Wang Xiang-zhai on taijiquan
ByThis was posted by Spring over at EF. It’s an ….um….interesting read:
As masters of the original ‘Taijiquan’, I should recommend the Yang brothers Shaohou and Chengfu. They are also old friends of mine, thus I know that this boxing really has some knowledge of mechanics, but out of one hundred persons not even one gains its essence, and even if one can gain it, it is still one-sided, because the basic skills of intuitive perception already died out a long time ago, thus their lower bodies have no real strength to speak of. Originally this boxing consisted of three fists, also called the “old three cuts”, Mr. Wang Zongyue changed it into “thirteen postures”, and it was later changed into as much as one hundred and forty or fifty postures, this is the major reason for the distortion.
For health preservation, it restrains the spirit and mettle, and brings discomfort to the practitioner. For combat, it harms the practitioner’s limbs and trunk, and causes the useful body to become a mechanical and stiff thing, it also disturbs the student’s nerves, and is nothing more than wasting one’s time. As for its method of training, a punch with a fist here, a slap with the palm there, a kick to the left, and another one to the right, that is pitiful and laughable.
As for dealing with an enemy in a fight, against a master-hand, please do not even consider it, if the adversary is not stiff and sluggish, even the famous masters of this boxing have no chance to apply their skills (edit: what about his “friends” above?). These abuses are so big that ‘Taijiquan’ might soon become just a mere form comparable to a chess manual. For the last twenty years, most people who have studied this boxing have not been able to differentiate right and wrong, even if someone has been able to differentiate them, he has not been capable of putting it into practice. As for common students, most of them use their ears instead of their eyes.
So ruined is this boxing that it has become useless, this is really deplorable. I wish that the powerful members of this school would promptly and strictly clean it up, and attempt to develop it in the future. When the day of success comes, they will be held as the bosom friends of all the boxing fans. I dare to say that I understand ‘Taijiquan’ deeply, those who do not agree, can notify me or lay the blame on me, only the wise ones might understand. At the same time, I suppose those who have really gained something in their study of ‘Taijiquan’, when they read this, they will nod in agreement and cannot help laughing.
So this raises a lot of questions. Was this a swipe at his supposed “friends” mentioned in the first paragraph? Was it a swipe at their students? To whom was this written and why? What was the context in which he encountered taiji? Does it tell us something about the practice of taiji at the time? Or does it call into question what Wang really understood?
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51 Comments
April 10th, 2008 at 8:04 pm
Ha ha. Old bastard. Funny he didn’t have anything to say about Lu Chan there. Though from what I’ve read, Cheng Fu would blow you up nearly as bad.
April 10th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
the eternal snipe. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be…
April 10th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
I think it isn’t a criticism of their skills, but of the way that they teach. I might paraphrase it as, “You’ve muddied the waters, so that almost none of your students can reproduce what you can do.”
and
“Your students can apply their skills in a combat situation against a good opponent.”
Yang Cheng-fu was the teacher that really began the widespread popularity of the style. To do that, he taught differently. This is a complaint that the difference has watered down the art, I suspect it is the eternal complaint of the purist about the popularizer.
April 10th, 2008 at 10:53 pm
As a taichi student, I have to say I agree with Wang’s comments, except perhaps the part about tai chi being harmful to health. In Wang’s time already, tai chi people who could fight were few and far between. Even Wu Jianquan’s son was lousy… that paints a pretty clear picture.
Also, Wang and people who lived during the Republic of China era were very influenced by Western scientific thinking: skill “a” is attained through means “b” and “c”, but means “c “isn’t as efficient as “b”, so let’s ditch it. Tai chi isn’t exactly the parangon of efficient and logical step-by-step fighting skill acquisition.
So even though Wang ribs tai chi pretty hard, I think he just wanted everyone to think about what they were doing so the level of CMA as a whole could improve. His message is still relevant today.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
From the little that I know of Yiquan - this stands out like shattering glass- “Another thing that sets yiquan apart from other eastern martial arts, is that traditional concepts, like qi, meridians, dan tien etc. eventually were discarded to make place for new explanations and ideas rooted in Western science, medicine and psychology. Much of this came about due to one of Wang Xiangzhai’s key philosophies, which was that yiquan was a science of martial arts[citation needed], and that there always would be room for improvement. If new methods or explanations are found that help produce better results faster, they should be adopted.” - from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yiquan
I do not not want to offend anyone with my own ignorance of Yiquan or political history of China, however -
1. As a student of a unique lineage of traditional martial artists, I am committed to not changing any of the traditional styles that I am learning.
