I’ve held off for a while on finishing this series because I knew how controversial it would be. But even though I felt that parts one and two addressed the issue, they don’t reach what I feel is the natural conclusion. So let’s wrap this issue up.
I don’t think there’s any controversy that the Chinese government has been involved in Chen family affairs. It doesn’t take much research to see that the government proposed that zhanzhuang and chansijing outside of the forms should be developed so that citizens could more easily learn the art. Nor does it take much to discover that the Chens supported contemporary wushu in the village. The so-called “four tigers” all did the 56 extensively when they were training, giving them a common grounding in wushu. Any casual perusal of their qualifications will reveal that they all won perhaps hundreds of contemporary wushu competitions between them. Wang Xian’s VCDs show a room in his house literally filled top to bottom with trophies and medals from all the tournaments that he won. I’m sure the others can show the same, if not more. People don’t mention it much, but their reputations largely come from winning these wushu tournaments.
Weapons forms done in the village also display a distinct attraction to using wushu weight weapons instead of traditional weapons. This has been going on so long that no one seems to even know what type of saber the Chen family used for their training before 1949. The oxtail saber was selected by the government wushu committee as being the “official saber” of wushu, and apparently the village followed step.
Looking at the structure of Chen taiji, just in general, shows it to be quite different from most other styles derived in part through Yang style. Alone among the styles, Chen shows a marked emphasis at the beginning on external alignment, being low, and having other outwardly visible qualities that produce a certain “look.” Early students of Chen are often advised to make their taiji look “standard,” often with that standard perhaps being a “standard bearer.”
Looking at wushu taiji, a similar approach is easily recognised. Outwardly visible elements of the wushu taiji forms are emphasized with approaching a standard also being the goal. Going low and being extended as a sign of progress are emphasized in wushu taiji, just as they are in most Chen styles.
Looking at how Chen style is taught in many places, through seminars by big name teachers from China, shows that this emphasis on external looks gets reinforced by the requirements of teaching in this manner. Teachers don’t have extended time to help students develop neigong/qigong elements of their taiji since that usually takes individual attention. Rather students are taught en masse with the external elements of their taiji being addressed for the most part.
Progress in other styles that may perhaps have an external emphasis at the beginning is usually measured by going beyond that initial emphasis into the more non-visible, internal elements of the taiji. Usually, these styles do one or two forms at the most. Nevertheless, the qigong/neigong elements of the forms are usually stressed near the beginning of the training.
Chen style, however, usually trains at least two forms per frame, with multiple frames being made available to students through the seminars. Some of the frames, like xinjia, stress outwardly visible elements of taiji EVEN MORE than other frames like laojia or xiaojia. And strangely enough, in most village lines, the xinjia is seen for some reason as MORE ADVANCED than the laojia. Perhaps one reason for that is because it is considered harder to perform, but nevertheless, the external portion of Chen gets emphasized at the higher levels through this training, whereas other styles of taiji at that stage would be moving on to outwardly less visible aspects of training.
So let’s be frank: what many students of Chen style around the world are studying amounts to nothing more than wushu taiji.
All the elements are usually there: the ubiquitous white uniform, the tinfoil weapons, the athleticism, achieving the “look” with external fajing and lots of chansijing winding, etc.
I’m not going to say that all of this is bad. External requirements must be in place for proper taiji, no question about it. But Chen students can quickly get caught up in working their way through endless forms all done superficially and athletically with very little internal development taking place.
Again, the seminar element reinforces this, and there’s an obvious financial incentive to keep it going. There’s always another form or weapon to learn, providing a ready-made market for the visiting teacher.
My advice to Chen village students by extension would be to simply learn the 56 since they are probably doing wushu taiji anyway. Why beat around the bush and waste lots of money when you can have all your wushu taiji in one short form? Once the external elements have been addressed in one form (the 56 combines yi lu and er lu), then more time can be spent on applications and neigong.
I realize this post will upset some people. Please understand that I don’t think all wushu taiji is bad. I’m thinking of learning the 56 myself since that type of movement is considered the only way that Chen style is supposed to look, and I’m getting tired of arguing otherwise. But getting wrapped up in endless superficial forms taught through seminars is, in the end, a road to no-where as far as taiji goes.
