Is Tai Chi becoming just another product?

[Xue Sheng]

Yup, here I go again and I promise to keep the ranting to a minimum..

As many already know, I have been looking at a whole lot of Tai Chi sites and talking to a whole lot of people and I am beginning to wonder if what many of the Chinese people I have talked to are right. The general consensus, and this is from Chinese born in China; Most of the Tai Chi being taught in America is just a business, not a school of real martial arts.

My teacher has said this many times, however now that he is thinking of opening a Tai Chi school, full time, I see his attitude changing towards business and away from teaching real Tai Chi with the martial arts intact. More forms, more Qi Gong, less push hand, less fajing and little or no applications seems to be the direction he is headed.

I was at a Chen seminar, a while ago, given by Chen Zhenglei and although he is very skilled, no one in the class was asking about application, fajing or Qinna. All they were being shown was warm ups and forms. No Qi, no applications, no mention of fajing, just forms. I have heard from people in the local Chinese community that have said the people in these seminars should consider themselves lucky. If this were China, Chen Zhenglei would not teach beginners, his senior students would. And then they add; but this is easy for him and makes him more money too, “he is just teaching forms, that’s it.”

If you go to the Yang family site they have a ranking system, based on years of study. I am aware of a Beginner, intermediate, advanced ranking system, I am not sure if it ever applied to Tai Chi back in the old days in China, but it may have. I was not aware this type of ranking system had a time limit or sub ranks within those ranks. I will add there are tests you have to take that appears to be based on skill, to achieve the next rank, but you cannot take these tests until after a certain amount of time has passed. This ranking system implies that if I study with a certified Yang Style center for 20 years I can be a very high level. So if I started at 18 by 38 I could be 8th level with 1 to go. I am not sure if this implies you are a master or not.

How is any of this different from a martial arts school that proclaims you’re a master after 2 stripes on your black belt or promises you a black belt after so many months or years of study or calls Taebo or Cardio kick boxing a martial art?

I talked with two Chinese Martial Artists, years apart, independent of each other and long before I started ranting about Tai Chi, I would call them masters, but both said they were not masters yet. They were not old enough, they had not trained long enough and you have to be at least 50 or older to be a master. Both were in there 40s and both had been studying their martial art for over 20 years.

There are hundreds of Tai Chi videos and DVDs for sale, more books than you can count and seminars all over the place, but is this really Tai Chi or just another commodity for sale and let the buyer beware?

I would appreciate any thoughts on this that anyone has

 

[celtic bhoy]

Sadly this situation is not really restricted to Tai Chi. I know of some external stylists that have been promised that they will understand self defence only once they have mastered all or most patterns/kata etc.

I think martial arts has a whole as well as us, are victims of our era. In the days of old, all martial arts were effective simply because the exponent relied on it to save their lives and the fact that they had sod all better to do than practice all day.

In todays society everybody is material and trying to cram two days into one. Everything is business including martial arts, Tai Chi being one of the main victims. The stress of life has meant that Tai Chi's use has been tailored to suit has a health remedy and not a martial art.

If Tai chi's training method was updated to the point were you was learning the martial application from the off, it would have a better chance of surviving. All this spending years perfecting form before martial application is addressed is counter-productive. People either become bored and switch to an external style or the martial side just becomes lost.

It would not be a crime to teach Tai Chi in a modern way, especially if it would help the art survive as a martial art.

 

[Makalakumu]

One of the things that I've noticed is that the level of charletenry in tai chi is higher then it is in other TMAs. The reason this happens is because the movements are so slow and it is so hard to really know what to look for and a teacher can spew flowery BS about "oneness" and "the universe" the entire time one teaches. Also, a person can go a very long time without being asked to actually demonstrate their skill. And when actually asked to demonstrate skill, the "it takes a very long time to learn tai chi to defend yourself" defense comes out (It actually doesn't take long at all if one knows how to teach it for self defense).

I'm very skeptical of most tai chi teachers. More so then other TMAs because of this stuff.

 

[Xue Sheng]

Sadly this situation is not really restricted to Tai Chi. I know of some external stylists that have been promised that they will understand self defence only once they have mastered all or most patterns/kata etc.

I think martial arts has a whole as well as us, are victims of our era. In the days of old, all martial arts were effective simply because the exponent relied on it to save their lives and the fact that they had sod all better to do than practice all day.

In todays society everybody is material and trying to cram two days into one. Everything is business including martial arts, Tai Chi being one of the main victims. The stress of life has meant that Tai Chi's use has been tailored to suit has a health remedy and not a martial art.

If Tai chi's training method was updated to the point were you was learning the martial application from the off, it would have a better chance of surviving. All this spending years perfecting form before martial application is addressed is counter-productive. People either become bored and switch to an external style or the martial side just becomes lost.

It would not be a crime to teach Tai Chi in a modern way, especially if it would help the art survive as a martial art.

Sadly I agree with you, this problem is not restricted to Tai Chi. I believe it hit the Japanese martial arts first followed by Korean and now Chinese, but I think that Tai Chi over took them all because it appears to be so easy and so non-violent and it is very good at helping Those people "material and trying to cram two days into one" that you mentioned relax.

And right up there with the Tai Chi Commodity is Qi Gong, but I won’t go there because I said I would keep the ranting to a minimum.

One of the things that I've noticed is that the level of charletenry in tai chi is higher then it is in other TMAs. The reason this happens is because the movements are so slow and it is so hard to really know what to look for and a teacher can spew flowery BS about "oneness" and "the universe" the entire time one teaches. Also, a person can go a very long time without being asked to actually demonstrate their skill. And when actually asked to demonstrate skill, the "it takes a very long time to learn tai chi to defend yourself" defense comes out (It actually doesn't take long at all if one knows how to teach it for self defense).

I'm very skeptical of most tai chi teachers. More so then other TMAs because of this stuff.

I have to agree here as well, there are a lot of Charlatans out there teaching Tai Chi. I have seen a few as I am sure you have as well. And thanks to well meaning Tai Chi masters, if you will, it has gotten worse. The Chen family has been giving seminars all over the world as has the Yang Family and in some cases you get very good Tai Chi people from this. But in others you get someone who goes to a few seminars and then opens a school and says I learned from Chen or Yang or Wu or pick a family, and people flock to them.

Also you have people like one near me that is from China and is trained in China as a gym teacher. In China gym teachers can be taught Wu Shu and Tai Chi competition forms. Well, he came to the US and opened a school to teach what he knows and this is fine, but he expanded because he has basic knowledge and is an incredibly good mimic. He now teachers 100s of different forms and styles from Yang to Sun from Shaolin to Wudang to Eagle claw all because he bought videos and copied them or he goes to China and video tapes these people doing forms and copies them. And to be honest his forms are very good, but they are just that, only forms, no substance. And I have talked to some of his students who tell me they know Yang Style, Chen Style, Wu Style, Sun Style, Bagua, Xingyi, and Shaolin. And they learned it all in 2 or 3 years.