From: twcaps@tennyson.lbl.gov (Terry Chan)
Newsgroups: rec.martial-arts
Subject: Stuff on Taijiquan History (Kind of Long)
Date: 29 Sep 1992 07:00:42 GMT
Organization: Department of Redundancy Department
Reply-To: TWChan@lbl.gov (Terry Chan)
NNTP-Posting-Host: 128.3.12.117


david@xlnt.com (David Johnson) writes:
   [some stuff edited out] 
  +I am the one who posted about the physically demanding form.  My teacher
  +said it is analogous to the Chen Pau Chui form discussed in Tom Osborn's
  +post "Yang & Chen (was Re: A few questions about T'ai Chi..)".  I have
  +had some people tell me that there is no such thing.  My teacher claims
  +it is generally not taught in the US but it is easier, not necessarily
  +easy to find in Taiwan.
  +
  +Many have said that it was Yang Cheng-fu made taiji more accessible by
  +creating a less physically demanding form.  The question this raises is
  +what did he do with the more physically demanding techniques.  I find it
  +hard to believe that he just discarded them.  Some have said my teacher
  +is wrong but he makes sense.  I do not think Yang Cheng-fu would just
  +throw those techniques away.
  
  +Will someone out there please post details of the evolution of the Yang
  +style?

Well, one source I have is the commentary by Gu Liuxin, formerly Deputy
Director and researcher of the Shanghai Institute of Physical Culture
(he just died within the past few years) in the first chapter to _Chen_
Style_Taijiquan_.  The first chapter is on the origin, evolution, and
development of Taijiquan.  I'll skip the Zhang Sanfeng stuff right off
the bat since it's not really relevant here.

Chen Wangting had 7 sets of boxing routines.  These were inherited
by Chen Changxing (1771-1853) and Chen Youbeng.  At this point, Gu
states that simplification of the original routines already begins
with Chen Changxing and Chen Youbeng because:

  - The introduction of firearms changed the role and relative 
    importance of boxing skills on the battlefield, 

  - the difficulty/lack of time of learning the seven (empty hand) 
    sets, plus push hands and spear exercises so that most Chen 
    family folk were expert in just two routines, push hands, and 
    sticky spear.  And finally,

  - "Another factor causing shadow boxing to change is its difficult
    sets of routines involving great physical strength, which were
    unsuitable for even highly skilled martial arts masters in their
    advanced age."

The two routines that Chen Changxing passes on are referred to as the
"original big style."

Chen Youbeng developed a New Chen style to suit fitness purposes which
dispensed with some of the difficult movements of the old style.  Chen
Qingping (Youbeng's nephew) also revised this form and it was called
Zhaobao (which are also referred to as two sets of "small style").

Chen Changxing passed the two sets of "big style" to Yang Lucan.  Gu
states that Yang Lucan modified the "Old/Big style" when Yang went
to Beijing to teach for fitness purposes.  There are branches from
Yang Lucan.

The third son, Yang Jianhou modified Yang Lucan's style to form the
"middle style".  Yang Jianhou's third son, Yang Chengfu subsequently
modified Jianhou's style to form the final "big" style commonly seen
today.

Yang Banhou (Lucan's older son) was known for developing a "small
style" which was passed by them (with the "big style") to Quan You, 
and then subsequently to Wu Jianquan (who then had the "small style").
From when comes the Wu2 school.

Chen Qingping (from above) passed on his two sets of "small style" to
Wu Yuxiang, who modified it and came up with an "improved small style"
from which comes the Wu3 school (commonly known as Hao school now).
Sun style descended from Sun Lutang who learned from a master in this
school.

Chen Fake brought the original "old style" to Beijing in the late
1920s and it has since has become popular, to say the least.

In characterizing the new Chen style, the Zhaobao Chen style, the 
two Wu styles, the Yang style, and the Sun styles commonly seen 
today, Gu Liuxin says they all resulted from the revision of the 
first set of "Old" Chen style.  All lack the vigorious jumps and 
leaps in the original form.

However, the second set of Old Chen style (the Paochui form) is 
"markedly different in style from other forms of shadow boxing."

This is the evolution as told by Gu Liuxin.  I don't pretend that
this is the definitive word, but Gu was a respected man and his
story isn't particularly bad and does seem to accurately capture a 
lot of what's out there.

Despite all the "simplifying" going on, we see most of the principals
involved were exposed to the original Chen sets and so David's
question of what happened to the original (or power) forms? Gu notes 
that the Paochui form was unlike other styles, and the modern schools 
of Taijiquan all originate from the first Chen set.  In the same vein,
whatever happened to those original Chen forms that were way too
difficult in Chen Changxin's time?


It's interesting to me how far back the simplifying process has been
going on, yet depite all this, Yang Lucan and certainly his sons
were renowned for their skills.  What's going on?  Maybe David's
idea that the more difficult forms would be taught later was valid.
Maybe the old Chen style just had too much excess baggage :-).

Other writers though, have somewhat different thoughts.  For instance,
Douglas Wile in _Yang Family Secret Transmissions_ writes that Yang
Banhou's transmissions are somewhat "'harder' in tone than the others, 
as he was said to retain more of the _paochui_ techniques taught by
the Ch'ens."  The Wu style fast form, which is supposed to be from
Yang Banhou, does have fa-jing and other techniques absent from the
common slow form.  But it doesn't seem to compare at all to the
vigorous and strenous Chen Pao-chui set that I have seen (in terms
of the degress of vigorousness and strenousness).

Of course, in T.Y. Pang's book, there is a quote by Wu Tunan that
essentially states that he doesn't believe that Chen style is true
Taijiquan at all.

Another story that goes around is that Yang Lucan and his sons all
simplified Taijiquan when they were called to teach it to the
corrupt, heathen Manchus so we get this garbagy "public" Taiji.
An example of this approach is Waysun Liao in his _T'ai_Chi_
Classics_, where he says "the modified form of T'ai Chi became
today's T'ai Chi Ch'uan, or the so-called T'ai Chi exercise...
In other words, most of the T'ai Chi practiced today is not the
original T'ai Chi, and is devoid of meaning."  Like that last
phrase, kind of dismisses it out of hand.  But then, all Liao
goes on to describe is a variation of the Cheng Man-Ching form.
Oh well.

Either way, it sure makes a lot of allowances for people who claim
to know or teach lost/hidden/secret forms.  

Terry "Gee, maybe it's all a racket?" Chan
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