Formosa Neijia

Considering the BS being spread by some descendants of Wang Shu-jin, it’s good that others are doing what they can to give correct info on him and his martial arts. Telling the truth honors him more than anything. So here is a comment made by Darius over at EF regarding Wang Shu-jin’s baguazhang:

a few comments regarding Wang Shujin’s neijiaquan:

1. Wang Shujin went to Taiwan in 1948, via Shanghai, and soon after that opened his martial arts school in Taizhong - the Cheng2ming2 guo2shu4guan3 - where he taught xingyi and bagua. He did not teach taiji then because at that time he had not yet learned taiji.

2. Wang bumped into Chen Panling in Taizhong in 1951 and eventually learned taiji from Chen. Wang started teaching Chen’s taiji both at his own school and as an instructor of the Zhong1hua2 guo2shu4 jin4xiu1hui that was founded by Chen Panling et al in early November 1950.

3. At the first large Guoshu tournament (zhong1guo2 guo2shu4 bi3sai4 da4hui4) held at the Sanjun Stadium in Taipei June 25-28, 1955, Wang demonstrated ‘Silianquan’ and ‘bagua chuanzhang’. Interestingly, in one of the articles on the event published in the Central Daily (zhong1yang1 ri4bao4), Wang was referred to as a famous qigong expert (qi4gong1 ming2jia1), though what that assessment meant coming from a newspaper journalist is questionable.

4. In1976, in a book on Xingyi published by one of Chen Panling’s favourite students, Lei Xiaotian, there is a foreword in which Wang Xiushen lists Wang Shujin and Han Qintang as having specifically researched taijiquan with Chen Panling - not xingyi and not bagua. There is then mention of others who studied the other arts with CPL.

5. People often forget - or don’t know - that Wang Shujin taught two main bagua forms (though forms were not the core anyway): long2xing2 lian2huan2zhang3 and long2xing2 you2shen1zhang3. The former is very similar to Chen Panling’s method, while the latter bares little resemblance to Chen’s method. In Wang’s system, the lianhuanzhang serves as a foundational, fixed-step method before students go on to learn the fluid, more complex and ever-changing youshenzhang.

In other words:

Wang was teaching *something* very early after he arrived in Taiwan, possibly as early as in 1949, maybe 1950. For obvious reasons, Wang could not possibly have learned Chen Panling’s bagua and xingyi before he even met Chen (and Chen fled with the Guomindang central government in late 1949, early 1950). He may have learned something from Zhang Junfeng right after his arrival when Wang was in Taibei for a while, but it is highly improbable that Wang - as a 45-year old, would have learned enough in the short period he was in Taibei to dare open his own school in Taizhong and start teaching.

There are no records of Wang having been a bagua student of Chen, yet it’s likely that he did learn Chen’s bagua lianhuanzhang (CPL called that form youshenzhang, but Wang already had a youshenzhang so he called the CPL form ‘lianhuanzhang’) since they are almost the same forms. In any event, the people in the CPL lineage did not view Wang as Chen’s bagua student. I think Wang probably learned the form as part of his involvement with Chen in Chen’s guoshu association. Chen always wanted to standardise the Chinese martial arts and his particular baguazhang reflected that goal. It would make sense that Wang Shujin - a teacher of the association and a friend/student of CPL- would learn the standardised forms.

The fact that Wang was demonstrating ‘bagua chuanzhang’ in 1955 (and I’m pretty sure I saw an article from 1953 too where Wang was listed as demonstrating bagua and silianquan, but I can’t locate the article), indicates that he was considered relatively skilled already then. If he had just started learning bagua, I don’t think he would have been asked to demonstrate at the first large-scale guoshu event after the nationalist fled to Taiwan and he probably would not have been mentioned in the newspaper as being an expert, even a qigong one.

Hope this helps put things together a little. The truth is, we don’t really know the exact course of events so it’s better to follow what we do know and deduce from that, than to deduce from what we don’t know…