Formosa Neijia

As everyone knows, WuTan is a major branch of Taiwan martial arts that is fairly well known around the world. But up until recently, most of us haven’t had an opportunity to see what the WuTan guys practice. Thanks to youtube, that is changing.

Contrary to what I thought in the past, there is a bit of variation in WuTan’s material when comparing different teachers. This seems especially true when looking at their taiji. Just looking at their Chen style, they apparently have several different versions.

The clip below is one of the versions that I hadn’t seen before. It was apparently filmed back in 1994 at the big taiji tournament in Taiwan (giving more credence to my assertion that these comps were more interesting in the past). It shows a very unique flavor that I think readers might find interesting. The fajing is done in a different manner than is commonly seen, and several of the moves get a new spin. I particularly liked the cloud hands done in the direction that the performer is traveling — that makes cloud hands a bit more effective for some applications. In any event, he shows quite a bit of power and yet moves fluidly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiT9bKw5NDY

This is a rare clip of WuTan founder Liu Yun-qiao doing applications with students and then going through part of his baji form. This is certainly a rare treat — clips like this are hard to come by.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE0zSNng2Zs

P.S. Hat tip to Bob for bringing these clips to my attention.