Ok, to be honest, I've always had a pretty poor opinion of CMC's branch of Tai Chi Chuan. I've talked to, met, and trained with a few CMC'ers over the last couple of years, and I get the feeling the style is very much geared towards the 'health & spirituality' divide of the art. I've tried to do a little more research on the style, and found that CMC was supposedly skilled as a Tai Chi boxer, with his push-hands supposedly being of high level. A quick youtube search came across this video of CMC: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSYPOhSgiis"]YouTube - Cheng Man Ching's playing some push hands[/ame] I'll concede, that this is fairly common of many Tai Chi videos available on youtube - students over-acting to boost Sifu's reputation etc... But because of the play acting, I find it hard to see if CMC actually IS skilled at Tuishou, as his students tend to claim. I then came across this website: http://www.patiencetaichi.com/ The founder of the school apparently trained with CMC directly, so with CMC's apparent reputation as a skilled martial artist, I was a bit put out when I read this on their site: While some of this article seems quite sound, the parts I've highlighted worry me. 'Moving slowly train's you to move quickly' for instance. I find this reasoning to be flawed. Start with slow movement to gain awareness of the necessary details, then gradually get faster and faster - surely this is the correct method; a method that a supposedly skilled boxer would advocate over continuously moving slowly? So, I suppose what I'm asking is; is what I've experienced a common theme among CMC Tai Chi'ers? Are they mostly focused on health and meditation over functional martial skill? Any feedback is welcome
TC Training 'Moving slowly train's you to move quickly' My understanding is that the movement is trained slowly so as to promote a relaxed state. This relaxed state helps when speed is necessary. Instead of a state where you are tense then relaxed then tensed again (i.e. generally pre-fight tension, relaxing as you throw a strike, then tensing at the last moment in order to transfer energy) you cut out the first stage, thereby promoting greater speed. Just a quick 2 penneth worth! Bill
First of all great name I do not think it is just CMC who highlight the health side there are also a lot of Yang stylists as well. I think that is due to giving the people what they want, if you have a class of 60 year olds they are not going to want to explore the martial side. Also I think it depends where the class is from. William C Chen teaches it a fighting style his daughters have competed in San Shou. Also there are a lot of schools in Maylasia where CMC taught before he lived in the USA. Maybe he was just slowing down as he got older. Regards Peter
Well.... Those films were not originally made for public consumption.In fact until they were made public in recent years they were only held by some of Cheng's students and their students.I had them for years as my teacher had them,but they were guarded and not common even among Cheng's people.So they weren't made for making the old man look good.He just was. While I admit that in the Taiwan film they could have had people closer to catch Wm. Chen rather than have him running backwards the length of a football field Wm. wasn't being compliant about getting blown away.Notice how when he comes back to Cheng he doesn't even have time to get ready,Cheng just blows him away immediately.Not that it would have mattered if he'd had time. I assure you in the film at Shr Jung in NY that neither Tam nor Ed are being compliant.They just were way out of their league.It's also easy to get a body reaction from the opponent which even when very slight and possibly so small as to be unnoticable to onlookers enables one to "catch" the opponent to great effect.I can see this in some of the exchanges with Cheng and those two.Can't you? My teacher Myles was a very athletic individual,wrestled in high school,played lacrosse in college,had studied Hung and S. Mantis,and before studying w/Cheng had studied w/Wm. Chen for a couple years.Told me that when he got up w/Cheng the first time "it was like a blink".They touched and Myles was blasted off his feet.That fast.Didn't even have time to react or realize he was gone until he was airborn. Tell ya what-when I met my fourth teacher I'd been around for 14 years.Was a recognized instructor of Cheng's system and Myles' #2 senior,chronologically.Had just stopped instructing in Fu Hok Hung a short period before.Robert had originally been an instructor under Stanley Israel and had then been accepted as a disciple by Tok of the Yip/Yu line in Malaysia-the no BS fighting sect. I was helpless.And I was no tofu TC guy.We banged all the time.I'd made more than just a couple of practitioners/instructors of other martial systems who had much more experience than myself back up.(Big loss of face for Karate guys,huh?)And I'm not a big guy.Welterweight increasing to light heavy over the years.(Hey,I'm kind of an ectomorph).And my push hands was considered pretty decent,one visiting teacher from Taiwan of Yang system said no one in town could push hands very well.Someone asked him about me and his remark was "Doc....not so easy."I guess-he never got me when we played. And I mean helpless.In the two years I was with Robert as his student and training partner I think in pushing I got him maybe three times when he wasn't "allowing" it.He could also beat me up at will.The only thing I could best him in was sword work-which I attributed to my FMA training,and told him so.So he gained acceptance as a student of Sunny Umpaad's FMA and became a teacher of his method -me and my big mouth! Between William's students and Yip's line I'd wager that Cheng's line has turned out more fighters in the last 40-50 years than any other TC line,tho' maybe the Wu,C-c line is equal in that regard.It was Yip's boys who shut Cheng's last disciple Wu up by finally putting an end to his claims by publicly challenging him in front of an audience.Anyone from any of the other clans have the guts to do that to those in their own lineage with outlandish claims?Not that I've heard of. Robert studied w/Tok when Tok was in his 60s.Training was horrendous.The other disciples told him he should have been there ten years earlier.As they put it,there was blood on the floor every night.And they weren't kidding.See the article on the history of CMCs TC in Malaysia in Journal of Asian Fighting Arts,tho' Tok is called by another name,Hei He Bei or something. OK,that said,I don't feel that Cheng taught all that much to his students in the US,even the seniors.All the inside stuff I learned I got from Robert,which came from Yip's line.It is significant that experienced people like Herman Kauz, Stanley Israel,and Patrick Watson,people who were very very good at what they did previously then studied with Cheng and became seniors.But Cheng sure didn't turn out any