Three Harmonies
08-18-2008, 09:43 AM
Zhao Daoxin was a student of Zhang Zhaodong, one of the most capable Xingyiquan fighters of the early 20th century, and Wang Xiangzhai, the founder of Yiquan, one of the only "Internal" martial arts experts with a verifiable fighting record.
We have often discussed the situation of "challenge matches" in China back in the last century and before. They were rarely full fights and had many more "rules" than modern MMA matches. Mr. Zhao has some relevant remarks.
INTERVIEW WITH ZHAO DAOXIN
Recorded by Huang Jitao
Translated from chinese by Andrzej Kalisz
Zhao Enqing originally was disciple of Zhang Zhankui (Zhang Zhaodong). Later he learned from the founder of yiquan – Wang Xiangzhai and became one of his best students, receiving from Wang a honorary name Daoxin.
The original interview was made by Huang Jitao in 4 sessions over 4 days and is quite long. Here is only a translation of small part.
Huang:
So also traditional wushu is not efficient in fighting?
Zhao:
People from traditional styles say that the modern wushu from national institutes is just „flowery forms". But it still doesn't mean that themselves they possess „true gongfu". The wushu from institutes neglects fighting side, while traditional wushu is talking about fighting. But it doesn't mean that it really got it... Contemporary traditional wushu, just like the wushu from institutes is mainly about training forms. Moreover there is a lot of symbolic or ritual gestures, with no relation to fighting. Looking from point of view of training – they still use old methods of low efficiency. In theory they should help to develop practical skills, but in fact are more like kind of praying, method of developing patience, and just a lot of useless efort. I don't know how many dozens of thousands of people practice traditional wushu in China. But I also don't know about any of them, who could prove their abilities in fighting on international stage.
Huang:
But in times when foreign fighting experts and strong men kept coming to China, Chinese masters of that generation defeated them many times...
Zhao:
If there are so many examples of Chinese master defeating foreigners, why we can only hear about it from our side, and they don't mention this? Maybe they don't want to talk about being defeated. But on the other side how many Chinese were defeated, but we didn't talk about it, because it would be humiliating. Anyway we don't know what were the proportions between victories and defeats. And if Wu Song had fought not a tiger, but just a cat, there wouldn't be reason to praise him for centuries. And what kind of opponents were those foreigners, who were defeated by our masters? My teacher (Zhang Zhankui) met Russian „strong man", I met Danish „boxer". Other friends had similiar situations. But our opponents were defeated after just one action, there was no real fight. But this was only because traditional Chinese wushu didn't meet real tigers. In those times you could easily became famous because of „defeating" some foreigner, but it was only because they were not any real experts.
More challenging was fighting with other Chinese at that time. No foreigners signed up for the leitai tournaments in Hangzhou or Shanghai. And the people from traditional styles, no matter if they were some monks or great masters famous in some place, they either became injured in fights or were not brave enough to fight. And the winners, although they signed up as representatives of some traditional systems, instead of forms and other methods of those systems, they were using completely different methods preparing for fighting.
Huang:
Could you tell us your opinion and views about chinese martial arts?
Zhao:
There is not much time. So I will only outline some issues. This will not be very systematic disscussion. And because people all the time talk a lot about advantages, I will say rather about problems.
Huang:
First tell us, what you think about the internal and external division, and division based on territory.
Zhao:
If we want Chinese martial arts develop, we must reject such divisions. It doesn't mean that there is no meaning in them at all. But they only partially describe way of demonstration, and they don't really say anything about way of fighting. Divisions in martial art should be based on effect in fighting, and not the way of practice, and they should not be effect of swindle. They should express human body and developing technique, and not sect-like customs nourished for hundreds and thousands years. The division for Shaolin, Wudang, Emei and Zhongnan arts is only expressing fact, that communication was difficult in old times. But it is past. And the internal-external division was made up by literatti fascinated by the style which they practiced, so they started calling it internal family art – skillfull writers created flowery descriptions. But in fact nobody would talk about himself being representative of external family art. In fact, in real fighting there are no styles.
Huang:
But the internal-external division is at least representing the real division for soft and hard.
