Embrace Tiger Return to Mountain

[RandyBrown]

This is in response to a post in another thread under Mantis. I didn't want to digress that thread so my response is below -

Many confusion that caused in CMA could be our ancestors was good in CMA but may not be good in literature. The Taiwan Taiji Association had tried to figure out the meaning of "holding tiger back to mountain" for years. Why anyone want to "hold" a tiger and go back to mountain? Will he try to get himself eaten by that tiger? Never heard anyone was strong enough to pick up a full growing tiger, not even mention to carry a huge tiger and walk up hill is almost impossible task for any human being to perform.

Let me offer my take on Embrace Tiger Return to Mountain.

First a couple points -
1. The move is applied as if someone is attacking from the rear with strike and/or kick.
2. The description of application offered in Yang Cheng Fu's 'Essence and Application of Yang Style Taijiquan' explains that the opponents hand and foot attack is fast and you can only brush them off which is followed by their counter-attack. As they counter, you move into Lu (Roll Back) which is stable and secure.

With that said - Tigers stalk their prey and attack from behind. Certain tribes when moving through Tiger country would adorn the last person in the party with a mask that faced behind them. The mask would have eyes and other facial features painted on it. Tigers want the element of surprise and would therefore move on to other prey as they would assume they were being watched and their surprise was foiled.

So if you look at this and apply that logic to the nature of the move - you are turning to look (embrace) the tiger. Since your move is countered you apply Lu and return to the mountain (or secure posture).

Just my opinion so feel free to comment, correct, or cross.

Randy Brown

www.iron-needle.com

[qiphlow]

nice description!

[cjurakpt]

our take on it is a little different:

the move actually starts with the cross hands from the end of the first chapter: when you turn to the right about 45 deg, as the left leg pivots on the ball of the foot into hip internal rotation the left armswings down across the body(clockwise), leading with the back of the hand; the right arm rises up slightly: you are intercepting a right punch with the right arm and the left is swinging down into a groin strike, or gut / rib cage (depends); then, you continue to turn the entire body to the right, to the rear 45 deg, as you sifht weight to the left foot, as the left hand comes up into what looks like a prep for a brush knne - the right foot steps to the rear 45 and you complete the move: what you're doing is, after the groin shot, you bring the left to the outside of his right and do an arm bar (or if he parries it to the outside, same thing); or if you get the right arm straight over your left shoulder, you can use your left as a fulcrum against the body (if he parries, you can roll over the parry and trap his left arm against his body as well, and then do the throw); you might also get the arm behind the head as well and do the throw

I know this is hard to visualize base on my desription - just play with it, you'll figure it out - the key is the turn - you don't turn into something, you are turning to do the throw

oh, and the move is NOT done the same as brush knee - it looks similar, but there is a different quality of the body / arm / hand movements (impossible to describe, easy to see)

BTW, we also translate "bao fu gwai san" as "leopard tiger returns to mountain" (we call a number of the moves by different names) - i forget why, there's something significant about the leopard / tiger amalgam - it's in my notes somewhere...it may be based on Taoist alchemical practice, leopard and tiger being yin / yang, and "return to mountain", is based on both i jing / baat gwa (I think post natal arrangement, but I'm not sure...have to look that up) returning to mountain, the source, something like that - (my teacher interprets the form as one big alcemical formula for generating the elixir, so that's why it comes in as such)

thus, the notion of embracing / holding a tiger is not something in our version - according to my teacher, it's a homphone that was mistakenly written as embrace / hold versus leopard (according to my teacher, YLC was illiterate: he heard the names, and repeated them to his literate students who then wrote down what they thought were the correct characters...so there was some linguistic drift - we name a number of other moves differently as well based on this)

I know it's a non-traditional perspective - but our lineage is from YLC through a non-family member who was a Mandarin court official, who taught my teacher's teacher (our form is an "old" version - pre-YCF deletions / changes), so that may explain it...

[RandyBrown]

cjurakpt,

Excellent description and I thank you for disclosing this piece from your system. Your version sounds similar to ours except for the entry and the additional blocking you have in the beginning.

Cheng Man Ching in one of his books describes the same method as Yang Cheng Fu except he adds a descriptive about the brush knee piece. He states - like Brush Knee but not, and the hand after you block downward turns to palm up like embracing a tiger. Just another tidbit from a different source.

Thanks for your input.

R Brown

[omarthefish]

...BTW, we also translate "bao fu gwai san" as "leopard tiger returns to mountain" (we call a number of the moves by different names) - i forget why, there's something significant about the leopard / tiger amalgam - it's in my notes somewhere......

