Chen vs. Yang - I'd like info (please)

[Pilgrim666]

Hi,

I heard an interesting thing from a trusted source. He said Chen tai chi can all be traced back to one individual in the Chen village who passed on the knowledge. In this day and age, many claim lineage to this individual, some with authenticity and of course many without.

Can anyone provide further information about this?

Also, what's the difference between the two (in a nutshell)? I'm interested in tai chi for its wholistic aspects as well as for its self defence properties, though the latter is less important than the former. Based on this, is one recommended over the other.

I imagine there may be previous threads on this. If anyone would direct me to them, I'd appreciate it.

Mike

[Tai Chi Shawn]

Hey Pilgrim,
You may have asked a loaded question :) Some of the folks here with tons of Tai Chi experience might find it hard to give you a simple answer. Because you and I have a shared history, so to speak, I think I know where you're coming from. I'll make a suggestion, albeit, it comes from only a little Tai Chi experience.

My opinion, you will likely enjoy CHEN style more. Here's a link to a site where this guy discusses (very briefly) some of the basic differences between Chen, Yang and Wu.

http://www.taichiacademy.com/wu.htm

The reason I suggest Chen is that the pace changes thoughout Chen style and it has very deep stances and is wonderfully liquid. It also was suggest in a Tai Chi forum I stumbled across that Chen is possibly more application based with more explosive strikes. Certainly not to say Yang style doesn't possess those qualities, but Chen seems more popular amongst those looking for combat applications - at least according to the forum I looked through.

My post is likely not terribly helpful, but it might give someone else with more experience something to resond to.

shawn

[lltdow]

I would definitely agree with Shawn.

I have been studying both Yang and Chen styles for about 5 years now. Both styles are really cool and the principles and theory are the same, but Chen style seems to appeal more to those looking for self defense.

If you are older and/or out of shape and have never taken a martial art before, I would recommend learning Yang style first. Not only will that help prepare you physically, but it will also get your mind use to learning kinetically.

If you are younger, pretty good shape and never taken a martial art before, I would recommend learning a different style of kungfu/wushu before moving to Chen style. Chen style is really, REALLY intricate and it is very important, in my opinion, to develop that ability to learn kinetically. To use an analogy, learning Chen style is like learning to write, first you learn the block letters and then you learn cursive.

If you are in pretty good shape (regardless of age) and have a pretty good martial arts background. Go for Chen!

[Pilgrim666]

Hi.

I've got some background in MA (about 3 years), though I tend to dismiss much of it since it was at a mcdojo. I am younger and in relatively decent shape, so I'm not concerned with physical exertion. I actually want to be physically pushed...

I've visited a Chen studio and I liked it very much. I will be visiting a yang instructor shortly and am curious to see how they differ - that is, as best as a complete novice can discern a difference.

No matter which I chose, I'm approaching taiji with a completely open mind and an expectation that it will be difficult to learn.

lltdow, I'll assume both chen and yang have similar health properties and that chen has more immediate self-defence applications. Is that a fair, if crude, assessment? In the long run, I suppose either choice will be a good one.

Mike



Thanks,
Mike

[scholar]

For my 2 cents, I'll have to say that it ultimately comes down to the teacher. Good Yang or Chen is good t'ai chi, period. What will impact you the most is if the teacher actually knows what they are doing. A good teacher, trained traditionally and for a long time by the family or their representatives has the most quality control, they have to teach like their Sifu is standing right there, and you are much more likely to get the goods the way they have been transmitted for hundreds of years.

Ninja Joe down at Fly-By-Night Karate is going to show you whatever he feels like (as long as you sign the contract!) usually mix and match Yang style, while pressuring you to sign up for his "real kung fu" classes (or BJJ or whatever).

There are also the Wushu academies full of young kids hopping around in fancy outfits waving floppy tinfoil swords and blowing out their knees by the time they are 20.

Then you have the hippie "peaceful fuzzies" who learned from someone who learned from someone who learned from a grainy video of the first half of Cheng Man-ch'ing's form, has had 11 knee surgeries, wears patchouli, plays music during class and passive-aggressively denounces all the sweaty barbarians who want to turn t'ai chi into a martial art!

And various combinations of all of these across the spectrum. The best way to avoid wasting your time is to get as close to a family lineage as possible. To be fair, some of those have unfortunately crapped out, too, but even their quality is much higher than the examples given above, and can at least lead you to a decent school if you are lucky.

