Chen Xin Jia vs Lao Jia

Nei Jia: the Qigong and Taijiquan Forum Taijiquan and the Internal Martial Arts
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Okay, I’m willing to give this thing another go, I miss it. I learned so much here. (I was ShaolinDan for those who remember/care, not that I really want anyone digging up some of the stuff I posted before, unless it’s early coverage on the Yunnan Shaolin Temple–that I’m proud of)

Anyway, I got older and I stopped training for a few years and then started in on taijiquan as one does. Been practicing a version of Yang style (Yang Jwing Ming) for a few years, and as of this summer I’ve been training Chen taiji as well.

So… this weekend I’m going to a seminar with Wang Hai Jun that will be on Xin Jia Yi Lu. I’ve heard about it on some podcasts, I’ve watched some videos of it, but up until now I have only ever practiced Lao Jia. Just thought it might be interesting to hear different peoples’ take on these versions of the form.

Please, I’m really not interested in hearing the divisive controversial answers, I’ve already heard those–Ken Gullette of the Internal Fighting Arts Podcast repeated someone else’s metaphor, and I’m sure it’s correct, “They’re like two different dishes served at the same great restaurant.”

I just want to know what your own experiences are with these forms and the conclusions you’ve drawn.

Thanks, I really would like to see this thing come alive again.

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I’m gonna be pretty sore tomorrow…

So, I got through the seminar reasonably well, Wang went nice and slow with a lot of repetition. I think I’ll be able to keep it up. We didn’t get very far, the third “pound the mortar” movement, right after the first punch, but it’s enough.

No really profound takeaways right now-I need some time to process. What I can say is the Xin Jia is very rich and very FUN. Just some really enjoyable movement and a lot more explosive release than in the Lao Jia I’ve been learning. Really really fun.

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Traditionally, Chen Family Taijiquan has Yi Lu (First Road) and Er Lu (Second Road), and these two forms can be practiced with different variations.

There was no such thing as “Laojia” (Old Frame) or “Xinjia” (New Frame).

Chen Peishan, a famous small frame practitioner of Chen Taijiquan, remembers:

"As far as I can remember, new frame (xinjia) was first mentioned in Chenjiagou around 1976. During this time, Chen Zhaokui, the son of Chen Fake, returned from Beijing to Chenjiagou Village to teach Taijiquan. Back then, students who were willing to learn gathered in the village square in the morning to learn from Chen Zhaokui. He often stood on a pedestal that was specially set up so that one could see him better during his Taijiquan performances. In the evenings he taught a small group of selected students. These were in the favor of learning the form (taolu) with many details and fajin movements. During the Cultural Revolution, Taijiquan could only be practiced in secret. Many masters left the village to live elsewhere, underground. There has been abduction, detention and many bad things during that time.

Chen Zhaokui’s demonstrations differed from the forms that were then practiced on a large scale in the village. This probably led some villagers to the assumption that this must be something new or a new form (xinjia). During this time I was visiting relatives in Chejiagou. Chen Zhaokui was a guest at my uncle Chen Lizhou’s house, where Chen Yu, Chen Zhaokui’s son, and I stayed together a lot. As I said, as far as I know, no one had spoken about a new or old frame in the village before that time. The terms large and small frames were quite common.

Even today, the question of why the form of Chen Zhaokui is called xinjia is not entirely clear. In the meantime it has simply become common to use this term. It is also controversial whether the so-called xinjia was compiled as a form of Chen Fake or whether it is even of older origin. To the outsider, the whole thing must appear very confusing.

If you look at Chen Fa’ke’s disciples, none of them uses the term “Laojia” or “Xinjia”. These terms are exclusively coined from students of Chen Zhaopi teaching in the village at a time when the art was dying out.

The differences between Laojia and Xinjia ultimately come down to learning two different teachers: Chen Zhaopi and Chen Zhaokui. Chen Zhaopi just happened to be their first teacher, and after he passed away, Chen Zhaokui became their second teacher.

It has been advertised to many that in Chen Family Taijiquan, you must practice “Laojia” first, and then afterwards, you practice “Xinjia” second.

But that is only because the villagers (at a time of trying to revive their art) learned them in that order because their first teacher (Chen Zhaopi) died.

Ordinarily, you would learn just Yi Lu and Erlu and deepen the layers of those two forms over time. They are just not explicitly organized as “Layer 1, Layer 2, Layer 3, etc…”

And those layers of details are often what lead people to mistakenly think that the differences they see between two practitioners are just trivial, stylistic differences. That most certainly could be the case, but is it also just as likely of a case that one is more layered and advanced than the other. It’s not always just an “aesthetic” difference.

This is Chen Zhaokui’s one and only son, Chen Yu - the closest representation we have to what “Xinjia” probably originally looked like: [video=youtube_share;bdYF0zg-boo]https://youtu.be/bdYF0zg-boo?si=WAjzxjeDDqS9ckL0[/video]

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What is that Chen village called today? There are so many places claiming to be the original village where this came from.

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It’s called Chen Jia Gou “Chen Family Village.” It’s in Henan, not very far from the Shaolin Temple.

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DanChase is correct in that in Chinese, we would say Chen Jia Gou.

You are also correct that there have been many who tried to claim to be the original of Taijiquan.

