From my internet research there seems to be quite a lot of different styles of Tai Chi (Chen, Yang, Wu, etc.), Hsing-I (Hebei, ShanXi, etc.) and Bagua (Yin, Gao, etc). However, there appears to be only one style of Liu Ho Ba Fa. Can this be right, or am I just not looking in the right place? Is there really only one style?
I've a question regarding Liu Ho Pa Fa...
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Xue Sheng
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There are no official styles.
There are "localizations", though. As far as I know, there's localizations for Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. The Shanghai localization is what Wu Yi Hui (the earliest historically verifiable teacher) taught in Shanghai. As I understand it, it diverges a lot from other styles of Liu He Ba Fa because Wu Yi Hui didn't really want to teach them. As such there are many flourishes in the main form that really don't fit in with the LHBF philosophy. It resembles Taiji the most. This localization seems to be the same one the Taoist Tai Chi society claims to teach.
The Hong Kong localization is from Chan Yik Yan, who was Wu Yi Hui's most successful student. He went to Singapore to teach a bit (which he slightly changed there as well). This one resembles Xingyi/Bagua more.
Wu Yi Hui claims to have learnt LHBF from three different teachers all around China. I personally doubt that they taught LHBF and that LHBF is actually Wu Yi Hui's own synthesis of what he learnt. Otherwise there should be LHBF remnants in those areas where he learnt from, but there doesn't seem to be any evidence of it.
The Hong Kong localization probably has the most sub-branches, since many of Chan Yik Yan's students or his grandstudents have moved away. So there are representations in Taiwan, the US and Australia.
The international representations of the Shanghai localization seem to be in Germany, Canada and the US as well. The only thing common with those seems to be that they don't have as direct a line to Wu Yi Hui.
