salcanzonieri wrote:1. Okay, SO, the YANG CHENG FU long form very closely follows the standard Chen Lao Jia long form.
But should it?
What if, what if, the Chen didn't have anything really put together at the time that Yang family's TJQ was getting popular and they followed the Yang long form and retrofitted it?
Because, in some parts of the older versions of Chen Fake's Lao Jia, he has a few extra postures that are clearly found in the Tai Tzu Chang Quan form, but the standard Chen Lao Jia form just glosses past them, when he in fact makes a point of showing them clearly.
What if, what if, ancient aliens invented Taijiquan and taught it to Zhang Sanfeng? One can "explore" any what-if one choses, but that doesn't make it plausible or factual - or necessarily worth investigating.
Is there ANY evidence to plausibly suggest that "Chen didn't have anything really put together at the time the Yang family's TJQ was getting popular"? There is evidence that the Chen's did. In your conjecture, are you refuting that evidence?
The Chen family states that CFK added back into his version of Lao Jia several postures from the original 5 (or 7) shorter forms. Since it was his addition, why would other variants of the family's form include those? How/why is that evidence that "Chen didn't have anything really put together..."?
2. Also, after reviewing so, so many "Original" Yang, Imperial Yang, Palace Yang, and like 10 other ones claiming to have an older Yang Long form that was close to what Yang Lu Chan taught, NONE OF THEM at all use this Shaolin frame that Chen Fake/Yang Chen Fu TJQ does.
WOULDN'T they being "older" be MORE like Chen style, hence following the Chen postures closer? But NO, none of them do at all. What does this mean?
And, what about the ones that do? For example, Earl Montague's "original YLC" form has the same sequence as Chen and YCF forms? You conveniently ignore the ones that don't support your thesis?
3. AND, the interesting thing about the Wu/Hao TJQ style is that it is even more like Shaolin than the Yang and Chen styles. Both the founders of Yang and this Wu style were friends and they both learned Shaolin Hong Quan first. That is a fact. I can see some parts of Hong Quan in the Wu/Hao Style added in that are not in the Chen/Yang (although there is plenty in there already) and besides that, the Wu/Hao TJQ style not only moves with the body mechanics of but also incorporates postures from Shaolin Rou Quan. I can clearly see it.
Also, 95% of the Wu/Hao long form follows the same frame as the Chen/Yang long form, they are all just variations of the same stuff.
I can't follow the point you are trying to make. Wu/Hao is "even more like Shaolin than the Yang and Chen styles", but "95% of the Wu/Hao" is the same as Chen/Yang? What point are you trying to make?
I have nothing against exploring the history and ancestry, but "random" conjecture and conspiracy theory stuff isn't very productive.
Feng Zhiqiang included in his version of the Chen-based saber form, two moves from Classical Chinese opera. He included them because he liked them. If you did not have first-hand knowledge of why he included those moves, should we conjecture that the inclusion of these moves indicates that his form has roots that are the same as or are derived from Chinese opera? Perhaps, in a 100 years, after everyone who actually knew Feng has gone, people will conjecture just that, that the origins of Feng's form is Chinese opera.