Gene,
Read your article from a while back on the Tagou Institute, found the story & the school intriguing. Just the size of the school must make it a management nightmare. Yet from all reports it sounds that they are able to maintain quality.
Have a few questions, it mentions that the Tagou has some two thousand champions. Could you tell me are these Tagou champions competing with the professional provincial team Wushu athletes at the National level within China? Or are they competing within a different separate venue within China? Does the school do taolu & san da? And do you plan to do anymore coverage of the Tagou Institute?
I’d love to do more with Taguo someday. It’s such an intriguing school and I have had very positive interactions with their headmasters. BTW, for any who haven’t read that article, it’s here They compete on all levels - there is a lot of local competition as you might expect - but they have also fielded a few national competitors. They are best known for their sanda fighters. And organization does not seem to be a problem really - I get the impression it’s run like a military school with a strict chain of command. If you’re really interested in Taguo, you should check out their 5 book series
My shrfu, Shi Xing Hao, mentioned how Taguo’s school works while we were trying to develop our own curriculum for our school. He said that after a student stays and trains for a lenght of time(not sure how long), he is then offered to stay and teach as a coach. They have alot of coaches. A new coach will get between 20-30 new students. This group will be together for the next 3 years all living and training together, no new students will join this group and these students will not train with any other coach…now i wasn’t told how it is dealt with for students who continue after 3 years. 3 years is supposed to get the student to a level of good solid basics. This method definitely makes it easier to have students progress very fast and keep the skill level high. Imagine training everyday with the same few classmates…never having a new student join the class. The teacher would never have to spend time helping someone catch up or teach the older students advanced stuff and the new students the basics. The group/team would grow and improve together.
3 years is supposed to get the student to a level of good solid basics. This method definitely makes it easier to have students progress very fast and keep the skill level high. Imagine training everyday with the same few classmates…never having a new student join the class.
Imagine learning from an 18 year-old sifu, who only studied 3 years with their own 18 year-old sifu!
Imagine having to learn a dozen different forms from 5 different styles, and trying to gain the proficiency to understand, apply, and teach them all!
i guess that came across the wrong way. you don’t become a coach after three years…i just meant that for the first three years you don’t move around, you don’t get new classmates, and you don’t get a new teacher. 3 years of training is only the first step in the doorway.
…imagine training 24/7 in a school with over 8000 students where you are in direct competition within the school and against other schools all the time. Imagine a place where you will be punished, corporeally punished, for poor performance and this includes young teachers. Imagine being 5 years old and being sent to this place by your family, who has invested a lot into your martial arts, maybe so much that you will spend the next ten years of your life there.
… Tagou was scheduled to come down as part of phase 3 of the relocation - slated for 2003 around the time of the festival. When I was last there in 2001, an insider pointed out a large plot of land that had alledgedly been purchased by Taguo - it’s the last thing you see when you leave Dengfeng city headed toward Shaolin.
I’d love to do more with Taguo but to be honest, my affiliation there is pretty loose. What more would you like to know, beyond what was written in the previous article?
A little more in depth I suppose; their formula for success, training regiments, info on a few of their top athletes & the venues they take part in, management strategies, etc…
I find it interesting how within China where for more recent times you really only had conventional contemporary Wushu competition formats & then San Shou/Da but now you have these various traditional venues & then the Shaolin hybrid stuff.
What also interests me is that as China moves towards ‘free enterprise’ & a more open society is; how these private schools function (all Professional Wushu teams are after all government funded) in a business sense & what the future holds for schools like Tagou as the country & the people of China evolve.
A little off the exact topic what I also find interesting about the whole ‘Shaolin’ mystic/scenario is where it is evolving (and I guess schools like Tagou are a big factor). Shaolin seems to me a unusual hybrid of traditional, modern wushu, San Shou/Da & acrobatics. I know a lot of ‘traditional’ minded persons don’t like what’s going on but I find it interesting how they (this Shaolin subculture) are pushing the envelop.
I think what’s most interesting about Taguo is that there are no monks and they pride themselves on being ‘folk’ masters. The folk masters are the ones who have preserved the traditional. What makes this even more intriguing is the newly erected Southern Shaolin Temple. They are a subsiderary of the Songshan Temple, so monks are being sent from Songshan to teach and preach Songshan curriculam, BUT they are also very actively researching the folk styles of the south. Now Songshan did this as well - still does in fact - and within the folk styles is a wealth of traiditional skills that never even enter into wushu or sanda.
Shaolin is about family and the monks know very well that the folk masters are our cousins, and that they carry the legacy as well. Herein lies the treasure trove…
The bulk of competitions in China are in wushu taolu or sanda, but at Shaolin, like many areas that have a local style, there is competition in traditional forms as well.
Just met a former member of the Guangdong Wushu team that is going to university here in Canada. We chatted about Tagou (amongst many things), he stated that he had visited as one of his friends, a former member of the Henan Wushu team was working there. He mentioned that the Tagou institute is quite the shrewd business operation, and that when you sign onto the school as Chinese citizen you are only allowed to eat in Tagou canteen (additional cost) & must shop in their in house store for a personal needs (clothing, toiletries, etc… another additional cost) and that per the contract you are not allowed to purchase these things elsewhere.
He also mentioned that Tagou is one of the largest employers for professional athletes retiring from the Henan team. And that unlike the professional gov’t teams, Tagou did not require retired athletes to gain a college teaching degree to work at Tagou.
An interesting conversation that kind of provided some insight as to how they (Tagou) are able to run such a large operation.
Do you know if the other institutes also run like this? I know that privately run schools are springing up all over China & find it interesting to understand how they compete in what has to be the most competitive market in the world for Chinese martial arts.
Most people outside are critical of Taguo just becase they are the biggest fish and it’s very much within Chinese nature to take a bite of big fish. Perahps it’s a communist thing… But I can’t refute any of those statements off hand, so who knows? Taguo definately has to remain competative - it’a an amazing empire, but far be it from me to tell you what the costs might have been. As far as I can see, all the private school are just that, they are all run on their own terms, much like private industry here. What’s the secret to a good school in China? It always comes down to two main factors in my view - results and connections. The best schools have the best tournament results. And it takes good connections to get one started and keep in running. It’s a little different than here, since people still do challenges and enemies can come over a break your sign and take your martial skill.
the book is called a course in traditional gong fu 5 volumes about 90$
Its a set of 5 books that i believed would be traditional , however it bears no resemblence to traditional gong fu in my eyes , its one big manual of everything you learn at tagou school.
It goes through every wushu routine imagineable , 2 man forms 3 man forms shield and sword vs staff etc .
One book is dedicated to application and it is completely sanshou/sanda orientated . It has lots of sanshou combos dodging ducking etc . The last book is nice with simple qigong applications .
Its worth getting it purely because it is so complete and perfectly done .
However its not trad kf , judging by the books , tagou is exactly like a university in china however not so expensive and more long term
as opposed to semester training you find in the universities
So those aren’t the traditional forms? What about the Shou Hong Chuan set, and all the Martial Monk sets?? I thought Hong Chuan was from the late Sung dynasty, and the Martial Monk sets are traditional Louhan.
I know the first two forms are modern, Wu Bu Chuan, and Lianhuan Chuan, but aren’t there alot of real traditional sets in there as well?
