he was trying to study under? I'm super curious if he can be solidly proven to have been trained and in what school. Thanks!
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Re: Bruce Franzis - Hsing I & I Chuan - 11 CD set...

Postby grzegorz on Sun Mar 31, 2019 3:41 pm

I trained him years ago and I still find the things I learned useful.

He doesn't claim that he mastered everything or knows everything but somehow his students are convinced that he is the authority on all things CMA.

I also found similar inconsistencies in China and heard stories but since CMA is so political it's hard to know what actually happened. It became obvious that there are teachers in China who are jealous of BKF's success. So in BKF's defense perhaps that jealousy plays a role in people trying to discredit him.

What seemed clear to me though was that there is and was lot more that is not getting passed on to his students. For example in the Wu style the slow form or long form is just the beginning and the stuff that follows isn't just a bunch of forms. When I brought this up to people I had known for as long as I can remember they didn't want to hear any of it.

One even attempted to publically shame me here online. Needless to say people choose to believe what they want to believe. When it comes to BKF confirmation bias will always kick in.

What I tell people is that there are good honest people who are not trying to get rich and want to pass on true complete systems of Chinese martial arts but these people are not marketing geniuses and don't attract the crowds.
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Re: Bruce Franzis - Hsing I & I Chuan - 11 CD set...

Postby xingyijesse on Sun Mar 31, 2019 7:10 pm

Thanks so much for the input although I wasn't bagging on whatever skills he has. I was more pointing out the untrue claims that have been made over time. I totally get when you say his students are taking it a bit far, though. I've also not heard of anyone trying to take him down from overseas, it always seemed more like them telling about their bad experience. In the grand scheme of things, no one gets wildly successful teaching IMA and I think their groups overseas are solid enough that they aren't jealous. Sorry they gave you a hard time, though
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Re: Bruce Franzis - Hsing I & I Chuan - 11 CD set...

Postby grzegorz on Sun Mar 31, 2019 8:31 pm

No worries Jesse. In text it can be hard to communicate emtion.

To be clear I don't associate with my old school so I am not offended in any way and I respect anyone who does research on perspective teachers.

Overseas I did meet people jealous of his success but I think it was also that he isn't Chinese type of thing yet he became rich from Chinese martial arts.

I also heard Liu did teach during communism and had students in Beijing whereas in the book Liu is made out to be a hermit (yet he was still known in the martial arts community decades later) because he was angry at the commies and refused to be apart of society yet anyone who knows Chinese culture knows being a hermit to the Chinese is worse than death and being a hermit in the middle of Beijing is virtually impossible.

But I am not just addressing Jesse. When I was young I enjoyed BKF's tell it like is attitude but in time I realized that how you treat people matters and influences other people and the students.

Teachers I have had since then were good people but were honest and not manipulative as a result didn't get same "sales."
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Re: Bruce Franzis - Hsing I & I Chuan - 11 CD set...

Postby GrahamB on Tue Apr 02, 2019 8:28 am

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Re: Bruce Franzis - Hsing I & I Chuan - 11 CD set...

Postby edededed on Fri Apr 05, 2019 6:25 am

D_Glenn wrote:
edededed wrote:I remember reading on the Web somewhere how Frank Allen (one of Bruce's earlier students) visited Zhu Baozhen, who shared memories of Liu Hongjie with him. Liu Hongjie was apparently Liu Zhenlin's top student, and Zhu also learned with Liu, which was the linkage. (I don't think Liu Zhenlin took disciples, i.e. he was just teaching people who baishi'ed to others, as many do.) This is the only time I have heard of bagua people knowing him Beijing, but one is better than none!

Liu Hongjie's palm changes looking different does not mean much - most Cheng styles only really share the first 3 or so palm changes anyway. Yin styles differ much more.

It would be interesting if anyone in Wu style knows of Liu Hongjie, too, but with most of the old masters passed away now, it is probably too hard to find. Maybe Frank found more in his travels.

I don’t know the exact details but my teacher said something along the lines that a young Liu Hongjie had done something, like trying to study under two teachers at the same time and getting caught, but not being a naturally talented fighter made him no threat, so he was tolerated has a hanger-on or a fan boy in the bagua community. So Liu Zhenlin opting to teach him totally makes sense.

.


Interesting - this is only the 2nd time I heard of someone knowing of Liu! In Bruce's book he was a student of Cheng Youlong's school, I think, I forget under whom though...

In general, the palms that we can see from Bruce's school look unique and not that much like other Cheng style schools. Just because one palm that Liu demonstrated in that video looks a bit like a Liang style palm does not mean much when the other palms look totally different!
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Re: Bruce Franzis - Hsing I & I Chuan - 11 CD set...

Postby D_Glenn on Fri Apr 05, 2019 10:18 am

I wish I could add something more significant, but the story comes from Dr. Xie’s birthday party back in 2000 and 75 westerners from all over the world had went to Beijing. Some students of BKF were asking about him and Liu, and I was just casually eavesdropping on what was said. All the Chinese had heard about BKF through the rumor mill, and coming to Beijing and basically putting out an open challenge to every Bagua school, before he even started meeting people, only ensured that he would never meet anyone good. And Liu, being on the outside himself, jumped at the chance to maybe get some respect. I can’t elaborate more, but I do remember that those guys were not happy with the answers that they got.

.
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Re: Bruce Franzis - Hsing I & I Chuan - 11 CD set...

