nicklinjm wrote:Surprised Erle Montaigue's 'interviews' with his supposed teacher Chang Yiu-chun are still being brought up so many years later.
Basically the conclusion from multiple discussions online (e.g. see here: http://www.shenwu.com/discus/messages/431/2975.html?1150683459) has been that Chang Yiu-chun either didn't exist or if he did he never studied from Yang Shaohou. No name similar to Chang's appears in the list of YSH's known disciples, and the taiji practiced and taught by Erle does not resemble that taught by actual students / disciples of YSH, such as Zhang Huchen or Gu Luping.
Erle's material seems to have been based on Chen Panling's form with a lot of the other material basically just made up.
As for Old Yang, there are the branches coming from YSH I mentioned above, also people coming from Yang Banhou's disciples in his hometown (Li Wancheng, Bai Zhongxin) who still practice the pre-YCF versions of the system.
This stuff is hilarious! Thanking you!
I know the tc world divides & just keeps on dividing so it's so fragmented it ends up in a few big brands and many division's of 1 or 0 but in the end even the link you posted is just as supportive as it is damning.
I know we'll never really know the real history. I also know I know very little when compared to the historians of IMA. Frankly the back stories don't interest me like the question "how does this work?"
I keep seeing snippets of fighty TC & many many softy TC. The fighty ones just seem to deliver more goods than the softies. In the end mad or not Erle's stuff looks more real to me than say Cheng Man Ching.
But I'm happy to be shown the light of really great unscripted softy TC applied even semi realistically. Then any commentary on how it's trained would be great. Until then the old school power method seems to be the only way.