Bay Area Chen Style & Chen Qingzhou's visit

[Tomhands]

Anybody have experience with SF Bay Area Chen style teachers? I've seen some of Paul Chou's material online. I've also seen sites for Tony Wong and Jin Taiyang (Kris Brenner). Any other suggestions/comments?

Also, none of the above sites give details about Chen Qingzhou events.

[This message was edited by Tomhands on 11-05-01 at 04:14 PM.]

[Kumkuat]

http://marina.fortunecity.com/victory/273/aspeccqz2.html

But this is out of date. Tony Wong should have the info about Chen Qing Zhou since he hosts his seminars a lot.

[Tomhands]

but that's a dead page.
Do you mind sharing some of what you know about Bay Area Chen style resources?

[count]

Too bad Adam Hsu is seldom in town. His Chen style is superb. Maybe you could get some good info from his school in the bay area. Here is their web page. (http://adamhsu.com/)

Count

Kabooom.com (http://kabooom.com)

Chi Kung International (http://chikungintl.com)


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[RAF]

I had the pleasure of visiting Chen QingZhou in the Xulu Village, Wenxian County, Henan Province. We demonstrated our forms and he put on one helluva show with his sons, students and his own performance. He also was one of the best hosts I have met in China.

About 2 weeks ago he was in the Cleveland area and gave a seminar at a Wing Chun school that is also teaching his Chen's taiji.

I really like his form and temperment. If you can get a seminar with him, I suspect the experience would be worth the money. If you can study with his students, then do it.

His forms tend to be classical in the sense of lacking many flowery movements (similar to mine and that is probably why I favor him greatly).

You can get his tape and judge for yourself. I think he is the 5th Tiger whose head is turned.

[Kumkuat]

Try these two:

Zhang Xue Xin
http://www.silkreeler.com/index.shtml

Terry Chan
http://www.nardis.com/~twchan/

I heard nothing but good stuff about them.

[Daniel Madar]

I've visited a number of chen stylists. I think I liked Jin Taiyang the best followed by Zhang Xuexin.

Kris is a very interesting person, who is 100% enthusiastic about her Chen style. She is very opinionated though, and some people seem to be put off, but I think it's great. You have to wonder at the level of dedication that would drive a 30 or 40 year old woman to move to china without speaking chinese and live there for 2 years before moving to chen village for 10 years. In my mind it's nothing short of incredible.

I was thinking of studying with her once when I was trying to work some things out with my current teacher. I also think that if you want to learn push hands the way the do it in China, she's the way to go. Her form is crisp. She teaches the way she learned in china though, so I wouldn't expect to go rocketing through the forms.

If you go to study with her, tell her I said hi.

Zhang Xuexin may be a higher level practitioner than Kris, but he has a few "problems" you might want to consider. The first is that he doesn't speak english too well. The second is that he has about 30 students, so his attention is spread a bit thin. He was a pretty cool guy though, and he did teach basic push hands drills.

Both of their students seem primarily motivated by health reasons, but Kris has smaller classes, so she can focus on the martial side if you are interested. She told me her sunnyvale class tends to have more martially minded people.

Merciless is Mercy.

[Tomhands]

thanks everybody for the great tips.

[eightgates]

Chen Qingzhou's website: http://www.nnrs.org/cqzma.htm

Paul Chou's teacher, Pan Wing Chow, was a student of Chen Fake during the early 30's prior to the development of the Xinjia that was promulgated by Chen Zhaokui beginning in the 1940's. Pan Wing Chow was close friends with Chen Zhaopei, Chen Qingzhou's teacher, and apparently he did have contact with Chen Qingzhou since Chen Qingzhou mentioned to me that Mr. Pan had sent him several of his published books on Chen Taijiquan. If you are interested in learning one of Chen Fake's older Laojia forms, you may want to check out Paul

[This message was edited by eightgates on 11-10-01 at 06:51 AM.]

[Kevin Wallbridge]

Just an historical detail.

The form that Pan Wingzhou learned would have been the public form that Chen Fake taught, rather than what is called Xinjia today. According to inner-door students of Chen Fake and Chen Zhaokui the so-called "New Frame" was the developed by Chen Changxing, but kept within the immediate family. As Chen Fake began to reveal more of the details there arose the impression that this was a new form. This was especially true when Chen Zhaokui returned to to Chenjiaguo. Chen Fake did seem to always reserve some of the details, even from his long-time students. Hence the variation in his legacy. Today we see the village form (laojia), the public form (xinjia) and the lineage form that Chen Zhaokui taught to four students.

"The heart of the study of boxing is to have natural instinct resemble the dragon" Wang Xiangzai