Xue Sheng
All weight is underside
There are a few posts I have been coming across lately discussing the effectiveness of TMA and some others have pointed to outrageous claims of current CTMA teachers in China or legendary claims of the past and to be honest that is pretty much true, but it is not the whole truth. There are a lot of teachers in China making outrageous claims as to their ability and what they can teach you and a lot of this is due to the New China and its approach to capitalism. Everybody wants to make money and the Westerners going to China to become Martial Arts Masters, or to pad the resume, are who they are targeting so they claim they are and/or their CMA is better, faster, stronger and more dangerous than the other guys. I ran into one in Beijing that was a self proclaimed Yang Style Taiji master that I was supposed to meet and train push hands with. That was until I arrived and he wanted to know my background, after that he admitted he did not do push hands much and all he taught was 24 form in the park. I saw a lot of bad Yang Taiji in the parks of Beijing. Most of it bad Yang style (but then there was more Yang than anything else). The only Taiji I saw that was rather good was a couple of guys doing Chen by themselves and guy doing Wu by himself and a guy doing Sun by himself. And then there were the 2 old guys doing long fist and that was rather amazing to watch actually.
And there are also rather outrageous Legendary claims about Chinese Martial Arts masters. My favorite is that they all appear to be undefeated…. If this is the case who did they fight with? And yet in some cases they never were defeated, but what does that actually mean. Mostly that they never were defeated by those that they fought in their area of China, not all of China, just a small part of it.
I liked it when I read the History of Wang Xiangzhai, the founder of Yiquan. Believe it or not he was actually defeated from time to time. Apparently one of the few that admits it, but this is, at least in part what lead to the development of Yiquan, which after it was developed he was of course never defeated.
It is sales mainly, but there are real CMA masters there and they tend not to advertise much or at all and this is due to Chinese Culture (they do it in the USA too, my Sanda teacher tells no one and my Yang Sifu does not advertise). I am not saying those that advertise are no good, there are many that are and there are many that are not. Generally, and I hate to say this, the better ones have a lot of Chinese students, but this is not always an indicator either.
There are a couple of things to take into account about Chinese culture before you start judging entire systems and the teachers of these systems. First there is an old saying from China that was very much true during the Cultural Revolution. “The nail that sticks up gets pounded down” So you would tend not to make yourself to popular or stand out based on that and they were killing people that stood out during the cultural revolution and much of that was targeted at the old ways which included TCMA.
And then there is this story that I read a long time ago that I again came across in a copy of Sun Zi (Sun Tzu) Bing Fa (Art of War) that I had that was translated by Thomas Cleary that is also still very true of Chinese culture, although not as much as it use to be.
You will find a very similar thing in finding CMA teachers in China. The best generally are not known by many, they tend to not advertise, they don’t trust outsiders and since no phonebook exist in Beijing (or at least I didn’t see one) I think you get the picture.
Just before I left Beijing I was given a name of an old Buddhist that my mother-in-law heard of only because she is a Buddhist. This gentleman was likely in his late 70s or early 80s and had done Xingyi and Bagua for a very long time. Maybe it was me but I could tell by looking at him he was very likely the real deal and he had that Xingyi master look that basically scares the living daylights out of you when they look at you. But due to lack of time, language issues (he spoke no English and I spoke way to little mandarin) and my feelings of complete inadequacy at Xingyi at that moment I did not train with him.
I guess the point I am trying to make here is that if you go to China to train it is very much buyer beware but that does not mean that there are not some excellent martial artists there, they just don’t talk about it much. And of course this is another issue to take into account when judging CMA and CMA teachers.
And there are also rather outrageous Legendary claims about Chinese Martial Arts masters. My favorite is that they all appear to be undefeated…. If this is the case who did they fight with? And yet in some cases they never were defeated, but what does that actually mean. Mostly that they never were defeated by those that they fought in their area of China, not all of China, just a small part of it.
I liked it when I read the History of Wang Xiangzhai, the founder of Yiquan. Believe it or not he was actually defeated from time to time. Apparently one of the few that admits it, but this is, at least in part what lead to the development of Yiquan, which after it was developed he was of course never defeated.
It is sales mainly, but there are real CMA masters there and they tend not to advertise much or at all and this is due to Chinese Culture (they do it in the USA too, my Sanda teacher tells no one and my Yang Sifu does not advertise). I am not saying those that advertise are no good, there are many that are and there are many that are not. Generally, and I hate to say this, the better ones have a lot of Chinese students, but this is not always an indicator either.
There are a couple of things to take into account about Chinese culture before you start judging entire systems and the teachers of these systems. First there is an old saying from China that was very much true during the Cultural Revolution. “The nail that sticks up gets pounded down” So you would tend not to make yourself to popular or stand out based on that and they were killing people that stood out during the cultural revolution and much of that was targeted at the old ways which included TCMA.
And then there is this story that I read a long time ago that I again came across in a copy of Sun Zi (Sun Tzu) Bing Fa (Art of War) that I had that was translated by Thomas Cleary that is also still very true of Chinese culture, although not as much as it use to be.
You will find a very similar thing in finding CMA teachers in China. The best generally are not known by many, they tend to not advertise, they don’t trust outsiders and since no phonebook exist in Beijing (or at least I didn’t see one) I think you get the picture.
Just before I left Beijing I was given a name of an old Buddhist that my mother-in-law heard of only because she is a Buddhist. This gentleman was likely in his late 70s or early 80s and had done Xingyi and Bagua for a very long time. Maybe it was me but I could tell by looking at him he was very likely the real deal and he had that Xingyi master look that basically scares the living daylights out of you when they look at you. But due to lack of time, language issues (he spoke no English and I spoke way to little mandarin) and my feelings of complete inadequacy at Xingyi at that moment I did not train with him.
I guess the point I am trying to make here is that if you go to China to train it is very much buyer beware but that does not mean that there are not some excellent martial artists there, they just don’t talk about it much. And of course this is another issue to take into account when judging CMA and CMA teachers.
