Formosa Neijia

So let’s take a break from Chen style for a minute.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCo0EEUTCMI
Zhao laoshi’s performance in this clip is awe inspiring. What great movement for any age, let alone an advanced age. I know that he’s one of the top teacher’s in Kaoshiung, and from this performance I can see why.
Notice anything interesting about the background? This [...]

[Read more →]

Part one here.
There are roughly two paradigms that most IMA people work with: stillness to movement and movement to stillness. Some IMAs fall squarely in one category or the other. Yiquan clearly starts with stillness and then goes into movement. Baguazhang clearly starts with movement and goes into stillness. Other arts like taiji (as broad [...]

[Read more →]

I want to write a few posts on this subject because I keep bumping into it lately. It seems that some Chen people are doing their art in a very external fashion. This element of Chen practice needs to be explored a bit. So let’s start with the following quote from a great article that [...]

[Read more →]

This is a great wallpaper of Chen Fa-ke. If you want it, you to the original link and download it. Enjoy!

[Read more →]

The following is from a comment on the post regarding the Yang family statement a while back. As you guys can tell, I sometmes like to reward particularly insightful comments with a post of their own because they might say something we should all be aware of.
This comment addresses Mary Yang (Yeung Ma-lee), Yang Shou-chung’s [...]

[Read more →]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iibeHPY6yt0
I was discussing which saber is used in Chen style recently: oxtail (niu wei dao) or willowleaf (liu ye dao). I asked because I’m looking to learn taiji saber and I want to buy the right one. Unfortunately, I haven’t found anyone from the village branches that really seems to know that much about [...]

[Read more →]

I don’t usually discuss technical details, especially as they relate to actual techniques, very often on the blog. There are many reasons for this. One, these kind of posts take lots of time. Two, many of us are practicing different styles, or at least different branches of the same style, meaning that our forms and [...]

[Read more →]

I’ve been meaning to talk about Chen Pan-ling for a while now. He was one of the brightest stars to come to Taiwan in 1949 and rightly earned his place in Taiwan martial arts history after he got here. Living in the then capital of Taizhong, Chen Pan-ling taught many students, who spread his teachings [...]

[Read more →]

My apologies. I wrote this yesterday and accidentally published it as “private.”
It seems that there aren’t a lot of pics of Han Qing-tan (韓慶堂) out there. Here are the few that I’ve managed to collect:

Notice how the saber is held behind the right thigh, hiding it from the enemy.

[Read more →]

There’s an interesting long fist/mantis form called si lu beng da (四路蹦打).
Here is Han Qing-tan doing an early version of the form:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkWY4joNlUk
BTW, I heard that the video above was shot by the CIA when Robert Smith was here in Taiwan. Apparently, they were doing some documenting of local martial artists. Pretty cool, eh?
One reason this [...]

[Read more →]