http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb1rYHvgVFU
My guess is that most of you have seen this by now. But I didn’t know that it has been made available on youtube yet, so maybe some of you didn’t either.
This video was put on the Net by a popular Taiwan martial artist, but how that happened is a bit controversial. Reagrdless of the controversy, I’m glad that this got put up so I want to draw attention to it.
This is a version of the Yang style that is rarely seen. Yang Shou-zong was Yang Chen-fu’s oldest son and how he does the Yang large frame is very interesting. I like this vid because it just goes to show that having a slight lean to your taiji is perfectly accpetable and the lean can be found in various lineages, not just Wu style as is commonly thought.
4 responses so far ↓
1 silkreeling // Oct 25, 2006 at 5:21 am
is there yang shou zong lineage in taiwan? what was the controversy about? care to share?
i used to practice under one of his grand student.
the lean can also be found in the dong ying jie’s form.
2 chessman71 // Oct 26, 2006 at 7:23 pm
Silk,
The Yang lineage in question was brought to Taiwan by a guy named Wang Zi-he. He studied under a disciple of Yang Chen-fu if I remember correctly.
Apparently, Yang Shou-zong was thinking of moving to Taiwan, but doing so was politically risky at the time, so he made a film of him practicing the form and sent it to the government or someone here (I’m not too clear on this part) as a type of audition. For one reason or another, Yang didn’t move to Taiwan but he supposedly wanted the film kept under wraps so people wouldn’t know he had thought of moving here. Remember that Taiwan and China were still technically at war and artillery shells were still being fired at that time.
Wang was the one trying to get Yang here, I think, so he’s the guy you see at the beginning of the clip giving the intro.
But since he made an intro, Wang clearly meant this to be public information. There’s no way around that.
But Yang Shou-zong’s daughter wanted it kept under wraps.
He Jing-han, the well-known Taiwan baguaquan teacher, got a hold of the tape and posted it on the web. Somone (apparently the person who gave it to him) got on EF and told him to take it down. He did, but thankfully someone had already saved it and posted it to youtube.
So the Yang family’s attempts to pretend that this stuff should only be held within the family have been twarted once again. Haha.
Agree about the lean, but I don’t remember seeing any of Wang’s descendents doing the form with a lean. They do, however, have some of the sweetest Yang style that you’ll find in Taiwan, depending on which teacher in their organization is doing the teaching. They’ve really tried to preserve what Wang Zi-he brought to Taiwan and they’re doing a good job.
3 Formosa Neijia - Exploring Taiwan’s Martial Arts » A statement from the Yang family // Dec 9, 2006 at 8:17 am
[...] A statement from the Yang family By chessman71 So it looks like Martial Arts Planet is the place to be these days. Apparently, the Yang family isn’t happy about this clip being up on the Internet, so they decided to make a public statement. Here it is: Yeung Family’s Tai Chi Chuan [...]
4 Formosa Neijia - Exploring Chinese martial arts, spiritual practices and healing arts » Han Qing-tan’s Yang style — another view // Nov 6, 2007 at 9:41 am
[...] this version of Yang style is not that far off from the older style of Yang shown by Yang Shou-hou here. People often forget that the old way of doing Yang looked more like this clip — with a [...]
Leave a Comment