Do you feel palace elite, security guard, mystical monks or other had real ability that would challenge fighters now days? If so why?
After many years, Wong Yan-Lam grew homesick and decided to return to Guangdong. He also decided that he finally wanted to accept students and teach Lama Pai. Upon arriving in Guangdong, he erected a large wooden stage and announced that he would accept any challenger to prove the effectiveness of Lama Pai. For the next 18 days, 150 of the area's best fighters were punched, kicked, thrown or strangled into submission. According to David Chin, "Either the challenger was maimed or killed. Wong never let one challenger leave his school without injury. He was a master of using the technique of cruelty."
The 438 of professional wrestlers at Shan Pu Ying (善扑营) belong to but one of the three capitol city garrisons. The one where Yang Luchan, Liu Zhijun, and Song Mailun taught at – Shen Ji Ying, had over 2,000 instructors/weapons experts who led the training of 30,000 strong palace guards. That plus the battle-hardened agents of Big Ten security companies (Biaoju), members of Big Six martial arts of the north, and all the people who flock to the city to make a name for themselves, Beijing during Qing Dynasty represented the peak of development and growth of traditional martial art.
In 1933, Yuan Liang became the fourth mayor of Beijing. Yuan was deeply interested in martial arts, and asked head of Beijing Physical Culture Institute (北平体育研究社) Xu Yusheng (许禹生) to recommend a teacher for him. Xu was one of the first modern educators in modern China. Between age 20 – 24, Liu Dekuan came and taught him at his house. Beijing Physical Culture Institute was the first time martial art was taught to the public outside of the traditional private master-disciple system. Many of the first generation instructors were great masters, they were responsible, as a necessity for teaching large classes, systematizing, formalizing, and in many cases creating (ex. Bagua Jian) many of the empty hand and weapons routines in traditional martial art. So Xu knew everyone.
Yuan Liang had one pre-condition, that he would fight each candidate, if he loses, he will be the disciple with no questions asked. The first few candidates, afraid to harm the most powerful man in Beijing, held back and ‘lost’. Yuan was deeply unsatisfied. He demanded Xue Yusheng produce someone better.
Besides, we knew people inside the palace got the real skill. As the famous saying goes “Of Luchan’s students, Wanchun (萬春) got his hard fajin, Lingshan (凌山) was adapt as throwing, and Quanyou (全佑) was skilled at neutralization.”
So these were his three best students (besides his sons of course). Wangchun, Lingshan, and Quanyou were Manchurian guards working at Prince Duan’s palace. Wangchun and Lingshan had no desciples, Quanyou today is respected as founder of Wu Style Taijiquan.
According to family lore within Taiji circles, there were actually two other Manchurian students who obtained Taijiquan skill before these three, but they both perished during the invasion of Eight-Nation Alliance.
In the previous post we talked about masters who taught princes and nobles. In terms of status and prestige, that is definitely the highest level a professional martial artist could aspire to.
In general, career options for martial artists – those whose focus purely on weapons and empty hand skills (vs broader studies involved in military arts), are few in traditional society. There were basically four:
1) The best, most ideal situation is one where the master has his own school. Here the students come to you. This requires the highest level of skill, as you have a known, fixed location, and anyone can come and challenge you. If you lose, by custom you have to leave and cede the school to the challenger.
2) The next level is being a teacher, but you don’t have your own school, you have to go to where the students are – you work for someone, or you teach in the military.
3) The third level is one where you have to risk your own life for protect the life or properties of private clients/masters. Examples are security company jobs, and bodyguard services. In the later scenario, normally you would be live at the household you are protecting.
Here the head of security can be a prestigious position, but the rank and file are basically servants of the house.
In general there is a huge fall-off in prestige between the second and third level, as people think only the desperate would risk their lives like that.
Because they fight in the real world all the time and employed so many martial artist, the Pao Chui group left perhaps the largest curriculum of any martial art group. Empty hand routines alone comprise of 108 sets. On top of that every type of weapon imaginable… They had a great reputation because of the constant feedback from their daily work, any weak members would’ve been weeded out very naturally, quickly.
Just as their rise was rapid and impressive, with the arrival of trains, ship, automobile, and better roads, the decline was also swift. The last of the “Big Ten” Biaoju closed its doors in 1920.
Martial art, like any human pursuit, is an organic product of its environment. When there are economic, military, social incentives, it develops and flourishes. When those needs go away or changes, the arts either decline, disappear or adapt to meet the new need. So it is that we can say the overall state of art for Xinyi/Xingyi (and most traditional Chinese martial arts) was definitely higher in year 1800 than year 1700, and better in 1900 then 1800, but in 2000 it’s definitely lower than 1900.
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