“Push Hands?”

angryclown

Jingang
The really, really low style of push hands is useful for when you're running a race in the 110m hurdles, and someone else is trying to run a different race at the same time and goes the wrong direction over the hurdles. It's also a nice way to acclimate your students to having their faces very close to your crotch.
 

Edmond

Wuji
Looks like someone is taking push hands in the Tantric direction. It's getting dangerously close to pushing more than just hands.

But, hey, maybe it's good for business. It'll attract a lot of Yoga people.
 

Marin

Lao Tou
Staff member
I'd say this kind of shameless fuckery was pretty standard fare in the west in 1998. It goes without saying that in those days Yang style "masters" who wanted to pretend to be as 'martial' as Chen style (that was apparently threatening their image) would look awful when pretending they had a low stance tradition.
 

Edmond

Wuji
I'd say this kind of shameless fuckery was pretty standard fare in the west in 1998. It goes without saying that in those days Yang style "masters" who wanted to pretend to be as 'martial' as Chen style (that was apparently threatening their image) would look awful when pretending they had a low stance tradition.

I'm a bit curious about how the Yang style and "commercial" Chen style from the village influenced each other during this time. I see that the village Chen style seem to use Yang Chengfu's 10 principles, which I'm not sure if Yang got from Chen or the other way around. I also heard Chen style added weapons to match up with Yang style to say "we got that too". The basic Tuishou also looks kind of similar, but they branch off in different dramatizations in the more "advanced" drills.

For reference, a link to the 10 principles: https://www.thetaichilife.com/yang-cheng-fus-10-essential-principles.html

Some also say the forms are the same choreography (Chen style Yilu = Yang style long form, and Yang style doesn't have Erlu). Although that takes quite a bit of squinting to see the similarities.

I guess all this is happening in China, while the west was really the Wild West with "masters" bringing things over and mistranslating stuff.
 

Marin

Lao Tou
Staff member
I see that the village Chen style seem to use Yang Chengfu's 10 principles, which I'm not sure if Yang got from Chen or the other way around.

I have never heard of such a thing. I never trained yang style and only learned the normal Taiji 'principles' from Chen style teachers. Never heard of the 10 though. I believe these most likely just originate from the Chen art anyhow. Maybe they use different words, but I have major doubts that These came to Chenyu by way of Yang, ever.

I also heard Chen style added weapons to match up with Yang style to say "we got that too".

This is documented false. Chen family has records of weapons practices going back hundreds of years, that of course is where Yang learned them. That said, the straight sword (jian) may not have been part of the original Chen syllabus and its possible that was inspired by Yang's use of it, who likely was inspired by someone else previously.

The basic Tuishou also looks kind of similar, but they branch off in different dramatizations in the more "advanced" drills.

Tuishou finds its roots again with Chen. Yang tuishou methods are only more simplified. Wu style (small frame Yang) did either a better job or preserving early Chen methods or they expanded a bit on them themselves, but again all of this can be found in Chen one way or the other, but not in the commercial branches, which mostly have nothing in the way of traditional practical knowledge anyhow.

Some also say the forms are the same choreography (Chen style Yilu = Yang style long form, and Yang style doesn't have Erlu). Although that takes quite a bit of squinting to see the similarities.

This is basically accurate.
 

angryclown

Jingang
I'm a bit curious about how the Yang style and "commercial" Chen style from the village influenced each other during this time.

A basic principle of marketing is that if you want to innovate in a market segment, you have to offer something different, but not *too* different. I.e. if the Chen family wanted to get into the U.S. market in the 80's and build off what the Taiwan Yang stylists had already been promoting for 15 years, they had to say "oh, yes, you like being floppy? Well, we, of course, are also floppy, but we fajin and are therefore fighty, too!" But in doing that, they validated floppiness as a basis upon which their "more" could be added while still leveraging the popularity of the name. So the influence would come in the form of setting market expectations, rather than any sort of technical exchange.
That's a bit simplistic, but in my view if people want to talk about the relationship between Chen and Yang in popular practice, you really have to look at it in terms of where the money is and how the various markets were built and developed.
 
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