One of the senior students had been eying me a bit suspiciously (I was sitting on a bench - this was, after all, a public park - nearby and had been watching for a while.) I smiled at him so as we had made eye contact, he came over. I asked him what they were doing and he told me it was a form of old longfist and the teacher was from the mainland. I asked if it would be feasible to feel the force that was bouncing the other students around and he said no in what I took to be a rather unfriendly way. I said OK and walked off
sorry to hear your experience was less then good.
Some teachers are open others are not, kinda depends I guess on a lot of things.
Even in commercial schools. In the CMA gym I practiced in long ago in San Francisco,
when we had visitors depending on the visitors the instructors would just keep the class sitting in a horse stance until they got broad and left.
In Beijing, in one of the many parks many Chinese would stop by to look and watch us getting tossed and whatnot. They would come up to my teacher and ask if it was faked.
He would laugh, and say "yes its fake, they are faking it" this was in reference to come kong jin type of practices. They would laugh, he smiled, they left and we went back to practice.
We had other visitors, the teacher would tell one of his senor students to deal with it....Watching it was not good. as the unlucky person would get bounced around, thrown out and then handed off to other students so he could feel the work.
I was told this happened with some chen students who came by when the teacher wasnt there.
The older students handled them...they brought back their teachers a couple of days later...after watching my teacher they mentioned that there was nothing they could do....and left...wasnt exactly sure what that meant it was all in Chinese. My sense was that the arts where quite different maybe they felt what they had wouldn't work out to well on my teacher hard to say.
In the parks if one is watching intently as maybe you were considering the topic of this thread it might make what happened more understandable.
My classmate while in SF tended to treat all visitors as challenges, a bit unfair I felt but a lot of the people did just want to try him out.
this would be all styles doing what ever they wanted...
Zhao attracts players from all other styles as well as beginners with little or no prior training. At 52, he does no exercise or even forms. He just pushes hands with anyone and everyone who comes by. I have seen men in their prime, twenty years younger than Zhao and twice his weight, with years and years of formal training go rolling off with big grins on their face
and others who where not so happy...
I had warned him about this, telling him its not china....some might come back here they use guns.