Postby xingyijesse on Sat Apr 06, 2019 9:53 am

To the guy talking about how Liu's Palm looked a bit different, I may have not explained it right. It was literally the same Palm taught by Di Guoyang in Beijing and it's specifically NOT Cheng style. It is the 7th Palm change from Liang style and I think you brought up a good point the BK doesn't teach it, he teaches really strange Palm changes that aren't similar to any other style. Bagua isn't a huge community and all of the styles show where they came from, look at Gao palms vs Cheng palms. Different lineage but clear similarities are there. It's kinda obvious that he didn't know what he was looking at and mis-identified it, especially considering he never learned that and has never taught it to students. You can't really believe that his lineage has one random palm that's exactly the same as a totally different style but the rest of the palms are completely unique. Right????
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Re: Bruce Franzis - Hsing I & I Chuan - 11 CD set...

Postby grzegorz on Sun Apr 07, 2019 3:31 am

D_Glenn wrote:I wish I could add something more significant, but the story comes from Dr. Xie’s birthday party back in 2000 and 75 westerners from all over the world had went to Beijing. Some students of BKF were asking about him and Liu, and I was just casually eavesdropping on what was said. All the Chinese had heard about BKF through the rumor mill, and coming to Beijing and basically putting out an open challenge to every Bagua school, before he even started meeting people, only ensured that he would never meet anyone good. And Liu, being on the outside himself, jumped at the chance to maybe get some respect. I can’t elaborate more, but I do remember that those guys were not happy with the answers that they got.

.


We do know that he did the same in Taiwan and supposedly even made the paper? Professor John Wang talks about it and respects what he did.

But in the mainland I imagine it wouldn't go over so well considering that in the PRC at that time (and today) people generally try to lay low and keep out of the spotlight because if you offend the wrong people things will go badly for you.

This at the core of Chinese culture. Chinese friends, unlike westerners, go out of their way not to offend each others unfortunately though sometimes it goes the other way where an insignificant nothing can turn into a deep loss of face.

I can remember someone wanted to train with a teacher and he got a little jealous at other students and showed a little bit of frustration at the teacher without saying a word needless to say that teacher stopped training that student.

When I got back to the States I met a teacher from Taiwan who I got on well with. He was impressed that I went to China and being that I had no money he offered to teach me for free. Unfortunately at the time I could not accept and when I told the instructor he basically wouldn't have anything to do with me from then on.

Needless to say the Chinese don't tolerate headaches. So although we will never know what actually happened if a Westerner challenged the Chinese Kungfu community immediately after the cultural revolution I would not be surprised that for some teachers the opportunity to learn just ended.

For a martial arts school in the mainland training isn't just a transaction. It's much more like joining a fraternity or a union, if they don't like what they see they won't teach you the real stuff.
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Re: Bruce Franzis - Hsing I & I Chuan - 11 CD set...

Postby .Q. on Tue Apr 09, 2019 3:36 pm

xingyijesse wrote:Shoot, the Yizong book that just came out spends a bit if time trashing BK as well, for manners, etc.

What book is this? I don't know of any Yizong specific book so am curious.

Edit: Forgot I actually have an Yizong Xingyi book but I don't think it's the one being mentioned.
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Re: Bruce Franzis - Hsing I & I Chuan - 11 CD set...

Postby JessOBrien on Wed Apr 10, 2019 11:32 am

Another BKF thread has come back to life! Seems like even people who dislike him can't stop thinking about him. Lol.

Since I'm one of the folks here who've practiced with him recently, I suppose I could chime in to help with the questions. Although I'm not sure the questioners are actually interested in much more thank making their own point.

XingyiJesse- I assume you are also Stone Tiger from the past? Good to see you are still active & training. I've seen some of Byron's posts on Facebook, seems like he knows what he's talking about. I also know there were a lot of tournaments in the 1920's but since i have no first hand data, I'll take his word for it. Nor do I know what's up with the Bagua Association in Beijing. But Liu didn't teach many people after the 1960's so I can see why they don't have much on him, or care about him whatsoever.

The 7th palm that Liu taught looks similar to many palm changes that I've seen in a variety of baguazhang styles. In visiting many schools over the years I've found that there is great variety, even among members of the same traditions. This isn't the same as Liang style, but since that system draws from combined Cheng and Yin Fu styles, as did Liu's I'm not surprised that they are similar.

Kumar has made a lot of people mad over the years. That's probably why he decided to simply stick with his last teacher's system and leave out the rest. But from what I've seen he did train with the people he listed, during the years he listed. Beyond that I'm not really able to comment on a public board. If you want to call him a douche, go for it. I've been called worse and I'm sure you have too.

Kumar told me he used to go meditate at White Could Temple in Beijing sometimes when he lived there. He did not recieve instruction there.

Kumar speaks fluent Chinese and I've seen him use that language with native speakers on numerous occasions inside and outside of martial arts events. He may have used translators in the 70's, I've never asked him about that. And I'm not sure why anyone would care.

In terms of "qi transmission" lots of Buddhist and Taoist people are into that kind of thing. Most martial arts schools don't deal with that. Liu's did. It's a simple as that. Whether anyone believes it or not is entirely up to them.

Finally, I said I learned some good things from him that served me quite well in full contact sparring. I think his system has many great elements. But it certainly isn't for everyone. I am a bit concerned that you seem to have a personal stake in disproving his claims or whatever. That seems like a fruitless and negative path to follow. But I'll do my best to offer any firsthand info to people who are interested.
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