For example, Wudang Temple wants to claim that they are the origin of Taijiquan, but “Wudang Taijiquan” was formed in the 1980’s right after the Cultural Revolution.

Sun Lutang, founder of Sun Family Taijiquan, actually went to Wudang to study their alchemy methods. But for someone who really wanted to learn Taijiquan, he made no mention of Wudang having Taijiquan.

Wudang Taijiquan that we see today is really just a mimicry of Yang Family Taijiquan.

Historically, Wudang has never been famous for martial arts. If you look at Qi Jiguang’s manual, he talks about all kinds of martial arts in that time and place. He mentioned how Shaolin was famous for its Staff Method. Zero mention of Wudang. In today’s time, Wudang kind of just shamelessly “plagiarizes” Taiji, Xingyi, and Bagua, pretending that those arts (each with their own respective histories) were all linked to Wudang Mountain, and what is really quite random is that they threw Bajiquan in there too.

There is also Zhaobao Village which is like a sibling village to Chen Jia Gou. But… It’s basically Chen Style.

The founder of Wu (Hao) Taijiquan, Wu Yuxiang, tried to learn from Yang Luchan (Founder of Yang)'s own Chen teacher. But he was instead referred to someone in Zhaobao Village.

He allegedly “found” a book by a “Wang Zongyue”. But Wu Yuxiang and his own disciple/nephew and Wang Zongyue’s book all made zero mention of Wudang.

It was later on did people started to piggyback on this by saying: “Oh… welll… Wang Zongyue was from Wudang!”

But Wu Yuxiang’s nephew was a scholar and wrote that the origins of Taijiquan were unknown, and that it was passed down from the Chen Village. Even though his own uncle studied in Zhaobao, he credited it to Chen Village.

Nowadays, Chen Village is very commercialized. Although it has problems of its own, its history holds up to scrutiny the best. Stuff like Wudang is so easily debunked when you look at Chinese martial arts at large historically.

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I could’ve posted here again a couple months ago, but life got busy…

Since last post I have attended two more Xin Jia seminars with Wang Hai Jun. We got pretty much halfway through…

It’s an interesting form, with certain aspects that I prefer to the lao jia and certain aspects that remind me of the Yang taiji I practice.

BUT it’s SO dense. Learning it kind of reminded me of the three times I attempted to read Gravity’s Rainbow—I never made it through :squinting_face_with_tongue: I don’t think it’s really to my taste and it’s probably a little too detailed to be learning in a large group seminar format. But it has given me some insights into the forms I do practice, so that was cool—

would learn more, but definitely low priority for me

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Heres the thing about tai chi forms in my POV.

Since 1920s early Jingwu researcher Tang Hao already found the Liangyi hall book outlining Chen taiji in the 1850s; the forms were about 20-30% shorter. Researchers are still going at it, and long fist forms with high movement sequence matches to taiji has been gradually surfacing. And they are even shorter in form length.

During Yang Luchan’s era, we see clearly that it was an experimental period, where Yang’s teacher allowed and encouraged innovation. Thus the classmate of Yang creating the neighboring village’s sudden thunder form. Using this as background context then you can have a better guess at what is the core difference between various Chen substyles.

My personal opinion after many years of thinking is that Old frame is indeed old frame due to having less circles. There is no doubt that the unique choreography of Chen taiji is the addition of circles to a long fist back bone. Take even more circles away from old frame and you get longfist.

Oral stories commonly say that Chen Fake had better fighting ability than Chen Zhaopei, which gave better PR for Xin jia. I think this led to downplaying the historical importance of lao jia.

Chen Zhaokui put a pause in between transitional movements and extrapolated possible “techniques within techniques”. This led to the appearance of the Xinjia being superior. However I think he was merely giving examples to a concept.

Xinjia also has slightly more body waving than laojia, which gives the impression of it being more advanced or powerful. But theoretically that doesn’t matter, since internal power means hiding your power.

I do find that laojia is very closed off and its basically impossible to learn higher concepts from Chen village. I think the 1960s and 80s left a very deep scar.

Xinjia’s idea is likely to extrapolate the other lost techniques and forms of Chen village within the circles. It is unknown whether the other forms were lost or deleted deliberately. Xinjia is indeed very playful mirroring Chen Zhaokui’s personality. But in later years it becomes more morose especially with its Beijing branch. But I like laojia for its historic authenticity.

Xinjia teachers may teach advanced concepts earlier and more frequently to show superiority over laojia, but there is no proof that those concepts don’t exist within laojia already. In fact some of these concepts for sure exists already within external long fist.

Also I think there are also some permanent losses in transmission about power generation in both branches, mainly due to the health issues experienced by top experts in both lineages. As I come to realize that I don’t really like modern Henan culture and commercialized modern taijiquan, I’ve also come to accept the limitations within taiji.

Finally one should consider that both xiaojia and laojia forms froze in time possibly due to the generational trauma experienced by both teacher-student groups, and the personal performance styles of the teachers were preserved to memorialize them. This happens occasionally in styles where the teacher suffered great ordeals, and performing the form itself becomes a ritual of remembrance. Thus it may be helpful to explore one’s emotional connections with forms.

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It’s great to hear an answer not coming from within a particular lineage.