2. People who I know to be the most knowledgeable on traditional chinese marital arts consider Liu He Ba Fa to be akin to wushu - part of the communist government’s attempt to disregard traditional/religious martial arts and create their watered down wushu (versus gong fu). I am wondering if anyone knows anything more about Wang’s association that Liu He Ba Fa person that is named in his bio.
Also, it would seem that Wang might prefer a system like krav maga over tai chi.
April 10th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Agree. He seems to want to mainly help CMA and China to stop being “the sick old man of Asia” compared to Japan and the West. He mentions several times he wants to help the boxing science and that’s why he is openly critical. I tend to believe in the sincerity because of those mentions and the historical context of what was happening at the time with people wanting to help the country. To me, his criticism seems more on “empty forms” (sounds similar to Bruce Lee’s criticisms many years later) than anything else. That interpretation would fit the context of removing the word “form” from xingyiquan to be yiquan.
April 11th, 2008 at 12:08 am
To be fair - since I know practically nothing about Wang -
There are lots of people who teach tai chi , pa-kua, and kung fu where I live — even famous/wealthy ones
- but I only entrust my two teachers with my learning because they learned it from direct day by day transmission over decades with authoritative traditional teachers who would not teach you if you they thought you lacked character - very differnt from the modern name fame/book/video/seminar/one to 3 month stay in Hong Kong or the Shaolin Temple deals that I see these days.
April 11th, 2008 at 1:56 am
Well, as far as health goes, I don’t see a whole lot of paragons of vibrant health into old age among yiquan practitioners, compared with the practitioners of taijiquan or other martial arts.
As far as fighting . . . really? Yiquan established itself as a martial art on the basis of the widely-publicized/marketed sanda success of a few of its leading practitioners–many of whom had good fighting skills before they came to yiquan. But what caliber of fighters do yiquan training methods really produce? I see a lot of Western boxing-type movements among those training with Yao Chengguang in Beijing. Is that bad? Of course not. Does Yiquan produce uniquely effective results with its martial arts training? I wonder.
April 11th, 2008 at 2:26 am
>many of whom had good fighting skills before they came to yiquan. But what caliber of fighters do yiquan training methods really produce?
That is one of those fascinating (subsitute “art x” for “yiquan”) questions that isn’t easily answerable in a scientific way. Sort of like does some dynasty sports team really have the best training methods or does it get the best talent and that is the key reason for success (best inputs, so best outputs, even if the training is basically the same or marginally better)? I wonder as well.
Interesting about the health point. Could be the sheer volume of taijiquan participants is going to produce random examples that we then hold up as paragons but their longevity and health is due to many factors (not explainable by something like yiquan vs. taijiquan vs. art x).
April 11th, 2008 at 3:17 am
This is an excerpt from Wang’s conversation with a newspaper reporter. The reporter tried to defend Taiji, but did not succeed.
And then Wang went on to give one of my all-time favorite comments:
“If a true enthusiast of martial arts sees this stuff, he will feel sick for a week!”
Wang is great because he knew what he knew, not because he knew everything. Whereas most IMAs don’t even know what they don’t know.
April 11th, 2008 at 3:29 am
“That interpretation would fit the context of removing the word “form” from xingyiquan to be yiquan.”
That would be true if “xing” meant “form”, but it doesn’t exactly. Some people interpret it that way. The literal meaning is “shape”, but in XingYi it has a wider meaning than just that.
April 11th, 2008 at 4:08 am
Against the backdrop of his times who would really disagree with what Master Wang has said? Lots of people talk about the health benefits of Taijiquan and nobody would dispute these but at the same time nobody would dispute the masses of people out there who practice a debased form of Taijiquan that has no visible effects other than giving practioners Tai Chi belly, making them pant breathlessly and become tense trying fruitlessly to mimic movements they dont understand and do not put any ‘yi’ into.
