Yang Style of Tai Chi Chuan not Good Enough from a Martial Aspect?

[The Willow Sword]

[jun_erh]

I can see how yang could be seen as too soft. For me, I started learning it for that reason. I was coming out of a year of doing both Hung Gar and Kuo Shu (chinese military type training). The hung gar was mostly forms, but artisticly it's southern style kung fu, so you know everything is very forcefull. The other class was great but, well it was kind of like being in the army!! I sprained all sorts of limbs. I had been doing 8 section brocade since the begining and felt that purely as an activity, tai chi would be less stressful and stuff. Not trying to give the world my biography, just explaing the appeal of the idea of yang style.

[TaiChiBob]

Greetings..

I train in both Yang and Chen styles.. common to both is the need to research more and more into teachers with authentic knowledge.. seek them out, whatever the price.. after a while your own understanding begins refining itself.. At some point you will find that Yang style has as much coiling, spiraling and FaJing as Chen.. but knowledgable Yang teachers are more difficult to find than good Chen teachers.. Chen is proud of its prowess, Yang has concealed it almost into extinction.. I hope we can revive it..

Be well..

[Kumkuat]

no tai chi is pronounced tai JI. And in pinyin it is spelled taiji.

[Crushing Step]

kumkuat- Great point. It bugs me when karate people who add tai chi to their curriculum say "tie jee kwon". Worse yet is seing it done as if a hard style! Nothing against fa jing, that is beautiful. What I mean is the stiff angular movements you would expect from a hard stylist.

I don't speak or read Chinese. But when I see that modern pinyin has two words that sound alike, and are spelled "Qi" and "Ji", then I know that their Chinese symbols and therefore their meaning must be different.

That brings me to my second TCC pet peeve. It's when the same type of people say the "chi" of "tai chi chuan" is the same "chi" as in "life energy".

[Kumkuat]

yeah. and tai ji's ji is pronouced ji with a hard "J" sound (like in John). QI is pronouced chi (like child). I don't know why most westerners can't tell the difference. I guess I hang with too many chinese people (and yes, they confirmed the pronoucation). Not to mention that when I was a child when I was learning German, I had this really strict teacher that was real anal about pronouncation so I'm kinda anal about that as well. But I still can't figure out the tones though in Chinese.

[TaiChiBob]

Greetings..

Tai Chi Chuan, Taijiquan, Tai Chi.. words that point to an experience.. pay attention to the experience.. I learned Chen from a gentleman that spoke so little english that communication was almost void, when he did speak we didn't know if he was telling us the name of a move or to leave because we were to stupid to learn Chen.. We persisted and the form was taught mostly in silence with sign-language of our own design.. What i'm getting at is that most of us don't communicate in Chinese, so much confusion is wrought from differing interpretations of Chinese words/phrases.. Why don't we simply state what we mean in english.. Life-force, Breath, Muscle energy, Intent, Spirit, etc.. We actually propogate confusion in the effort to understand a foreign language that is based on imagery and esoteric concepts..

The one that gets it right is the one that transfers the concepts into their own experience.. and that can be done with english or with no words at all.. so to get all academic and authoratative over a complex and confusing system of communication seems as counter-productive as the perceived academic "mis-conception".. especially when the misconceived person actually has the concept... " a rose by any other name is still a rose"...

Be well..