It is my understanding , once an art is designated an “ intangible cultural heritage “, it pretty much becomes regulated by the governing bodies. The forms become standardized, and cannot be taught differently under any circumstance, all teachers must present and teach the same curriculum. IMO, the true art can be lost under such accords. Please , anyone correct me if I am wrong.
No, not at all. As one of the videos above is my uncle, Ma Chuanxu, I can clearly tell you, that what you think is not actually what will happen. The Liang Bagua family governs itself, and all of my uncles, and my teacher teach the curriculum that they were taught by Li Ziming, and each has his own focus and methods thereof.
What is happening in China is that the government is trying to boost "nationalist pride" by trying to highlight such things in different areas. So they approach legitimate teachers in an area and try do things like these videos to highlight this, but thats about as far as it goes. The teachers generally dont care much........
It seems they contacted the 2 formally established "research associations" in Beijing, namely the Xingyi Quan research Association and the Bagua Zhang Research Association and asked them to put forward a person each. The Bagua Research Association of course put forward Uncle Ma, as being the most senior practitioner in Beijing right now, and the oldest student of Li Ziming, who established the association. The Xingyi research Association head is Zhang Zengji and of course he put himself forward. The Xingyi research association has been a pile of poop for a number of years now by the way...I am no fan of Zhang....