[lltdow]

I would also agree with Scholar about finding a really good teacher. Unfortunately, if you don't know too much about the martial art and the teacher, you can be suckered into joining a school only to realize that the teacher really doesn’t know anything. For example, I have met several teachers in my area that has very impressive martial arts resumes, such as they are disciples of this famous Chen-style grandmaster (I won’t name names), and they have been certified as a high level instructor, and then you find out that they really don’t have a clue about how to properly do even the first Lao Jia (first form of Chen style). I recently went to a workshop and talked to a couple of “his or her” students, and they kept telling me how great of an instructor he was and how great his technique was, but every time I looked at his form, I was kind of ashamed that this famous Chen-style master, somebody I admired and respected, would cheapen his own repetition by certifying him as a high level instructor. It wasn’t that his students were trying to hype him up, they actually believed what they were saying, it was just that they didn’t know any better. I talked to a friend of mine who is of Asian decent, and he said that the practice of certifying these instructors was quite common. It is kind of like the Internet boom, where it was more important to get your name out there as fast as possible then it was to establish sound business practices. Well, that is what a lot of these masters seem to be doing, getting there name out, and signing up as many mediocre instructors as disciples as possible, in order build up their organizations, in order to get them to buy and their students to buy their merchandise. A lot of people would probably testify that the same thing happened with Tae Kwon Do schools in the 80’s and 90’s.

So what should you do....First of all, do as much research as possible before hand.
1. I would recommend searching as many web sites and chat rooms as possible to get a good idea about the different styles of Taiji.
a. Yang-style: see if you can find a clip of the “Actual” Yang family doing the long form. Yang Zhen Duo, grandson of Yang Lu Chan has a great DVD set, but it is kind of expensive. Compare this to what I would call Beijing-style taiji (this is my own naming convention used to describe a way of doing taiji that is closer to what we in the west think of as Wushu). For Beijing-style, look at martialartsmart.com, they have a great set of taiji international competition routines.
b. Chen-style: Look for videos of both Chen Zhenglei and Chen Xiaowang, they both represent traditional Chen style taiji, but both of their styles are pretty different. Chen Zhenglei’s is more relaxed and open, while Chen Xiaowang’s has lower stances and more Chin-na techniques. Again, you might compare this to the martialartsmarts.com’s Chen style internalal competition routine.
Use what you learn from these clips and/or videos to judge what the instructor knows. Don’t hold the instructor to closely to what you see on these tapes. There are a variety of different styles of Yang and Chen that won’t be completely represented by these tapes. But at least you will have a pretty good idea about what they should be capable of doing.

Another thing I would do, is check out Tsung Hwa Jou’s book, “The Dao of Taijiquan Way to Rejuvenation”. It gives a great explanation of the different styles of Taiji. In fact to answer your earlier question about the differences between Chen and Yang, Jou states that Chen is 50% Yin and 50% Yang, while Yang is 100% Yang. He also recommends, that a person learn Chen before they learn Yang.

Hope this helps.

LLTDOW

[scholar]

While Jou's book is interesting as a compilation of material from the various schools, I wouldn't give too much weight to his personal characterizations of the different styles. Like any other book on T'ai Chi from an outsider, you have to assess the information he had in light of literature from more authoritative sources, such as the classics now available in Chinese and English from the Yang, Wu Chien-ch'uan and Wu Yu-hsiang lineages.

T'ai Chi Ch'uan makes a study of the balance of yin/yang, that balance is known as "single weightedness." 100% this or 50% that, set in stone, bespeaks an inability to change in the face of changing circumstances that precludes T'ai Chi ability. There are other assumptions and conjectures Jou makes which are also doubtful, at best, IMO.

[lltdow]

While I would agree with Scholar that the Taiji classics are by far the ultimate in the literature available out there, I would have to disagree with how effective they would be for a beginner. They are pretty difficult for most mid-level and advanced practitioners to digest.

I believe that Jou's book is a good beginning for somebody who is looking to compare both Yang and Chen. Jou's book gives a good summary of the different styles (although I also disagree with him on some of the comments he makes about Wu-style, Sun-style, and the Competition forms), good explanation of different theories behind Taiji, and there is even a section with some of the Taiji Classics.

Does Jou’s book make certain assumptions and conjectures…sure…but so does everybody…including myself
:)

[scholar]

I completely agree that the "classics" aren't much use other than curiosity for a beginner. We say that to our beginners: "I am your book!" when they ask us to recommend a book. Also, I found the Chinese govt. line drawings in Jou's book to be useful for simple comparisons of the different styles.