Who can deny that so much of what is passed for Taijiquan is intentionless, limp, and done with very little internal co-ordination at all? The criticism’s made by Wang Xiangzhai are similar to ones made by people like Wong Kiew Kit who call say people do ‘Tai Chi dance’ and not Taiji. When practiced badly Taijiquan really does have all the negative effects Wang points out and really does look very pitiful particularly when placed in a self-defence situation.
Wang Xiangzhai clearly respected Yang Shaohou and Chengfu and he highlights their skills as testament to what he calls the original form of Taijiquan. However, people have to understand that fake Martial Arts is not a new phenomena. I remember a story about Chen Fake who once allowed a ‘master’ of Taijiquan who claimed to be over 100 years old and ran out of breath in the middle of his form to save face. Wang lived in an era where, like today, people tried to capitalise upon the reputations of certain fighters by claiming secret lineages and styles or claiming discipleship when they’d only learned forms and no power training. Naturally he was distressed by this being passed on as the real deal and thus he called for the powerful Taiji masters to stop allowing this.
April 11th, 2008 at 4:44 am
Well, I’ll say it: I think Wang Xiangzhai was full of shit in his critique of taijiquan that Dave posted above. Calling Yang Chengfu a “master of the original taijiquan and an “old friend” juxtaposed with a slagging of the training method that Chengfu taught–and made his living from–is puerile hypocrisy and blatant self-marketing at its most obvious.
The comic irony is that much of the same criticisms can be made regarding the popularization of Yiquan over the past twenty-five years or so: Lam Kam Chuen and Yu Yongnian, yiquan for health; Yu Pengxi, yiquan for health and mysticism (empty force); anyone who says that high-level Yiquan practice for fighting is not difficult, arduous, and proprioceptively complex is ignorant of the practice; experienced Yiquan practitioners fare no better against Muay Thai or Kyokushinkai fighters than experienced taijiquan players; etc.
April 11th, 2008 at 4:46 am
I will now burn incense… and go into trance….I am a channel for Master Wang…from beyond the grave…..
“How can you miss what is in your face, I challenge all of you to fight me, but first come and debate me! (Here in the land of Yellow Springs) Even if you lose the fight maybe you can score a point some other way! Now, of course, the Yang’s and the Chen’s were never as good as me, I kick their ass everyday back to elementary school in the after-life. They injured their health practicing the wrong thing! That is what I said! Lu Chan also! I couldn’t eat ghost food for a weak after I saw him do his form!
They are all qi crazy.
Now, if you want to know a secret, a quick way to shorten your life is to practice martial arts everyday…all dead gongfu masters are here! (Please come here and study Yiquan with me, Master Wang Xiangzhai)
Also I challenge those Krav Maga-zi’s to die and then come here and fight me too.”
Oh, I have a headache…I’m so dizzy…what happened…?
April 11th, 2008 at 5:02 am
Damn the old man can’t shut up even when he’s dead . . . :- ] He wastes far too much qi yakking on the Internet.
Which brings up the question: is there Houtian qi in Heaven?
April 11th, 2008 at 5:20 am
> That would be true if “xing” meant “form”, but it doesn’t exactly. Some people interpret it that way. The literal meaning is “shape”, but in XingYi it has a wider meaning than just that.
I assume Wang must have intended to deemphasize all of those meanings when he says things like:
“One should know that the original ‘Xingyi’ completely lacked the training method of the twelve forms, but the whole body was meant to express the essence of all these twelve forms. It did not have the theory of the mutual promotion and restraint of the five elements, there were just the five elements representing five kinds of forces. It did not have any fixed techniques, boxing routines or forms of movements either.”
I am basing this assumption mainly on this kind of statement and these kinds of blog posting and comments, plus wikipedia and so on. Who knows. Dave had a nice rebuttal post earlier.
