Today we have the second part in a 2 part guest post by Brian Willis. He describes some of the reasons why there is such a huge difference in quality between Tai Chi that is taught publicly and the “in door” training that is very difficult to find. Brian mostly discusses Yang Style Tai Chi. Unfortunately this problem exists in all the major Tai Chi Styles as well as most other Chinese Kung Fu, Indonesian & Malaysian Silat, Okinawan Karate, Russian arts and many others. Click Here to read Part 1

This author is not a representative of Clear’s Tai Chi. His opinions are his own and may differ from those of Clear’s Tai Chi.

The defanging of Yang Style Tai Chi (part 2)
By Brian Willis

The Chen family had developed a very formidable style of kung fu (what we now call Chen-style tai chi chaun) during the Ming period, taught only within their family until the early 1800s.  Then the art was opened for the first time to an outsider named Yang Lu-chan.  Lu-chan left the Chen village, returning for a while to the village of Guang Ping where he modified what he had learned, creating the Yang style of tai chi chaun.  He earned a reputation as a great master but only had three formal students – his sons, Yang Pan-hou & Yang Chien-hou, and, later, a promising young artist in the Chen style named Wu Yu-hsiang (whose art later branched off into one of the two Wu styles (known now as Wu/Hao) & the Sun style of tai chi chaun, but that’s a different topic!)

Yang Pan-hou proved to be an even greater fighter than his father and his kung fu soon drew the attention of the emperor.  The emperor asked Pan-hou to teach his art to the imperial family, a request that simply could not be refused.  Not wanting to reveal to the hated Manchu the greatest strengths of the until-then-secret Han-developed martial art of tai chi chaun, Pan-hou created a new form.  He lengthened the form from 64 movements to 106 movements but, more significantly, he removed much of the fa jing and reeling elements from the form.  Still a powerful martial art but a pale shadow of the original, this was what was taught to the Manchu royal family and, later, to the palace guards.

After the Xinhai revolution and the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the leaders of the Republic of China recognized that the population needed physical exercise.  Drawing primarily from the martial art most familiar to them (the watered-down version of the Yang style which had been in the political spotlight for half a century), a further simplified version was developed and began to be taught to the masses.  The Republic of China struggled, however, and later fell to the communists (who essentially reverted to dynastic imperialism, but that’s a different topic!)  Under the communist People’s Republic of China, the leadership again recognized the need for a national program of physical fitness.

In 1956, the Chinese Sports Committee developed a new form of exercise by reducing the Yang style to only 24 movements, known as the 24 posture simplified form and often referred to as the Beijing form or Beijing style.  No longer taught as a martial art (although still containing many authentic movements at its core, still developing chi and still employing chi gung principles), this form was used by the government for general exercise and was taught in “re-education” camps, and later in all schools.

As a result, while the Chen, Guan Ping Yang (or traditional Yang), Wu, Sun, etc., styles of tai chi chaun were still being taught to small and dedicated groups of students, hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens were being taught the exercise program known as tai chi.  As one might expect, many of these citizens continued their exercises after leaving China (where it is still being taught to school children) and it thus found its way into popular Western culture because of its genuine health benefits.  This emasculated version of “tai chi” is the slow-motion “dance” commonly seen in parks, senior centers & YMCAs across the nation, and is what is most commonly taught by tai chi instructors outside the much smaller martial art community.

Today we have the first part in a 2 part guest post by Brian Willis. He describes some of the reasons why there is such a huge difference in quality between Tai Chi that is taught publicly and the “in door” training that is very difficult to find. Brian mostly discusses Yang Style Tai Chi. Unfortunately this problem exists in all the major Tai Chi Styles as well as most other Chinese Kung Fu, Indonesian & Malaysian Silat, Okinawan Karate, Russian arts and many others.

This author is not a representative of Clear’s Tai Chi. His opinions are his own and may differ from those of Clear’s Tai Chi.

The defanging of Yang Style Tai Chi (part 1)
By Brian Willis

Unquestionably one of the penultimate martial arts – in fact, its very name means something along the lines “supreme ultimate boxing” – the entire family of tai chi chaun is struggling to reclaim its status as a martial art.  How is it that tai chi chaun came to be generally viewed, especially in the West, as the healthy exercise known as Tai Chi rather than the serious martial art it was meant to be?  There are several major factors that contributed to this situation, several of which will be briefly explored in this post.

First, however, a bit of history is necessary.  For centuries, the indigenous Chinese (commonly known as the Han) fought to repel foreign invaders intent on capturing the rich farming land and resources of the Chinese heartland.  Chief among these were the Xiongnu (the motivation for the beginning of the Great Wall) and the Mongols, including Genghis Khan himself.  In addition to military assaults, China also experienced significant cultural invasions, too, including the introduction of Buddhism.  When Kublai Khan (grandson of Genghis) finally succeeded in conquering the ruling Song Dynasty in China, he established what is now known as the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368).

Under Yuan rule, the native Han population was generally treated very poorly (although some emperors were better than others), and the nation as a whole began to collapse into ruin.  Eventually, the Mongol invaders were overthrown and China entered into perhaps its greatest period of cultural enlightenment (aided, actually, by major global warming, but that’s a different topic) during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), once again under native rule.  During this period, and as a reflection of the Mongol rule that was now indelibly stamped on the Han psyche, national pride flourished.

One component of the rebirth in national pride manifested itself in a renewed interest in native Taoism instead of the imported Buddhism and, subsequently, the “soft” martial arts from the Taoist Wudang monasteries grew in reputation as opposed to the “hard” martial arts of the Buddhist Shaolin temple.  Arts like ba gua, hsing-I & tai chi grew out of this transitional period.  (It is during the Ming period, and largely as part of the rejection of “all things foreign”, that the legend of Chang San Feng began to grow, culminating in the myth that he was the creator of tai chi chaun – but that’s also a different topic…)

It was a crushing blow, then, when rebel factions, aided by a series of natural disasters and a mini-ice-age, overthrew the Ming only to lose their grip (the Shun Dynasty lasted less than a year) and find the nation once again falling into foreign hands – this time, the Manchu or Manchurians.  The Manchu ruled from 1644 until 1912, and the Qing Dynasty was China’s final ruling dynasty.  The Manchu were even more hated by the native Han population than the Mongols had been and their repression of the Han was severe.

As part of this repression, Emperor Yong-zheng outlawed Chinese martial arts and Emperor Qian-long began systematically confiscating and destroying all manuscripts relating to the martial arts.  This “book burning” was incomplete but it greatly damaged the historical record of the development of kung fu, with only a handful of documents from the Ming period surviving.  This resulted in a history full of holes, many of which were later filled in with myths.

Which brings us back to our original topic – why is tai chi chaun so often not considered to be a legitimate martial art but, rather, something akin to yoga or Pilates?

Part of the answer has to be attributed to the name itself!  One of the earliest Qing rulers, Tai-zong, called himself Emperor Tai Chi (essentially giving himself the title of “Grand Ultimate Emperor”).  Chinese culture placed serious restrictions on using an emperor’s name “in vain” so the very name “tai chi” became taboo.  This resulted in the art becoming virtually unspoken of and there are practically no written records mentioning it by name until after the fall of the Qing Dynasty.

Two more major parts of the answer, however, are tied to the development of the art in the 19th & 20th centuries.  Specifically, the fork introduced into the Yang style when it was taught to the imperial guards resulted in an intentional “watering-down” of the art.  Subsequently, the development of tai chi as an exercise for the masses, first by the Republic of China and later by the People’s Republic of China, completed the defanging of the art.

to be continued…