Bao wrote:pacman161 wrote: As far as small frame goes, from what I understand, neither Yang Luchan, Li Yiyu, Chen Fake, or anyone around that time mentioned two separate lineages of Chen style. In fact, Wu Tunan said that Chen Xin was not even a practitioner of Chen style.
Wu Tunan didn't believe Chen style was Tai Chi, so by saying that Chen Xin didn't do Chen style, he might have meant that Chen Xin's art Tai Chi.
And if you read Chen Xin's book, some stuff he talks about doesn't really makes sense, and deviates quite a bit from what was taught by Chen Fake and his students and grand students, as well as what is commonly understood among all internal styles.
Chen Xin's book was published posthumously. He died 1929 but the book was first published 1933. Some things points to that things was added that was not Chen Xin's material. Also there is a foreword he would not agree with. Obviously some things must be different from what Chen Fake taught. The small frame had not been changed to teach in public to big groups.
What do you mean is different to things commonly understood in all interna styles? This is something you need to explain better.
And thus far, I have not come across a single practitioner of small frame that has the kind of power generation and ability that Chen Fake, his students Hong Junsheng and Feng Zhiqiang, and their students like Chen Zhonghua, have. This should cast some doubt as to whether or not small frame was ever really a thing or just another modern invention.
Well, most Chen small frame practitioners today first study middle or large frame. So if they haven't shown any large frae similar power generation it might say more about their personal interest. Why should Hong's or Feng's personal expression be considered standard?
Wu Yuxiang's Wu style was derived dierectly from small frame. So I don't understand why you believe it's modern. Both Chen small frame and the Old Wu style are older and more original than Chen Fake's modified large frame. And besides, the frame in small frame and Wu/Hao, is a standard IMA frame. The idea of large frame is to develop Changjin, long energy. The idea of small frame is stability. In most of small frame (with exception of Sun) the main idea is to find the natural alignment where the angles and structure is as naturally strong as possible. This idea and many postures from small frame can be found in much other and older IMA, so in fact, a more reasonable conclusion is that the small frame could be considered the original Tai Chi frame. As you said no one "around that time mentioned two separate lineages of Chen style." So why are the Yang style and Wu Yuxiang so different? Wu didn't mention that what CQP taught him was different from Yang Luchan's style. So maybe Yang Luchan taught Wu Yuxiang small frame as well? Maybe both of the Medium and Small frame was contained together in the same original school and lineage?
Wu Tunan said that what Chen Fake practiced wasn't taichi, but acknowledged him as a practitioner of his style. He just didn't think it should be called "taichi." He said Chen Xin wasn't a practitioner of Chen style, there is a difference. And Li Yiyu wrote significantly about taichi and had access to Wu Yuxiang, Yang Luchan, and by proxy Chen Changxing, and he never mentioned it which is pretty strange to say the least.
There is no evidence to suggest there is a large frame either. Chen Fake did make some changes to the style after coming to Beijing and called it "New Frame", but not "large frame". And even if they practice new frame movements, if they don’t have a legit lineage, then they will not develop anything internally and thus will not have the power that the legit new frame guys have due to their lack of understanding of the internal principles/practices.
It isn't about so called "large frame power generation", all internal styles, whether it is Xinyi, bagua, xingyi, Yiquan, taichi, chen style, or whatever, have certain universal truths and underlying fundamental principles that are shared. These principles are part of what make internal styles internal. For example, force is not generated from the muscles in the same way that external styles like boxing generate force. There is something that is gained through either stance or a repeated motion for a long time while maintaining structure, relaxation, and proper movement/quality of motion. This thing that is the foundation of internal power generation I have not seen among any small frame guys, and if they were to cross hands with say Chen Zhonghua, proved he was not his usual nice self and willing to go all out, they would go flying into a wall. They do not have essential internal understanding that is required in order to fight with Chen style or any internal style as it was meant to be. There is a reason CZH can make fully resisting people fly around the room with hardly any movement even though these people are twice his size, and it has nothing to do with his amount of muscle as that wouldn't be possible doing what he does in some of his videos. Plus, he even said in a video that a powerful taichi practitioner can actually be very weak physically, and unable to lift heavy objects for example, despite being able to generate enough force to send people flying, and suggested the power generation is something independent from that.
Not sure what you are talking about when you say that the Wu/Hao style uses the Chen small frame but this is incorrect. Wu Yuxiang learned almost entirely from Yang Luchan, and then went to Zhaobao village after he suspected Yang Luchan wasn't telling him something. He found what was missing from Chen Qingping while there, however, his style is pretty much the same as what Yang Luchan taught him. And the Zhaobao guys didn't have the "small frame" that these small frame Chen Xin guys talk about, but was the same frame that Chen Changxing and later Chen Fake had.
The original Yang style and the Wu Yuxiang style were not that different. Same goes for the original Yang style and the Wu Yuxiang style. It is pretty well known that Yang Chengfu made significant changes to the form, and that most of what is now practiced as far as Yang goes comes from him. Some people say this was as a result of him not taking the training seriously when his father was alive, and as a result of not being able to fight, tried to make the form larger and rebrand it as a health exercise. This doesn't really make any sense though, because taichi done in the original smaller frame does not differ as far as the health benefits go. Taichi is actually a lot less about the frame itself, or even the movements, and a lot more about the underlying principles and internal understanding. The main reason he changed it was probably because he ended up being big and changed it to fit his body.