April 11th, 2008 at 5:22 am
A further irony, perhaps also comic, is that Yang Chengfu appears to have greatly simplified his own personal taijiquan practice after about 1930–if Zheng Manqing’s recollection is accurate. Supposedly at the time that Zheng studied with him, YCF only practiced moving into, and then holding, a few postures like Single Whip and Lifting Hands, and then practiced tuishou. Perhaps YCF took Wang Xiangzhai’s criticisms of long empty taolu to heart. ;- ]
April 11th, 2008 at 6:33 am
i want to know what the’ three cuts’ are.
yang is said to have practiced holding,
single whip [yang meridians]
lift hands [yin meridians]
backfist parry punch [advancing]
repulse monkey [retreating]
but remember this is after years of practicing an entire system.
mentioning the longevity of tai chi you check the ages most of the yang family,not real good.
i have never heard a coca cola executive praise pepsi,so you must take the words of any practicioner with a grain of salt.
i find those who are not premoting their own art and are content with their own training find no need to deride others.
April 11th, 2008 at 7:32 am
Thanks for listing the postures in YCF’s later practice, Wayne.
And you are correct . . . this was after years of practicing an entire system, or certainly a lot more than four postures and tuishou. WXZ’s distillation was after years of xingyi practice, then some more years of exploring/challenging other systems.
And just for clarification: I deride neither yiquan nor taijiquan (both of which I’ve trained), just some of the words of Wang Xiangzhai.
April 11th, 2008 at 9:19 am
just for clarification.
parry punch and repulse monkey were done as walking exercises up and down the hall,i might have been a little unclear with that.
i also dont think his overall training time deminished,although that is speculation on my part.
April 11th, 2008 at 11:00 am
yes what was Wang talking about in “3 cuts”? did he find out directly from the Yangs? is this knowledge still around and explicit in a written source in Chinese or English?
April 11th, 2008 at 5:35 pm
neijia,
It’s completely true that Wang said he wanted to remove all the forms from martial arts. However, I’m just trying to point out that “xing” does not mean “form” in English.
G
April 11th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
“yes what was Wang talking about in “3 cuts”? did he find out directly from the Yangs? is this knowledge still around and explicit in a written source in Chinese or English?”
Sounds to me like he’s confusing the “three old fists/cuts” of the Dai family with the origins of Tai Chi Chuan. In fact, the two systems aren’t related at all.
There’s an article on Jarek’s China From Inside website about the three old cuts.
April 11th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Here’s a link to the article on the 3 old fists:
http://www.chinafrominside.com/ma/xyxy/sanquan.html
April 11th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Wu Cheng Ching in his contribution to the classics mentions the “old Yang three techniques”: rollback, push, and elbow. This is from Wile’s Lost TaiChi Classics of the Late Ching Dynasty. My guess is that is what Wang is talking about. Wu’s three techniques apparently make the first ever push hands pattern. It’s a great read.
April 11th, 2008 at 8:29 pm
@B_Wutang:
It is my understanding that back in the day the yiquan camp and the lhbf camp exchanged top students to ’share’ teaching methods.
My own exposure to the ‘3 sisters’ within the teaching of a lhbf camp basically teach the ‘essence’ of each. Example, the xingyi is based upon the training of the 5 elements, bagua is based on the training of single and double palm change.
My own exposure to LHBF is void of the wushu pizazz. Trust me as I used to do wushu
However, there are some camps of LHBF that are more wushu based.
April 12th, 2008 at 3:32 am
wujimon // Apr 11, 2008 at 8:29 pm
you might be interested in this book -
http://books.google.com/books?id=bs1Qw7yv-DQC&pg=PA204&lpg=PA204&dq=Nanjing+1928+martial+arts&source=web&ots=Jhy_CQp6Ad&sig=z1NWCBbh9cX362JuI8v7k4SuKXo&hl=en#PPA201,M1
no liu he bafa in Nanjing - when the country was especially looking for the top martial arts and artists to strengthen the country -
i see hsing-i, pa-kua, and tai chi -
maybe some people made up up liu he ba fa out of pa-kua, hsing-i, and tai chi at some point and called it a martial art thousands of years old…
April 12th, 2008 at 10:08 am
LHBF may not be thousands of years old but that doesn’t mean it was made up by the CCP. Once again, Tao Ping-siang brought it to Taiwan in 1949 and he was KMT — not a communist.
A whole lot of CMA isn’t listed as being taught at the Nanjing academy. Doesn’t mean anything.
April 12th, 2008 at 10:54 am
A reliable source tells me it was created in Nanjing some time after the late 1920s.