I hate to say it but this sounds like a classic example of what YouKnowWho was talking about, being good at MA but not at literature. If you think that is a leapord - tiger, then someone in your lineage got this only orally and never had a written quan-pu. There's a really obvious reason why it would be called "bao fu guai san" and a less obvious reason too.

First of all, that is NOT different from what other poeple call it. That is exactly what it's called in Chinese.

抱虎归山 - standard mandarin pronunciation = bao hu gui shan.

Then add in that what you spelled looks like it must have come from a southern dialect because in Cantonese, tiger/hu = fu and Mountain/shan = san. Somebody in your line just interpreted the "bao" at leapoard which in standard mandarin is pronounced "pao" and the two words bao and pao would be virtually indistinguishable to anyone who didn't speak both Mandarin and whatever dialect the speaker spoke.

In other words your "bao fu guai san" is basically hominyminous with "carry tiger back to mountain" or "satiated tiger returns to mountain".

[Three Harmonies]

I am not familiar with Yang Taiji, only Sun, but I do not think it is reasonable to interpret this as an attack from behind. No one is psychic, so you cannot forsee your would be attackers behind you.
In Sun one way we apply this move is intercepting their strike and kneeing them as they come in. For instance we are in a closed stance, right leg forward. My opponent throws a right cross. I intercept it (can grab wherever you like, I personally like to parry a bit with my right, grab around the neck in an outside clinch with my left)and use his momentum to knee the **** out of him.
My literal breakdown would be;
The reference to Tiger is in regards to the fierce (read: commited) attack by my opponent. "Bao" embrace / wrap / hug simply means to grab onto something. I am no expert, but I interpret it as getting close and controlling the body (ie. clinch, half clinch etc.). Return to mountain means to stand strong like a mountain, sinking your knee deep, not allowing his momentum to barrel you over.

My .02 cents,
Jake

[cjurakpt]

I hate to say it but this sounds like a classic example of what YouKnowWho was talking about, being good at MA but not at literature. If you think that is a leapord - tiger, then someone in your lineage got this only orally and never had a written quan-pu.

I hate to say it, but that is an incorrect assumption, for a number of reasons...

first off, the written character that I got for it from my teacher is leopard; as far as i know, he got it from his teacher who was a school headmaster, and his teacher got it from his teacher, a Mandarin Court official who studied directly from Yang Lu Chan: all three were / are highly literate in Chinese texts by training, so the reason it's this way is not due to lack of education (my teacher minored in classical Chinese literature when he was at Princeton, and routinely translates classical Taoist texts for us); in fact, probably the the only oral transmission was from YLC, as he was illiterate; so as for our kyuhn po, I am pretty confident it is reliable; but the fact that it is different doesn't surprise me, as our sahp yiu (ten essentials) are also somewhat different from the ones that you usually see, as is our form, which is probably one of the closest versions to what YLC actually taught (e.g. - we still do the spin kicks, the jump kicks and the sweeps; we also have some hand movements that the YCF version does not have)

There's a really obvious reason why it would be called "bao fu guai san" and a less obvious reason too.

and those reasons would be?

First of all, that is NOT different from what other poeple call it. That is exactly what it's called in Chinese.

I don't understand what you mean by this: as I said, the way we write it is different from other styles, no argument; and I am not saying that the way other styles characterize it is incorrect - just that we do it differently; and again, the reason for it, I think, has something to do with the description being based on something from yik ging / taoist alchemy, but I don't remember exactly what it was - so I will have to ask my teacher when I see him this week

???? - standard mandarin pronunciation = bao hu gui shan. Then add in that what you spelled looks like it must have come from a southern dialect because in Cantonese, tiger/hu = fu and Mountain/shan = san.

my teacher's primary language is Cantonese, so we use that dialect to name the moves; hence the "southern" transliteration...

Somebody in your line just interpreted the "bao" at leapoard which in standard mandarin is pronounced "pao" and the two words bao and pao would be virtually indistinguishable to anyone who didn't speak both Mandarin and whatever dialect the speaker spoke.

you are correct that someone interpreted it as leopard; you are incorrect that it was done because it was mistaken as a homaphone (I have to spell that word incorrectly, otherwise the censor takes out "hom o" - weird...) - especially as my teacher's teacher spoke Mandarin (being the head master of a primary school, I think he was fairly well educated), and my teacher speaks it fluently as well (he learned it to be able to communicte with his teacher, and was his official translator for all his American students for over 10 years)

In other words your "bao fu guai san" is basically hominyminous with "carry tiger back to mountain" or "satiated tiger returns to mountain".