As always, I welcome your responses.
18 responses so far ↓
1 zenmindsword // Mar 6, 2007 at 8:44 am
the passage of time will be the judge of the veracity of your words so worry not if people get upset. its life that people in general do not appreciate good advice - most people just enjoy making mistakes and learning from there. the irony is some can never see beyond what they are learning and keep falling back to teacher says, lineage says, history says, etc. and in the end they get stuck in a rut and the only way to break out of it is to examine external methods and as time goes on the words of the taiji classics become even less relevant and may even sound hollow to those who are not able to go beyond the external forms. (ok, getting off the pulpit now :-))
2 Martial Development // Mar 6, 2007 at 9:02 am
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: there is no such thing as “internal development”.
But I would love for you to prove me wrong, with a definition of “internal development” that isn’t completely arbitrary and non-falsifiable.
I think that the Tai Chi community at large could do worse than to increase its athleticism. Compared to other styles, we are just a bunch of fatties.
3 Q // Mar 6, 2007 at 9:08 am
Chen Qing Zhou’s line only does two empty handed forms, the laojia large frame and the cannon fist. His movements contain minimal outward circling and he doesn’t show a ton of strong fajin when performing. There are probably other traditional Chen teachers like him who don’t do wushu, they’re just not as famous. If you get his VCDs though I’d get the laojia as that’s his bread and butter.
4 mo // Mar 6, 2007 at 1:32 pm
i think it’s interesting that you mention the village and the four tigets. most people are under the impression that chen xiaowang is the standard bearer of chen style today, and that whatever the village practices is the only authentic chen style.
however, if you think about it, chen fake was supposed to be the standard bearer of his times. since this is supposedly passed through the male line of the family, that would make his son, chen zhaokui, the next standard bearer, making chen yu, zhaokui’s son, the representative of chen style today, not chen xiaowang.
i’m sure the government played a huge role in promoting xiaowang and the village’s taiji as the standard, since they would be able to play a role in the development of chen taiji in this way.
5 baichi // Mar 6, 2007 at 4:13 pm
You do know that the first one to emphasis zhanzhuang and chansigong as foundational training was your great Taiji-hero Feng Zhiqiang? Without any influence from the evil-knievel government I suppose. That is a truth the village is indeed trying to hide, since Feng has become unpopular there (for reasons beyond my knowledge). It was Chen Zhaokui’s idea that training single postures and movements of the form can greatly increase your combat abilities, just like he favoured lower basin training… taking single movements as foundational training was just the next step, although it was probably influenced by Feng’s teaching, as suggested above.
On the other hand, if you got the typical american ideological anti-communist-fever, then you can blame everything you don’t like on the wicked communist government I guess…
6 mo // Mar 6, 2007 at 9:53 pm
ummm… the form is composed of single postures/movements that are linked. training single postures has always been foundation training, all you have to do is look at other arts like xingyi (5 elements), tongbei, shuai jiao, and you can see that repetition of solo movements have always been an important part of training. the form is composed of these movements, these movements don’t come from the form. taiji is a martial art, why should the training be any different? i’m always amazed when people talk about taking movements from the form as if it were some great discovery, when the form was CREATED by linking these movements together. training single movements is the base of any martial art, and has always been part of traditional training.
7 lide // Mar 6, 2007 at 10:10 pm
Most of your arguements are based on supposition, not fact. You speak of high level training methods. Have you been shown these by the people you deride as external? Doesn’t seem so. As a practitioner of the style you deride, I have to say Dave, that you are seriously talking out of your ass here. Your article isn’t controversial or anger inducing, just seriously misinformed, and bad journalism.
8 wujimon // Mar 7, 2007 at 3:09 am
I concur with Mo. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to break down movements into their silk reeling components. In fact, I think this is a very good thing and shows a high level understanding of an art.
The fact that chen taiji, as I have learned it, highly enforces zhan zhuang and silk reeling is an indicator of it being internal as these practices are often considered ‘internal training methods’.
I actually recently wrote a post titled, Removing Chen Creep. In it I outline how I got blasted for doing my chen more wushu-ey. Also, when I’ve received private corrections, they have often been of the “you’re too low, not sinking into kua enough” type of corrections.