April 13th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
luo de xiu is the man
April 14th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
@B_Wutang:
My comment was to address your initial inquiry of the relationship between the yiquan and lhbf camps. Apparently, WXZ saw something about this camp that we wanted to check out.
Regarding the history, I don’t really care if it was created in 10,000 BC or 1920, my a monk or a legendary figure, or via reading a scroll… I still see value in the training and it’s material
April 14th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
wujimon // Apr 14, 2008 at 9:18 pm
We must see things differently then - as I definitely care about the roots and history of a style - because there are too many frauds out there for one to not be skeptical of a guy who claims he’s “invented” a martial arts style. It seems to me that this guy basically took what he learned from hsingi-i and re-branded whatever he liked about it as his own for dubious reasons of self-promotion and self-aggrandizement. Why not just practice the original - hsingi-i - instead of the derivative - xingiquan?
April 14th, 2008 at 11:46 pm
I assume there is some aspect and explanation of Wang’s teachings and answers that must hark back to the nature of his lessons with the legendary Guo Yunshen and the age of Wang at the time. From a karate site, http://www.shimakarate.com/sensei_kim.shtml:
If it’s true that only WXZ learned all the secrets of Guo’s zhan zhuang and xyq, that seems to be an important clue as to why Wang would take this position and why he’d be so much better at xyq than his peers. How old was Wang at this time? 8? One might conclude Wang as a preferred special student *was* practicing the most “authentic” and “secret” and “best” xingyiquan, and others are/were not because Guo apparently held something back from the other students. Perhaps he rebranded the art because he saw it as diluted, much as taijiquan is usually something else and totally not martial today, and many teachers try to “rebrand” their school as “original” or “more martial”, “more authentic”, “not diluted” and so on without going so far as to giving the art a modified name.
The legend of Guo itself is fascinating for many reasons. They say he focused on beng quan in prison but also (and perhaps more importantly) on zhan zhuang while manacled. To me, having someone be really exceptional at a particular technique is interesting but not surprising (e.g., young Tyson’s left hook is a great modern example). What’s more fascinating to me is the nature of his zhan zhuang practice in prison and afterwards. I don’t think much is really published about it, at least in English. Could he hold the santishi posture while handcuffed? If not, what did he do? What was the most likely shape and weight of those manacles at that time?
April 15th, 2008 at 5:10 am
“One might conclude Wang as a preferred special student *was* practicing the most “authentic” and “secret” and “best” xingyiquan, and others are/were not because Guo apparently held something back from the other students.”
This is a stretch - don’t you think? The style is Hebei hsing-i - derived from Shangxi hsingi-i - anyhow. I’ve never heard it said that WXZ l was the best hsing-i practitioner - remember that Guo Yunshen had other famous students who were well-regarded - like Li Cun Yi for one -
Also - clearly there were other good hsing-i fighters - look at the all China tournament then in 28 and the 30s - who did hsing-i
The core issue here is that Hsingi-is based on the Taoism and traditional Chinese medicine and WXZ stripped it of that in favor of something secular - science - and he gave it two different names - and pretended he’d invented something new.
We practice a martial form of tai chi - but just because some people do tai chi poorly doesn’t mean we’re going to re-brand and pre-tend we created something better by secularizing it…
April 15th, 2008 at 7:46 am
yeah probably a stretch. i’m reading mainly the yiquan side and buy most of their hype. i’m not sure he claimed a reinvention, tho.
April 15th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
i became so disillusioned at the state of tai chi here in australia that when i moved from sydney to brisbane i did not teach for 10 years.
i still instructed former students but did not let anyone know that i trained.
at the insistance of former students i again started to teach.
because what i was teaching was so different to what was out there,i decided i would no longer call it tai chi,that was because what the general public think is tai chi is so well established that the real art seems like something else.
if everyone calls an apple an orange,to sell an orange you must change its name.
in the end i decided to still call it tai chi,because i new if i gave it a new name everyone would say i was trying to disguise what i was teaching.
April 15th, 2008 at 5:25 pm
b wutang, why do history and roots matter? only if they have the strategy does it matter
April 16th, 2008 at 3:47 am
MEOW - history and roots matter precisely because strategy matters - not just the correct fighting strategy, but the correct training strategy as well. There is just so much crap (much of it promulgated with honest intent) that it is hard for people new to IMA to distinguish. Proper lineage can alleviate some of those concerns.
