Formosa Neijia

5 responses so far ↓

• 1 Jose de Freitas // Jun 21, 2007 at 7:48 pm

  Pics of him are rare? Then who is the guy in the book CPL Original Tai Chi Chuan Form (ed. Carruthers and Chang)? I thought it was CPL!

• 2 chessman71 // Jun 21, 2007 at 7:57 pm

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I meant outside of that.

• 3 Darius // Jun 21, 2007 at 10:11 pm

  I would love to see pictures of a younger Chen too. The ones above are earlier than the ones for the taiji book, but there must be some pictures from the mainland somewhere out there too.

  The pictures of Chen in his taiji book were taken when he was old and ill. According to his student Lei Xiaotian, Chen wrote him in December 1966 to tell him that he would be getting up at 4.30am every morning for next three months in order to practice and prepare for taking pictures for the book since he had not been well. As Chen passed away in early April of 1967, the pictures for the book were literally the last thing he contributed to martial arts in his life.

  I think the above pictures (and the ones to come) show wonderful structure and spirit - in a way that the taiji book pictures do not because of age and health. I’d just like to see some earlier ones from the mainland….

• 4 chessman71 // Jun 22, 2007 at 12:46 am

  Darius,
  Excellent points. I agree about the structure shown. It stands in direct contrast to the pics in the taiji book, as you said. I know conclusions about CPL’s arts have been drawn based on the pics in the taiji book. People often forget context, and in this case that means everything.

  But then this just reinforces my point that the pics in the taiji book DO NOT represent how the form should be done. Regardless, the book is still a classic and we should treasure it as such.

• 5 Formosa Neijia - Exploring Taiwan’s Martial Arts » Pics of Chen Pan-ling xingyi pt.2 // Jun 28, 2007 at 10:35 pm

  [...] Pics of Chen Pan-ling xingyi pt.1 [...]

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