Wu & Zhaobao
You are referring to the other Wu style, I think. Wu Yuxiang is said to have combined Yang Lu Chan’s teaching with the Zhaobao form.
Feng said it was small Chen style. In other words he classified Zhaobao style as Chen style.
“I put forth my power and he was broken.
I withdrew my power and he was ground into fine dust.”
-Aleister Crowley, The Vision and the Voice
Yesterday I saw a Taiji performance and the Chen style did not look anything like Zhao Bao ! Chen looked very rooted where as Zhao Bao looked very continually changing shifting. Chen seem to stay low, Zhao Bao was high low medium etc …
That is from an external point of view
Hey thanx for the link Dingo. Makes sense what Sigman says about empty and full. " I don’t know what you think of Mike Sigman" On a personal level I dont particuliarly care for him. On a professional level I dont have much to go by. I do however have a video of him doing some push hands with Don Miller where he gets schooled thoroughly. Of course he’ll argue that Miller was simply pushing him and muscling him but if this were the case then Sigman would not have graduated past Novice skill imho. To me it looks like Miller just uses good body structure but gimme another year and review the tape and I may have a different opinion. When I saw this video originally a year ago(when I was a rough beginner and knew almost nothing of push hands) I thought Sigman got beat but not soundly but now its easy to see he really does get schooled. Its always fun to review martial arts materials you havent looked at in a great while after training and its almost like reading a completely different book, video etc. Of course push hands isnt fighting but has some components that are useful in fighting. Sigman is a funny guy, he’ll talk smack endlessly about someone how they only are good at competition shoving and not fighting, critizicing theyre teachers etc. then when that person publically challenges Sigman he’ll blow it off basically saying your a p*s&y and then says if you got some much skill why dont you challenge this particuliar judo teacher whom I’m not even sure knew someone else was making challenges for him. Can you imagine me saying how much you suck and your teachers have little skill then when you challenge me I call you a punk and say why dont you challenge Rickson Gracie if your so tough. I’ve seen him make challenges for Chen Xiao Wang and I wonder if CXW was aware of this at the time. Sigman is a funny guy he says how he’s not good enough to teach tai chi but then he teaches internal components to non tai chi people using guess what peng, lu etc. Probably more then what you wanted but you asked
Wu (Ng) and Wu (Martial) are different
Sam Wiley,
The Wu style you are talking about is also known as Hao style, promulgated by Hao Wei-zhen. Yes, Wu yu-xiang learned small frame Chen style and this is the Wu style Feng was referring to.
The Wu (Ng) style that the list is talking about is the one by Quan Yu, and now I believe it is divided into three sub-braches.
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Northern Wu - now taught by students of Yang Yu-ting, famous practitioners include Wang peisheng and Li BingCi. Zhang Yun, a student of Wang peisheng teaches this style in US.
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Shanghai - Wu Jian-quan popularized this version. Wu Ying-hwa and Ma Yuehliang were two famous practitioners
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Southern version - taught by Wu Kungyi in HK and now by his students.
These three sub-branches have their own distinguishing characterstics and practice method
Ah, I see. That makes sense then. Translators need to spell it the way everyone else does then.
So what about the Zhaobao style? Up until recently I had never heard of it, but now I see an article seemingly every month in every magazine about it. Does Feng Zhiqiang study that one, or traditional Chen style, and either way why would he classify something bearing little resemblance to Chen style as Chen style (if what WenJin said is true)?
“I put forth my power and he was broken.
I withdrew my power and he was ground into fine dust.”
-Aleister Crowley, The Vision and the Voice
Zhao Bao and Xiao Jia (small frame) Taiji are different animal altogether. Zhao Bao style is practice in Zhao Bao village, a village close to Chen Jia Gou.
Xiao Jia is practiced by a certain group of Chen family.
Feng was taught by Chen Fake who created Xin Jia (New Frame). Hence, Feng practiced both Lao Jia (Old Frame) and Xin Jia (new Frame). Feng now created his own Hun Yuan Taiji. But that is another story.
For more info on Zhao Bao, Xiao Jia, Xin JIa and Lao Jia, visit this site
http://www.digidao.com/nstyles.htm
Hope this helps!
Brassmonkey: interesting take on Mike Sigman, thanks for that. I’m going to try and attend a seminar of his in the autmn and check him out. I might even try his own teacher test on him! ;D Whatever, the basic ideas generated by his list have been very useful to me in getting a better handle on what might be going on in taiji in Western terms.
Sam: Zhaobao style is an odd animal with some subdivisions of its own. Up until recently, the Chen village claimed it as a branch of Chen style because most of the practitioners have Chen Qingping, who was trained by a Chen stylist, somewhere in their lineage. However, Chen Qingping also learned from a master named Zhang Yan, and there are Zhaobao people who do not trace their lineage back through Chen Qingping. Interestingly enough, Peter Lim’s site reports an encounter between Wu Tu Nan and Du Yu Wan (aka Du Yuan Hua), who wrote the first book for the general public on Zhaobao taiji, and apparently his form was identical to Yang Lu-chan’s, sharing similar posture names and everything. To sum up: it’s all a mess, it’s very intriguing, and that’s all I know about it! 