April 16th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
lol there is no ‘correct’ way, like ive said in other posts, the strategy which underlies them is what underlies all arts which utilize it (just a different expression), training strategy, u mean.. the one which produces results?
i dont want to say who my teacher is in case he pulls me up for this :P, but his lineage is top notch (all 3 xin yi liu he branches, trained under ma yueh liang, and ji jinsan among others), yet im doubting his fighting ability (despite what ive heard about him discrediting schools etc, i dont get the feeling hes hardcore (i trained under other guys before him)
i also went to a few classes with shi mei lin (ma’s and wu ying huas step daughter), she would be as close to the lineage as you would get, yet she cant fight at all, lineage matters only if you want the exact expression, and thats why m.a. these days are getting watered down and weak, because not many people understand them.
ive noticed this with quite a few practitioners of m.a., almost like they train, and do exactly what the teacher tells them, but dont truly think about what theyre learning (btw, i mean all styles, and i honestly think ufc etc is crap (no technique or strategy, but theyre def. conditioned). Anyone can regurgitate what the teacher gives them, but to really! understand is another thing (at the base m.a. is to defeat an enemy (usually i would use kill, but there is a force spectrum, esp in todays society), what is the most efficient way of doing so, the most efficient way of training, the most efficient way of fighting, how do you train your mind for the stress of possibly killing or dying, too much talk on history, and not real m.a.!
April 16th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
ooh yea big post (h)
April 16th, 2008 at 4:46 pm
what do u guys think are the aspectts which bind all martial arts, the aspects which are necessary in order to have an effective fighting system?
April 17th, 2008 at 3:51 am
“i dont want to say who my teacher is in case he pulls me up for this :P, but his lineage is top notch (all 3 xin yi liu he branches, trained under ma yueh liang, and ji jinsan among others), yet im doubting his fighting ability (despite what ive heard about him discrediting schools etc, i dont get the feeling hes hardcore (i trained under other guys before him)
i also went to a few classes with shi mei lin (ma’s and wu ying huas step daughter), she would be as close to the lineage as you would get, yet she cant fight at all, lineage matters only if you want the exact expression, and thats why m.a. these days are getting watered down and weak, because not many people understand them.”
meow, you’re not the only one who’s made that complaint about your teacher Stephen Yan, but you’re a little more obvious expressing yourself–the mind of a 15-year-old in the body of a twenty-something, a common form of troll. And hiding behind a nom-de-’Net.
So I’m curious how you checked out the “ability to fight” of either Yan or Shi Mei Ling. Did you see them fight? Did you go around challenging an old man and a woman to a fight yourself? Or do you judge their martial skill level solely by what they’ve shown you, probably in a public class?
It’s true that martial arts lineage is not directly correlated with either martial knowledge/skill or the ability to use that knowledge/skill under pressure. It’s also true that not all effective teachers will have a lot of fighting experience. And it’s definitely true that pursuing excellence in a martial art is not all about fighting.
It’s been said before, by Sun Lutang and others: if you want to learn to defend yourself, buy a gun and learn to shoot it. If you want to learn a martial art, seek out a variety of teachers and intelligently work your ass off. Lineage is no guarantee of quality in today’s mass market of movie-induced martial arts madness.
April 17th, 2008 at 5:28 am
i once heard two devotees of tibetan buddism arguing over whos teacher had the best linage.
it came down to the fact that one had been reincarnated 14 times the other 15.
they both should have been worrying about their own training rather than arguing.
the old saying an inch of meditation an inch of budda.
add skill like adding a sheet of paper each day.
having said that it only takes one dummy for the whole linage to be lost forever.
i never thought either wu ying wa or her daughter to be fighters,but that does not mean they dont hold the secrets and are unable to train fighters.
watching wu do the spear form on u tube shows me the best constructedf spear form i have seen for practical fighting.
if you want to be a fighter go and have one death match a day for the rest of your life,you might not live long but i promise improvement.
cma are not ring crafts they are designed for self defence and life enhancement.
they are meant to arise out of nowhere when the need arises.
to come from the state of wu chi.
this may be combat or a car spinning out of control toward you,i know these arts work because when needed they have arrived.
most times it was not combat it was more deadly.
so dont waste your time looking at short term gains.
who do you want to be at 80 wu ying wa or mike tyson the choice is yours.