That guy I linked is currently in the Wang Yongquan lineage, which has always had a very skilled group of taichi practitioners, and is unique because Wang Yongquan was the son of a student of Yang Jianhou. A prince paid a lot of money to Wang Jianhou to teach him but he needed a training partner, and Wang Yongquan's father, who was the steward of the prince, was given this task. Wang Yongquan also knew Yang Jianhou (as well as his sons) and may have gotten some tips from him before he died, and he learned from his father some as well, but it is generally excepted in the lineage that his taichi came from Yang Shaohou, although it is not unreasonable to think that he may have gotten something that predates Yang Shaohou, but his main teacher was not Yang Jianhou as Wei Shuren, the last student of Wang Yongquan, claims. Wang was listed as a disciple of Yang Chengfu as that was the will Yang Jianhou, however there is a dislike for Cheng fu within the lineage, and as you might have guessed, their frame is not large like Yang Chengfu's, but is much smaller. They also have a curriculum where they can show what taichi was like before Chengfu changed it. That guy in the video (Guan Nan Wang) also trains in taichi tongbei from the Zhang Ce lineage, which is publicly known as Wuxing tongbei. Zhang Ce was the youngest student of the founder of Old Qi style tongbei, and his tongbei brother who was much older than him, was friends with both Yang Banhou and Yang Jianhou. He introduced Zhang Ce to them and he became a student of them as well. He eventually fused both Old Qi tongbei and his taichi together to create what he named Wuxing tongbei, instead of taichi tongbei as to avoid competition between the Yang family, however, within the lineage it is called taichi tongbei, and they have a taichi set that comes from Yang Luchan's sons. And it also has a smaller frame then the big Chengfu frame you typically see that now makes up 99% of Yang style, and it is very similar to the Wong Yongquan frame. (All of this is covered in his subsequent vids if you would like to watch them and get more info).
As far as the Wu Quanyou lineage goes, most practitioners trace their lineage back to his son Wu Jianquan. Wu Jianquan became friends with Yang Chengfu and they influenced each other a bit, and then Jianquan left Beijing and the style moved to Shanghai and underwent changes, and then the style traveled again to Hong Kong and underwent even more changes. However, Wu Quanyou's top disciple was not his son Wu Jianquan, but a guy named Wang Maozhai, and when Wu Quanyou died, Wang Maozhai taught Wu Jianquan in his father's stead for a time. Wang Maozhai did not move and stayed in Beijing, taichi's home, and taught several people, his most famous student being a guy named Yang Yuting. However, Yang Yuting had reputation for being really nice, and he wasn't really into fighting, and got bullied by the Yiquan crowd (mainly Wang Xiangzhai and his top student Yao Zhongxun) for this. Yang Yuting's top student was someone named Wang Peisheng, who got his start in bagua under Ma Gui, and then became really good under Yang Yuting, really fast (he was helping Yang Yuting lead classes as a teenager), and then his grandmaster Wang Maozhai decided to train him directly in addition to what Yang Yuting was doing, according to the story, so that the fighting aspect of Wu style would not die with Yang Yuting and would be passed on to the next generation. There are tons of videos of Wang Peisheng, and a few of Yang Yuting, and you can see that their frame is also fairly small like this original Yang frame.
As far as the Wu Yuxiang lineage goes, I would need to know who you are talking about. Their frame is still I would say similar to these other frames, and that lineage is very scarce as there were hardly any 2nd and 3rd generation practitioners of the style.
I say all of this to show you this, while there will be differences as styles are passed down from generation to generation due to different habits, body structures, and sometimes the opinions/methodology of the practitioners, taichi is taichi, what Wu Quan You, Wu Yuxiang, and Yang Luchan practiced was most liked the exact same system, and frame is not as important as principle, and what you are developing internally inside your body.
And also of course, none of these have anything to do with Chen Xin or the long frame he supposedly did.
As far as Chen Xin's book goes, he tries to talk about certain aspects of training such as opening the shoulder, which is something that every single internal style in existence does, however he is completely wrong about what it means to open the shoulder as he thinks you stretch the ball and socket joint until a "hole" opens in it, which is not shared by any other lineage (including Chen). Opening the shoulder has to do with the shoulder blades becoming easier to move as the back and torso relaxes and becomes more flexible so the shoulder blades can extend. He also talked a lot about stuff that had nothing to do with Chen style, like traditional Chinese medicine and philosophy, which was not taught by anyone else, and even though Chen Fake was said to be the top hand in the Chen village during his time, he did not have a formal education, and did not teach this sort of stuff, which makes it doubtful that it ever was part of the system at all. (Yang Luchan also did not teach these things). And Chen Xin doesn't spend a small portion of the book talking about these things, but takes up a lot of it writing about this unrelated material. This again is all covered in Guan Nan's subsequent videos, he actually pissed of a few small frame guys for saying this, but if you want to know more I would really encourage you to watch his vids that come after the ones I've linked, as he knows much more about this than I do, and he is very deep in the Chinese scene to the point where I am doubtful there is anyone that has as many legit connections as he does, and he is willing to share more than any youtuber I know of. Go check him out, you will probably hear about some things that virtually no one in the west has knowledge about.
Anyway, he certainly doesn't understand the small frame principles, the reason for or the focus of this practice. If he explained in detail what was wrong and managed to compare a little it would be ok. But now as he just gives general remarks without showing any kind of