Hot Take: I think Wang Zongyue is Wu Yuxiang

Nei Jia: the Qigong and Taijiquan Forum Taijiquan and the Internal Martial Arts
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When it comes to Taijiquan, I think the Classics are overrated.

For starters, people don’t even ask who the author is, and perhaps the first “Classic” that subsequent “Classics” quote is the writing authored by a “Wang Zongyue”.

However, I think Wu Yuxiang (or someone in his social circle) most likely wrote it, and that’s not just because Wu Yuxiang just happened to have “found” the writing after he felt his teacher, Yang Luchan, was hiding things from him.

The biggest reason for me is that the form written out in Wang Zongyue’s writing is simply Wu (Hao) Family Taijiquan’s form.

Source for Wang Zongyue’s Writing: https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2013/05/25/the-taiji-classics/
Source for Wu Yuxiang’s Writing: https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2013/06/01/hao-style-taiji/

  • Both start with 懶扎衣 (Lazily Pulling Back the Robe)
  • Neither of them has Cross Hands - something both Yang and Chen have.
  • And both (misspelled?) Shang Tongbei (Fan/Flash Through the Back) to San Yong Bei (Three Through the Back). Three? The Chinese character 三. Did Wu Yuxiang mishead Shang as San? And "both" authors just happened to have spelled it this way when none of the other texts call it this?
  • What we would call Cloud Hands (Yùn Shou), they call Tangling Hands (Yún). Two different Chinese characters, but again, look at the Pinyin here: Yùn vs Yún. The tone is different. Did "both" authors mishead the word?
And there are many sequences in both forms that are uniquely theirs in name.

Basically, Wang Zongyue’s form is Wu (Hao) Style Taijiquan.

So I am led to believe one of the two scenarios: [LIST=1]

  • Wu Yuxiang constructed his form purely from a list of names from a book he found, instead of from his teachers.
  • Wu Yuxiang used Wang Zongyue as his pen name, and used his form (Wu (Hao) Taijiquan's form) as the basis for Wang Zongyue's form. [/LIST] Dubious authorship aside, another reason why I think the Classics are overrated is because when you think about it... the Classics are just a mashup of even older Chinese texts, including such as Laozi (Tao Te Ching), The Art of War (Sun Tzu), Book of Changes (I Ching), and others.

    Like: “The weak overcomes the strong; the soft overcomes the hard” is a direct quote from Laozi.

    The Classics mentions “Knowing both yourself and your opponent, in a hundred battles you will have a hundred victories.” which is a direct quote from The Art of War.

    A lot of these writings are not the fruits of Taijiquan. They are the result of… copying even older Chinese texts. ​

    If your goal was to derive wisdom from the Classics… why not just read the actual “Classics” they imported it in from? Just read stuff like The Art of War instead.

    I could take a random quote like “Make noise in the east, and strike in the west.” and claim this is a Taijiquan “principle” despite the fact that Sun Tzu was not a Taijiquan practitioner. Taijiquan does use that concept, but the quote is not exactly original.

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    If Wang Zongyue’s is to be called just a mashup then its a very well written one, whereas Wu Yuxiang’s reads like an instruction manual.