April 17th, 2008 at 7:51 am
oosh tom!
youre right about the what was being shown in class, so they could be better, in mei lins case, her form was full of holes (its been affected quite a bit by her wushu training methinks), and when pressed why, quoted cliche sayings ‘tai chi doesnt fight’ etc
stephen on the other hand, i could be wrong about, his teachings in some things are good imo, but he doesnt have the same ‘fighting spirit’ as people ive trained with (my uncle was in the army as a seargeant and survived cancer, his technique might not have been as good / precise, but his killer intent was tonnes more) (also he teaches jump kicks, sweep kicks and moves where you deliberately take yourself to the ground, sometimes the strikes are to areas where the opponents anatomy is strong (sometimes leaving oneself open as a result of) etc, obviously ive only been shown a little of what he knows, and he is definitely crisp, but based on this, its left me a little skeptical)
in urban society, a gun isnt necessarily the most effective means of self defense (especially here in nz where the laws are a little more tougher regarding weapon use), the time to recognise a threat, release safety and shoot gives a person who would engage in melee combat quite a large range to work with (and i want real m.a., not showmanship)
wayne - major fallacy, if its meant to protect you, you cant wait 80 years before youre good at it, real m.a. training should produce effective fighters within months (its just that imo the traditional training methods (i.e. millions of forms) are ineffective, if you pit 90% of kung fu practitioners out there against tyson, i guarantee they would lose (although, its not just forms, something ive been thinking about lately, a boxer has what, 8 - 9 techniques, but theyre extremely good at doing them, as opposed to 300 techniques, 30 of which may cover the same angle / range (and you have to think to do them). Tyson has agility, speed, strength, timing and tech, but he doesnt have the same strategy / efficiency that i see in other styles, the same potential. Also, dont get me wrong, there are definitely higher levels to m.a, but they dont happen overnight, and theyre only small refinements as opposed to the tech etc mentioned earlier.
April 17th, 2008 at 7:54 am
oh yea tom, i cant be too far off the mark if its also been mentioned earlier eh
April 17th, 2008 at 8:12 am
why not learn to use guns instead of obsolete spears etc (aswel as the unarmed)
April 17th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
no one said it takes 80 years.
three years with a good teacher is all you need.
May 8th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
[...] of previous interviews with Master Wang. Original, unedited translations are available at Formosa Neijia (in part) or from the Yiquan eBookstore (in [...]
December 1st, 2008 at 7:39 am
on the critique on yiquan propaganda above. In the original interview, WXZ clearly states that he did not invent a ‘new’ style. But simply wants the methods of xingyi quan reexamined. And honestly, if you have never trained yiquan, let alone trained intensively and discovered its differences with xing yi and taiji… well you just have no idea what you’re talking about. Yiquan is tough, and if you practise it seriously, its very tough. It is much like a constant confrontation with yourself, all the tricks, techniques, methods that you hide under, become exposed. So yiquan is in essence, a constant reexamination. Tough doesn’t mean a loss of subtility or sensitivity. Wang XianZhai said ‘All that i train for,
is a calm mind and a strong spirit’.
Ive practiced both Taijiquan, Xingyiquan and Yiquan for several years, and i want to put strong emphasis on yiquan’s effectiveness in combat situations. If trained properly it gives very quick reflex, speed and a calm attentive mind(if you know the effect of adrenaline in a fight, you understand the importance of that)
It is not something you can learn quick, it takes some years, i would say at least five, before it is really understood, but the result is… something you should find out for yourself. Health and longevity are part of it.
December 1st, 2008 at 1:56 pm
D33,
didn’t you gain those in TJQ and XYQ?
Maybe you trained those not the right way and you have no idea what you are talking about?
Only asking, ’cause there are always 2 sides.
If Yiquan works for you, feel happy. Others might prefer trad. arts, even Dave is more into other stuff nowadays, anyway.
December 24th, 2008 at 12:14 am
I notice that he’s referring to Yang style practitioners. I wonder if this was because the Chen style was still ‘hidden’ at the time he was making these statements? If so, I wonder what he would have made of Chen style…