If people are really serious about reading material in the beginning, I'll recommend Wilhelm's I Ching, that usually shuts them up for a while! That is probably the most useful technical information on underlying theory, but you are going to have to be a walking encyclopaedia to process it. As time goes by and people really learn T'ai Chi in depth, it tends to start making more sense, as will the family classics and other books like the Tao Te Ching and Chuang Tzu.

[denali]

Pilgrim666.. I sent you a private message..

[Pilgrim666]

Hi.

I've replied and look forward to hearing from you.

[lltdow]

I could be wrong on this statement, so please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe that I read somewhere that most of the Classics were written by Yang, Wu, Sun stylist. Has anybody else heard of that before?

The reason I bring this up, is that would be a good reason why Chen style does not strictly adhere to the classics.

I don’t know if I would use the word ******ization, but it seems that the trend is more like Taiji has progressively “mellowed” as the years (and new styles) come along. If you look at what a lot of people consider to be the sources-Wudang or Chen Cannon fist (and I have heard a lot of people say that the original source of the Chen Cannon fist was the Shaolin, consider that Chen village is only a day’s travel away), both styles are considerably harder than what became Chen style Lao Jia Yi Lu. And if you soften Yi Lu way down, it is easy to see the similarities between it and the Yang long form.

[cam]

It seems like a lot of politics to me.
I've heard people describe Yang as 100% yin, Wu style seems to use obvious leaning and Sun is a composite of Yang, Wu, baqua and xing-yi.
Do any forms of Taiji strictly adhere to the Classics?

[scholar]

Originally posted by cam
It seems like a lot of politics to me.
I've heard people describe Yang as 100% yin, Wu style seems to use obvious leaning and Sun is a composite of Yang, Wu, baqua and xing-yi.
Do any forms of Taiji strictly adhere to the Classics?

The question then is, which classics? Each family uses a diferent set of writings, with some overlap. The Yang and Wu Chien-ch'uan family use what are called the "Yang family 40 chapters" as a core document, but the current Yang family also has Yang Ch'eng-fu's writings which the Wu don't use (nothing wrong them, they just don't use them as they are from a time when the two styles very clearly represented different traditions). As well, the Wu family uses Wu Kung-tsao's (also spelled Wu Kung-cho or Wu Gongzao) writings as a standard for thir schools that the other families don't use. Wu Yu-hsiang, Li I-yu and Sun Lu-t'ang wrote extensively, and a lot of schools value those writings, but they aren't canonical outside of Wu/Hao and Sun style. Cheng Man-ch'ing also wrote quite a bit, but his material isn't used much outside of the tradition he started. The Ch'en family famously has Ch'en Hsin (Chen Xin) and others.

If you were to meet a high level player, say Eddie Wu Kwong-yu or Chen Xiaowang and tell them that what they are doing doesn't somehow conform to the classics, you will have to be able to tell them which classics they are violating and then you will HAVE to be able to beat them to prove it. Unfortunately or not, that is the most unequivocal way to interpret the classics. Fighting ability is the ultimate test of validity in the martial world. Ch'en stylists sit so low and shake because it is a technique that works for them, Wu and some Yang and Sun stylists lean because it works, Yang style redirects using big circles instead of small because they prefer to throw their opponents for great distances.

There are hundreds, thousands of techniques to choose from, whatever style you do mostly reflects the personal choices of the teachers in your tradition. My Sifu says: "There is only one T'ai Chi Ch'uan, the different family styles are just 5 good ways to get there. Martial arts is like a library, full of different books. Who has time to read them all? You pick a few you like and try them. If one really suits you and has enough information, you may end up spending the rest of your life studying it."

[scholar]

Ah, but to win a fight against a T'ai Chi teacher using brute force proves that the T'ai Chi teacher isn't using T'ai Chi Ch'uan at all, as you say, because brute force is easily neutralised by real T'ai Chi.

If someone is going to tell me that my T'ai Chi Ch'uan is no good, that I don't follow their idea of the classics, why should I take them and their opinion seriously if they can't beat me up? Why should I listen to them at all?

Lots of people talk, but if you are going to tell me that what the Wu family teaches is somehow wrong to my face, you are going to have to back it up or be walked on. People can be as brave as they want on the internet though, I don't care too much...

;)

[cam]

I think the only thing I could show Eddie Wu is how good I look when I land on my face!:D