Formosa Neijia

I attended class last night for the first time in about six weeks with my main Chen style instructor. I was waiting for the next module to open up (I don’t really care for the modular teaching system).

So after class, he asked me if I had any questions. Hehe. After all this discussion of the huleijia and zhaobao, etc. I had a multitude of questions. And of course, I couldn’t stop myself from asking all of them. Now if I could just remember all the answers…

So in no certain order, here’s what I learned last night.

Wang Jin-rang was very skilled even though he only practiced for about three years. My teacher said that Wang practiced FOUR versions of taiji, all of them rare: He-style zhaobao, huleijia, and two that I didn’t even recognise. He said that Wang trained fanatically for three years and really got the taiji into his body, so even if he didn’t practice much later, it didn’t matter since he had the skilled ingrained into him.

My teacher also said that the huleijia is MORE difficult than pao chui. I said that some groups are teaching it before paochui, and pointed out that he does too. He then said that our group and others that teach it before paochui are teaching two frames only: the lian frame that is smooth, and the jing frame that uses lots of obvious fajing. He said that the second jing frame is more difficult than paochui because you are basically doing faijing on almost all moves. Second, you must be able to rotate the dantian very well in order to do the jing frame. So lots of paochui is necessary to build that first. I get the impression from his short performance of the huleijia that we don’t do any of the crazy knee drops that others have noticed in the rising-falling frame of huleijia.

I asked about the ten levels and he said that’s what they do in China. He didn’t know of anyone that does that here. Obviously it’s because most people in Taiwan do huleijia as part of the Chen curriculum. The only guy in Taiwan that might be doing the whole ten level training that I could find is here. My teacher said if I wanted to study all ten frames, I’d have to go to China.

He said that Pan Yong-zhou’s group shouldn’t have the huleijia, from what he knows. He said they should practice a version of xiaojia, instead. When I pointed out that the website said they had it, he replied that he had no idea where they got it.

He also gave a long-winded explanation of the difference between dajia and xiaojia. But frankly, I still didn’t see the difference and I don’t think it was my level of Chinese. I did come to the conclusion that he’s using those frames to teach different points that could probably be taught in one frame. From the effort he put in to explaining it and the faces on the other students, I would say that I’m not the only that was confused. He ended the talk on that subject by saying we’d understand after we studied it. Gee, that’ll take a few years!

So that was it for last night. I wanted to get this stuff down in case I need it for later. Sorry for the randon thoughts.