Excepts from CMA history

Xue Sheng

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Or duck and cover and wait for lineage fight to end and the dust to clear :D

Quoted sections from “The Spring and Autumn of Chinese Martial Arts – 5000 Years” - By Kang Gewu

1117 The 7th Year of Zheng He: Northern Song Dynasty
Imperial Diarist Li Siju once got up at midnight to practice Ba Duan Jin (eight pieces of brocade) which included such strength enhancing postures as She Diao (http://www.yimag.fr/IMG/cache-112x125/arton26-112x125.jpg ) and Zuan Quan

Which says Ba Duan Jin is older than 891 years and explains why there are so many variations on the theme

Chen Style Taijiquan

He also talks about the origins of Chen style taiji and therefore by default the origins of taiji, However he has place Chen Wangting death at 1719 which appears to be 39 years later than I have seen before which places Chen Wangting between 1600 and 1680.

But the origin does sound plausible to me and much more believable than the multitude of Zhang Senfeng origin theories that place Zhang Senfeng in multiple dynasties throughout Chinese history in association with various martial arts, religions and philosophies.

I am not putting this in quotes since it is paraphrased; Basically he is saying that Chen Wangting took whatever style the Chen family was doing (Chen style quan) and combined it with Yin and Yang Theory, Qi JiguangÂ’s Quan Jing San Shi Er Si (32 form boxing) and Huang Ting JingÂ’a Dao Yin (guiding method) and then codified Tui shou and two person sticking method and then Chen style Taijiquan was born.

1851 Yang Luchan who learned Chen style from Chen Changxing and he later taught Chen style to Wu Yuxing

This is interesting since Wu Yuxing is considered the founder of Hao Style and from what I have read Wu Yuxing learned from Yang Luchan but I always assumed it was Yang Style and then Wu Yuxing later went to learn with Chen Qingping (14th generation Chen family) and the person credited with starting Zhaobao taijiquan. In a discussion with my Yang style sifu he says Wu Yuxing never learned Chen since no one in Chen village would teach him so he learned Zhaobao. This is per one of his books in Chinese

1861 to 1862 Yang Luchan in order to meet the demands of health maintenance and expand the range of people who could learn, he removed movements of explosive power, jumps and other difficult moves. He then created Yang Style taijiquan with the characteristics of softness, slowness, roundness and flowing movements as well as extended and relaxed postures

That I just find rather interesting

In 1930

Research on Shao Lin and Wu Dang written by Tang Hao was published. Based on textual research, the book refuted the idea that Zhang Sanfeng founded the Wu Dang School of Quan and also rejected the belief that Da Mo (Bodhidharma) started Shao Lin Quan

I would really like to see this article and its sources since I agree with what is being said. However many most certainly will not but just the same I am not looking for a debate about it, I just found this interesting.


There are of course a lot of interesting things in the book by Kang Gewu, some of which are likely only interesting to me and there are few that are likely questionable due to the problems in researching Chinese history and separating myth from fact but the author did a great job and I do think the book is well worth the read.
 

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