Having studied both wushu taiji and “traditional” chen taiji, I consider them to be vastly different. While they may share similar characteristics (multiple forms, low stances), their training methods are different. Never have I been asked to disect a wushu-taiji posture down into it’s core silk reeling components and associated dantien rotations.
In addition, never have I been asked to try and break the wushu-taiji posture down into it’s core 8 energies and what that means from an application perspective.
As for just learning the 56, if you want to compete, sure.. But, doing a condensed form hides ppl from the insight that could be obtained in looking at how chen became yang over time. Why did buddha warrior pound mortar turn into ward off left? I like the long forms (chen laojia yilu and yang long form) due to their contemplative nature and subtle hints on ‘key elements’ based on movement repetition.
Basically, I can honestly say, I am not practicing wushu-taiji when I do chen taiji
9 GrahamB // Mar 7, 2007 at 4:23 am
Not liking the Chinese government is not just about American anti-communist fever. It’s because they are a bunch of crooked, murdering bastards who execute 10,000 Chinese citizens every year (more than the rest of the world put together).
A lot of the executions are done in public. The families are sent the bill for the bullet. Then the organs are sold to Westoners (sometimes ‘to order’).
What a lovely bunch of people.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1425570.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4921116.stm
10 chessman71 // Mar 7, 2007 at 8:17 am
Mo hit the nail on the head with his first comment IMO. But the point of my post ins’t really the government per se, it’s the empty practice of many that do this type of Chen style.
I think I went out of my way to specify a CERTAIN TYPE of Chen style. People who read carefully will notice that NOT all Chen people fall into this pitfall IMO, even in offical Chen family taiji.
Both Chen Yu and Chen Qing-zhou were mentioned, and I think those two guys are solid examples of traditional, no-wushu influenced taiji within the Chen family. But as all of us know, they are rarely touring America and they are rarely in the books and magazines.
As to me “deriding the style I do,” that’s the whole point: what’s described in the article ISN’T the style that I or others do. It’s empty wushu taiji. What I practice is more traditional and isn’t concerned with looking exactly like what comes out of the village.
Sorry this is considered poor journalism. Sometimes I do editorials as well.
11 Q // Mar 7, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Don’t expect to learn non-wushu stuff just because the teacher practices traditional stuff himself though. Some trains very traditionally themselves but only teach forms, which I guess is perfectly ok if they don’t mislead the students into thinking what they’re learning is the whole thing.
12 baichi // Mar 7, 2007 at 3:56 pm
@Graham:
And what, in the name of everything I can think of, has this to do with martial arts?
13 Graham // Mar 7, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Baichi, it’s a reply to you - in post no. 5
“On the other hand, if you got the typical american ideological anti-communist-fever, then you can blame everything you don’t like on the wicked communist government I guess…”
14 baichi // Mar 7, 2007 at 7:06 pm
I hate to repeat my question, but what does this have to do with martial arts? You may not like the government, but that doesn’t mean you can make it the boogey-man for every unwanted trend in mainland martial arts…
15 Thomas // Mar 8, 2007 at 4:32 am
And Graham is not even American. How dare he indulge in “typical american ideological anti-communist-fever”!!
16 GrahamB // Mar 8, 2007 at 5:02 am
Bachi, in China it has a lot to do with martial arts. You might have heard about the little government controlled thing called ‘WuShu’. The people behind the firing squards are the people backing (or rather, enforcing)Wu Shu. In a culture where you get a bullet in the head for not towing the party line the huge popularity of the martial art-less performance piffle that is Wu Shu (taught in endless forms at seminars) over more traditional practices (with GASP applications) is more understandable.
Anyway, to answer your question again, I was replying to you comments in no.5.
Tom - my apologies for indulging in your American perogative. Feel free to fly into a right-wing rage and invade a country or two
17 silkreeling // Mar 10, 2007 at 11:28 pm
if you have the chen classics, do consult it. it is a better guide to learning. perhaps from there you’ll find the reason for the stance in chen taiji.
18 cup // Jan 16, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Personally I practice Bushido which is Japanese in orientation but I’ve known people that practice both techniques and I wouldn’t judge so harshly.
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