There are many thoughts that suggest Chen style was not solely Tai ji as much as Chen Village arts that incorporated some Shaolin Pao Chui and Shaolin Taizu Chang Quan as well.
I read that Zhao Bao includes all the theories of the other taiji styles but adds the unique 9 thesis’ of Zhao Bao not found in the other Taijiquan.
True as more & more is studied hearsay is distinguished from stories and realities.
Though in the end Taiji is Taiji and Chang San Feng real or not (in terms of founder) and what he studied are left in history unbeknown to us and probably uneccessary.
hmmm…
now this has me thinking. not very well… but still thinking…
erle montaigue says that yang lu-chan studied under chen chang-xing first, then jiang fa, if i remember correctly.
many zhao bao practitioners say that after (or before maybe…? i forget…) jiang fa came to chen village, he taught at zhao bao village.
so… since both claims are historically sound by my reasoning of what i know about the lineages and such… jiang fa could have very likely taught both yang lu-chan, chen chang-xing, and whatever guys were at zhao bao village.
before yang lu-chan started learning from chen chang-xing, there were already taijiquan practitioners in chen village from a time when jiang fa was there earlier… this would have given them (chen family practicioners) time before and after (especially after) to modify their forms.
if this all is true, however, the chen family cannon pounding form (aka “second routine,” “cannon fist,” etc.) would have to have been created in the time between the first and second times jiang fa visited chen village to teach.
after this all, the chen family had a LOT of time to modify stuff in the 1800’s, and probably did so freely.
of course, this is all speculation, but it is an okay look at things, i think. on another note, some people call wu yu-xiang’s style the wu/hao, wu yu-xiang, or the wuu style. of course, not many people even talk about it anymore, since it’s so rare.
also, about the waist leaning, i have never seen any in any wu form. the whole body is tilted, so the waist energy is not broken.
didn’t yang lu-chan have tilting just like wu? i remember sam saying something about erle montaigue changing the old form so the spine was straight (in accordance to a wudang manuscript or something like that)? sam, i’m curious about how similar the old yang small frame and the wu look compared to the old yang large frame and the yang cheng-fu large frame. i’d be willing to bet that wu is closer to what yang used to be like (with the tilting, of course).
from what i know about wudang taijiquan, it’s more vigorous than the yang and wu styles. not sure when/how it was developed, however. i’d be very interested in learning more about it. i know that www.wudang.com has some stuff about it, but not all that much. on an interesting note, it’s 13 postures are different than what we normally consider the 13 postures (the chen family also had a different idea of what the 13 postures were).
Gentlemen,
Wudang Tai ji quan in name is trivial according to what I know there are at least following styles of Taijiquan that use such a name:
1.Wudang Taijiquan in 108 movements transmitted by my Great GrandMaster (Abbot of Zi Xiao Tang) in Wudang , Xu Ben Shan (1860-1932); [This being my lineage’s Wudang Taijiquan]
2.Wudang Taijiquan taught by Grand Uncle Chen Helong (Also of Xu Benshan’s disciple), who in turn taught this style to Wu Jiaopeng (1908-1990); it consists of six routines and is very similar to Taihequan as taught by Han Shiming of Shanxi;
3.Wudang Taijiquan taught by Yan Jiakang (1695-1786); during Republic period (1911-1949) this style was taught by Yang Zai Xin (learned in Wudang Nanyan Tang) who taught in Liaoning Province;
4.Wudang Youlong Taijiquan - taught in Tianjin in the second half of 19th century (and still popularly practised there) by Taoist monk Pei Yuanchen;
- Zhao Bao Taijiquan is also sometimes referred to as Wudang Taiji quan or Wudang Zhao Bao Taijiquan commonly.[This being my other practised Tai ji quan]
So the myriad is difficult to comprehend.
Regards
Shi Chan Long
Plastic Squirrel…
Yes, Erle changed the form after finding a manual on Taiji during his time at Wudang Shan. Supposedly, it mentions about a dozen times in the first couple of pages that the spine should be kept vertical. So after much deliberation and consulting with other masters, he made the decision to change the form. Keeping the spine upright makes the form much more difficult to do in some places. Personally, I think the changes were good, as it makes the form more of a movement therapy for me than doing it the old easy way.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with doing it with a lean if you want. But I personally think that keeping the spine straight is the way to go. There are many reasons I think so, and all come from my own experimentation and experience with Taiji and other things, but of course, there will be those who disagree with me quite loudly. I just want to make one thing clear to them, and that is, that I too learned to do the Taiji forms with a lean in many places. But I was told to change it, given basic guidelines, and did so, and because I like the results I get from the form done this way, have not looked back.
Remember that Yang Cheng-fu changed the form so it would be easier to perform. While I don’t know whether or not Yang Lu-chan or the earlier Wudang masters leaned because I was not there, I sort of “lean” toward the idea that they did not. I just have a feeling about it. And one other thing I think is that it is possible that the lean was something Yang Cheng-fu and others at the time added, as Taijiquan changed greatly in the early 20th century.
“I put forth my power and he was broken.
I withdrew my power and he was ground into fine dust.”
-Aleister Crowley, The Vision and the Voice