here's the deal: one of my teacher' specialties is reasearching the classical origins of tai chi names; for example, an alternate translation of "dan bian", and the one we use, is "Transforming the Elixir" (and I actually saw one of the texts he got this from, so he's not just making it up); now, this is obviously very different from "Single Whip" and has to do with a taoist alchemical interpretation of the form - it doesn't mean Single Whip is wrong, just that it's an alternate translation (if you don't practice the form from this perspective, then there's no real point in having it as a translation); so, in this case, as I said, we interpret / write / translate BFGS as I mentioned above; it is not a mistaken homaphone, it is a deliberate alternate version; again, I don't remember exactly why it is this way, something to do with taoist alchemical imagery, and I will check on it this week when I see my teacher

BTW, there is a possibility that I am mistaken about this, of course - but if there is an error, it is because of my faulty memory, not my teacher's lack of literary education...

but thanks for the input

[omarthefish]

Here it is in simple form.

The entire Taiji Community around the world all agree that it is "bao"/carry/full except your your particular line. The only real disagreement is wether "bao" should be interpreted to mean "carry"/"embrace" or to mean "full"/"well fed". Those two meanings are from nearly identical characters.

抱 vs. 饱

This "community" I speak of includes scholars, lineage holders, native speakers etc.

The group that believes the character is "leapord"

狍 includes, you, your teacher and others in your lineage.

When you come across something like that in any other field of study, you have to ask yourself some really serious questions about who is most likely write and who is wrong. It is theoretically possible that Yang Luchan called it "leapord" and somehow everyone else since except for you guys got it wrong....but not likely.

an alternate translation of "dan bian", and the one we use, is "Transforming the Elixir" (and I actually saw one of the texts he got this from, so he's not just making it up); now, this is obviously very different from "Single Whip" and has to do with a taoist alchemical interpretation of the form - it doesn't mean Single Whip is wrong, just that it's an alternate translation

This too is an incedible stretch. Dan Bian is a pretty easy one too translate. You can draw all sorts of potential conclusions about what a "single whip" is supposed to represent but again, it flies in the face of basically all the other Chinese speakers and scholars in the world. Your "pai" vs. "everyone else.

If it's not a mistake then it is somebodies addition or renaming of a bunch of stuff just as happened with Bajiquan, once known as "Paziquan". From "rake fist" to "8 Ultimate Extremes Fist". Clearly someone added some culture to the form.

This has nothing to do with any sort of implication on your teacher or lineage. I am just speaking from a common sense academic perspective.

[cjurakpt]

I actually don't disagree with your point - and to be fair, I should not have said that rendering bao/pao as "carry" was an incorrect rendering of a homaphone: rather, it would have been more approprite to simply say that the way we write / interpret the name is different from the one that has become the standard;

why this is the case, from what I understand, is that the person in our line who learned from YLC (I believe that his name was Yang Zi Teng, although I am probably transliterating it incorrectly) interpreted the names he was given based on his understanding of taoist alchemical practice (which would explain why we translate dan bin as Transforming the Elixir [as i said, I did see those characters given as an alternate way of writing the name in a book on Chen style, so it's not just us], and other moves, such as "Cloud Hands", we name as "Bear Walk"); since YLC was illiterate, I guess it left room for different students to write down the names as they best saw fit, or even to change them based on their own understaning / interpretation of the material they learned in context of something else (in our case, taoist alchemical practice); and as we are obviously a minor, small lineage, it's not surprising that we may be the only one that does it like this, and based on the way in which we practice and interpret the form, it is not inconsistent for us to use these names the way we do;

anyway, I don't claim that what we have is necessarilly more correct than any other version, that it is the truth and that others are wrong - it's just a different perpective - and again, i will ask my teacher when i see him exactly why we use the leopard/tiger imagery as opposed to the standard "carry-tiger"

[omarthefish]

Well that went well.

I've got opinions I can't support academically as well. I just tend to not post them.. .for that very reason.

[cjurakpt]

Well that went well.

I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic - it seems that way, and if that is so, I don't really understand why...(if not, then my mistake); again, I can understand why you are being skeptical - looking at it from your perspective, as you point out, if someone comes up with a claim that is incongruous with the opinions of the recognized authorities in the field, it is not unreasonable to raise questions about it: certainly the burden of proof is on the minority; that said:

I've got opinions I can't support academically as well. I just tend to not post them.. .for that very reason.

