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]