Zhao:
This division is even more muddled. Some just use it to criticize other schools. But when they talk about their own school, they stress that „soft and hard supplement each other", that „internal and external are trained together". They maintain that it's only them who keep right balance between soft and hard, while others tend to much toward softness or hardness.
Huang:
But the concepts of internal-external, soft-hard, at least led to developing sophisticated theories of internal training – concept „from yi to qi to jin".
Zhao:
„Yi, qi, li", „jing, qi, shen" - those concepts related to internal training are hard to express with normal language. We could say that it is about using self-suggestion to induce feeling of comfort and strength. There are new concepts, at least evenly useful, and even more efficient in practical use.
Huang:
What are the shortcomings of Chinese martial arts if we are talking about way of fighting?
Zhao:
There is a lot of shortcomings and taboos. Apart from those which are common for all Chinese martial arts, there are other, specific for some school. For example everybody fears that his style will resemble some other, so they try hard to make it look different. If you tell some person doing baguazhang, that his movements resemble taijiquan, he will hardly accept such opinion. If you tell some xingyiquan practitioner that you notice some similarities to western boxing he will feel bad about it. But actually the differences between styles are more in ritual gestures than in the way of figthing. But those gestures are usefull only for demonstration or meeting, in fight they are useless and stupid.
There is also taboo of falling down. In challenges there was an unwritten rule, that touching ground with part of body different than feet meant defeat. So in the south they stress „ma", and in the north „zhuang". In many styles long, low postures and centered torso are stressed. But what is real value of those stable techniques? The principle „when leg is raised, half body is empty" results in loosing opportunity of efficient kicks and hitting with knee. And the force which can be generated from non-balance is not used conciously yet. Constant talking about „not loosing center" disturbs developing agile body work and fast footwork. What is rejected in Chinese martial arts, is exactly what is most valuable on the international martial arts stage. Traditional Chinese martial arts are old men arts. Old is seen as equal to saint, authority, deep knowledge. But for old man it's hard to raise leg for kick, and each falling down can be dangerous. So this hidden weakness of old master, in teaching process becomes taboo of „not loosing balance". But fighting is not limited to shuaijiao competitions. In many cases loosing balance or even falling down is not big price for getting opportunity of executing efficient action.
We have often discussed the situation of "challenge matches" in China back in the last century and before. They were rarely full fights and had many more "rules" than modern MMA matches. Mr. Zhao has some relevant remarks.
INTERVIEW WITH ZHAO DAOXIN
Recorded by Huang Jitao
Translated from chinese by Andrzej Kalisz
Zhao Enqing originally was disciple of Zhang Zhankui (Zhang Zhaodong). Later he learned from the founder of yiquan – Wang Xiangzhai and became one of his best students, receiving from Wang a honorary name Daoxin.
The original interview was made by Huang Jitao in 4 sessions over 4 days and is quite long. Here is only a translation of small part.
Huang:
So also traditional wushu is not efficient in fighting?
Zhao:
People from traditional styles say that the modern wushu from national institutes is just „flowery forms". But it still doesn't mean that themselves they possess „true gongfu". The wushu from institutes neglects fighting side, while traditional wushu is talking about fighting. But it doesn't mean that it really got it... Contemporary traditional wushu, just like the wushu from institutes is mainly about training forms. Moreover there is a lot of symbolic or ritual gestures, with no relation to fighting. Looking from point of view of training – they still use old methods of low efficiency. In theory they should help to develop practical skills, but in fact are more like kind of praying, method of developing patience, and just a lot of useless efort. I don't know how many dozens of thousands of people practice traditional wushu in China. But I also don't know about any of them, who could prove their abilities in fighting on international stage.
Huang:
But in times when foreign fighting experts and strong men kept coming to China, Chinese masters of that generation defeated them many times...