I am not a Chinese scholar, unlike my teacher - he could cetainly provide references to all this based on his own reasearch, (I guess you could e-mail him and ask if you are really interested: www.dantao.com ); not surprisingly, almost all of it is in Chinese, and since my skill s in this area are limited, obviously I am giving him the benefit of the doubt about what he tells me (as I have no reason to do otherwise); so all I have are "unacademic" opinions - which is why I am not discounting what you say, as I personally do not possess the ability to directly prove my stance nor to refute yours - for now, the weight of evidence is clearly on your side, so all I can say is what I said: we have a different way of writing / interpreting the characters, I believe that they are consistent with the context in which we do the form, and that's about it - I don't think that you are calling the internal validity of what we do into question, but if you want to say that it's not the standard version of tai ji, that is certainly correct - the lineage is not a common one, and we do call some things by different names - that's about it in a nutshell...

[omarthefish]

Wasn't being sarchastic.

I've got a whole pile of things I won't bother going into online because I really don't feel like "defending" my point of view on them or because they touch on lineage issues or because I can't quite accept my Shifu's story and don't want to publicly disagree or because I actually honestly don't care what people think. he he. It's really true. If you REALLY didn't care about ....whatever....then you (the generic rhetorical "you") wouldn't bother responding to posts on the issue. There's an incredible amount of stuff I truly don't care about on this forum. You can tell which items I don't really care about because I am not posting on those threads.

Anyways, I made a comment about literacy and translation and you came back at me with what seemed kind of defensiveness about your teacher and how scholarly he was and all so I tried to back off a bit and depersonalize it making it an academic issue, not a personal one. You actually understood exactly what I meant so...yeah...that went well.

No worries.

If you're ever curious about my indefensible positions I can post some of them but don't expect me to post counter-arguments to anyone who posts saying that those views are dumb or impossible or whatever.

[cjurakpt]

Wasn't being sarchastic.

ok, sorry, just wanted to be sure - as your obviously know, it's easy to misconster things in this medium...

I've got a whole pile of things I won't bother going into online because I really don't feel like "defending" my point of view on them or because they touch on lineage issues or because I can't quite accept my Shifu's story and don't want to publicly disagree or because I actually honestly don't care what people think. he he. It's really true. If you REALLY didn't care about ....whatever....then you (the generic rhetorical "you") wouldn't bother responding to posts on the issue. There's an incredible amount of stuff I truly don't care about on this forum. You can tell which items I don't really care about because I am not posting on those threads.

Anyways, I made a comment about literacy and translation and you came back at me with what seemed kind of defensiveness about your teacher and how scholarly he was and all so I tried to back off a bit and depersonalize it making it an academic issue, not a personal one. You actually understood exactly what I meant so...yeah...that went well.

fair enough - it's admittedly hard to be totally detached and non-defensive about it at times - so I do appreciate your re-framing it the way that you did; again, I see your point - why should you just take my word for it on it's own merit? to wit, I will try to ask my sifu for something a bit more scholarly to reference it if I am able to - or at least clarify where in the line it came from;

No worries.

none; cool

If you're ever curious about my indefensible positions I can post some of them but don't expect me to post counter-arguments to anyone who posts saying that those views are dumb or impossible or whatever.

well, I'm always interested in alternative perspectives, so as you like; otherwise, I hear you - TBH, there are a number of really contrarian perspectives that my teacher holds vis a vis the "standard" body of tai ji form, theory, practice, etc. which I personally agree with (and, like you, there are things I don't agree with either - fortunately, he's the kind of guy I can say that to directly, and he's fine with it) - as you say, many of these things are in a way "indefensible" (at least by me at this point), not to mention inflammatory (it's less in the realm of "hey, we're just different" and more into the zone of "we're right, they're wrong"), and in fact many times I have wanted to post stuff that I have refrained from for that reason; in this particular case, I guess that I sort of broke my own rule, but hey, so it goes...actually, in retrospect, I'm glad that you did respond the way you did, because it's a good example of how, in the future, if I do post stuff like that, what facts I might want to have handy to substantiate the opinion...

anyway, sorry about the initial *****ly retort, and thanks again for the input...

[Songwind]

I read this thread because I'm currently learning ETRM, so obviously I have not yet developed any keen insight.

This struck me, however:
fortunately, he's the kind of guy I can say that to directly, and he's fine with it

I think that having a teacher with this sort of attitude, about anything, not just MA, is crucial for really full development. I think it's pretty obvious that this approach has helped to produce a thoughtful student who really feels like digging into their art.

Forgive the small hijack.

[cjurakpt]

the only two caveats I would add with that are:

1) in my experience, a significant number of Chinese teachers are absolutely fine with you telling them that you disagree with them: it's just that if you do, they will never correct you - ever again...

2) I was with my teacher over 10 years before I felt comfortable enough to do that