Zhao:
If there are so many examples of Chinese master defeating foreigners, why we can only hear about it from our side, and they don't mention this? Maybe they don't want to talk about being defeated. But on the other side how many Chinese were defeated, but we didn't talk about it, because it would be humiliating. Anyway we don't know what were the proportions between victories and defeats. And if Wu Song had fought not a tiger, but just a cat, there wouldn't be reason to praise him for centuries. And what kind of opponents were those foreigners, who were defeated by our masters? My teacher (Zhang Zhankui) met Russian „strong man", I met Danish „boxer". Other friends had similiar situations. But our opponents were defeated after just one action, there was no real fight. But this was only because traditional Chinese wushu didn't meet real tigers. In those times you could easily became famous because of „defeating" some foreigner, but it was only because they were not any real experts.
More challenging was fighting with other Chinese at that time. No foreigners signed up for the leitai tournaments in Hangzhou or Shanghai. And the people from traditional styles, no matter if they were some monks or great masters famous in some place, they either became injured in fights or were not brave enough to fight. And the winners, although they signed up as representatives of some traditional systems, instead of forms and other methods of those systems, they were using completely different methods preparing for fighting.
Huang:
Could you tell us your opinion and views about chinese martial arts?
Zhao:
There is not much time. So I will only outline some issues. This will not be very systematic disscussion. And because people all the time talk a lot about advantages, I will say rather about problems.
Huang:
First tell us, what you think about the internal and external division, and division based on territory.
Zhao:
If we want Chinese martial arts develop, we must reject such divisions. It doesn't mean that there is no meaning in them at all. But they only partially describe way of demonstration, and they don't really say anything about way of fighting. Divisions in martial art should be based on effect in fighting, and not the way of practice, and they should not be effect of swindle. They should express human body and developing technique, and not sect-like customs nourished for hundreds and thousands years. The division for Shaolin, Wudang, Emei and Zhongnan arts is only expressing fact, that communication was difficult in old times. But it is past. And the internal-external division was made up by literatti fascinated by the style which they practiced, so they started calling it internal family art – skillfull writers created flowery descriptions. But in fact nobody would talk about himself being representative of external family art. In fact, in real fighting there are no styles.
Huang:
But the internal-external division is at least representing the real division for soft and hard.
Zhao:
This division is even more muddled. Some just use it to criticize other schools. But when they talk about their own school, they stress that „soft and hard supplement each other", that „internal and external are trained together". They maintain that it's only them who keep right balance between soft and hard, while others tend to much toward softness or hardness.
Huang:
But the concepts of internal-external, soft-hard, at least led to developing sophisticated theories of internal training – concept „from yi to qi to jin".
Zhao:
„Yi, qi, li", „jing, qi, shen" - those concepts related to internal training are hard to express with normal language. We could say that it is about using self-suggestion to induce feeling of comfort and strength. There are new concepts, at least evenly useful, and even more efficient in practical use.
Huang:
What are the shortcomings of Chinese martial arts if we are talking about way of fighting?
Zhao:
There is a lot of shortcomings and taboos. Apart from those which are common for all Chinese martial arts, there are other, specific for some school. For example everybody fears that his style will resemble some other, so they try hard to make it look different. If you tell some person doing baguazhang, that his movements resemble taijiquan, he will hardly accept such opinion. If you tell some xingyiquan practitioner that you notice some similarities to western boxing he will feel bad about it. But actually the differences between styles are more in ritual gestures than in the way of figthing. But those gestures are usefull only for demonstration or meeting, in fight they are useless and stupid.
There is also taboo of falling down. In challenges there was an unwritten rule, that touching ground with part of body different than feet meant defeat. So in the south they stress „ma", and in the north „zhuang". In many styles long, low postures and centered torso are stressed. But what is real value of those stable techniques? The principle „when leg is raised, half body is empty" results in loosing opportunity of efficient kicks and hitting with knee. And the force which can be generated from non-balance is not used conciously yet. Constant talking about „not loosing center" disturbs developing agile body work and fast footwork. What is rejected in Chinese martial arts, is exactly what is most valuable on the international martial arts stage. Traditional Chinese martial arts are old men arts. Old is seen as equal to saint, authority, deep knowledge. But for old man it's hard to raise leg for kick, and each falling down can be dangerous. So this hidden weakness of old master, in teaching process becomes taboo of „not loosing balance". But fighting is not limited to shuaijiao competitions. In many cases loosing balance or even falling down is not big price for getting opportunity of executing efficient action.