fighters from raw recruits during his US years.I'd say that was William's specialty. While I studied with Tung's disciple Chiang from Malaysia and learned a lot of good stuff from him he was my 5th teacher and I'd have to attribute the vast majority of my skills,such as they were,to what I learned from the CMC line. I don't feel Cheng's line is any less effective than others-but hey,most TC sucks nowadays regardless of lineage.They need to spill some blood in training,and then match up against practitioners from other systems,not just TC systems,but few do.Drop by the Finger Lakes sometime and I'll come out of retirement and show you.Kidding,I know your o'er the water. Oh yeah,I think the guy at Patience just meant the relaxation and refined kinesthetic control enable one to move/react faster than one would otherwise,as Laban noted.No big deal,but unless he proscribes ever moving fast in other training I don't see a problem there. I don't feel that Cheng's people are any more health etc oriented than most TC people.They also seem to dominate the field at pushing competitions in the US.Most TC people just talk theory anyway,and most will not get on the court and really mix it up.Oh yeah,Robert won the '89 pushing championship in Singapore.Personally I feel that push hands comps are the TC community's candy ass answer to their non participation in fighting tourneys.I think they should just fight rather than use what is a training method for comps.But I guess I'm just old fashioned in that respect. Hey,did you see the color films of Cheng playing at applications out of the pushing framework with those guys?Pretty funny to watch. "So, I suppose what I'm asking is; is what I've experienced a common theme among CMC Tai Chi'ers? Are they mostly focused on health and meditation over functional martial skill? " How many are focused on functional martial skill whatever line they belong to other than talking theory?We're in the minority. You're lucky in that nowadays there are more interested in that-when I was young we were considered barbarians by others no matter what TC they did,Cheng's,Yang,Wu, etc. That's one reason I loved and miss Koyo so much,our experiences with and the attitudes towards us by la de da practitioners of our respective systems were so similar as to be identical.Nothing like being someone who's really doing it being looked at askance by others who are basically dancers. "Well, I studied with so-and-so,and this is really different." Yeah,we train to use it.Or as I've on occasion said to students-"You need to be more violent." Enough feedback?
William Chen classes. I was a student of William Chen mostly in the 1970's. His whole emphasis was on fighting and that's about all we did. I have heard him say on several occassions, that he is not that interested in the health and meditation aspects of Tai-chi-Chuan, just in the fighting. (Although he is quite familiar with these other aspects). One of the answers mentions his two "daughters". He has one daughter, Tiffany, and a son, Max, both doing well in the fighting circuits.
As an outside observer, although from the perspective of someone who uses Tai Chi-esque moves in my fighting, I have never really had much issue with CMC and his demos. As most know I am not a big advocate of Chi, but I can see reasonable application of natural mechanics and that is perfectly acceptable [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bos_4KfHa8"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bos_4KfHa8[/ame] Certainly his material looks FAR superior to drivel like this.... [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSnUDkCQ0WU&feature=related"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSnUDkCQ0WU&feature=related[/ame] .....which to be honest makes George Dillman look convincing
Huang,tho' actually highly skilled,seems to have..... Oh bleagh,we've been through it all before. At least we didn't have to watch the match against the wrassler again. I refer you to MAP member Mr. Nigel Sutton's article in Journal of Asian Martial arts- "The History of Cheng,Man-ch'ing's T'ai Chi in Malaysia".
Yes, you are probably right about CMC, He was the first oriental I ever worked out with in '63, I was a innocent kid fresh off the indian reservation. He freaked me out beyond belief, with his chi power, etc. This was when few chinese would teach westerners anything. But, I don't think CMC was a super martial artist. I had to do 3 years of tai chi chi gong before I could do the regular tai chi. CMC was probably more an expert on chinese medicine and acupuncture than anything else. I still think he was pretty great as the 'master of the 5 excellences'. He didn't even start to learn tai-chi until he was 22 or 23, so, I don't think he was really into fighting or anything.
Who all did you study directly with in Cheng's Taiwan circle? How long,including the 3 years of ch'i gung, did you study Cheng's method in total while there? 3 years of ch'i gung-do you know why so long? Were they putting you off or were you baishi?
Wang Shu Jin is another Master that is spoken of with awe, but again I see nothing but good form [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3331hHtPcbU&feature=related"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3331hHtPcbU&feature=related[/ame] [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhUH8LgN1xw&feature=related"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhUH8LgN1xw&feature=related[/ame] Impressive certainly, actually very impressive for a man his size, but far from a convincing case for "non mechanics" chi.
No, mostly I wasn't there. I was in the u.s. air force. I would leave and come back. I had to wait that long because it was almost that long before I came back. Mostly, I worked out with his students. He couldn't really talk to anyone. He was from Yunnan province, I think. He spoke mandarin, but, with the accent of his province. Just about everyone had a problem with his accent. He didn't really speak cantonese or taiwanese, so, very few could understand him. I don't think he actually had a 'main student', or anyone who was very close to him. I mostly practiced with some of his students, learning some tai chi, acupuncture, daoism chi gong, etc. I wasn't really in the 'taiwan group', just on the perifery of it.
You have to master the slow form before you can learn the fast form. (Although not al styles of Taiji have a fast form, I understand, so presumably their 'martial' application would be very limited.) Even a movement executed slowly has a surprising amount of force when it's done without being 'thought about'. Which might sound like gobbledygook, but if you ever accidently hit a solid object (like a wall for example) while practising your slow form then you would understand my point, believe me!
I met Zhang in Tainan, not Taipei. If he moved to Taipei later, I didn't know about it. So, if anything, I was in the 'tainan group'. And yes, Zhang said you can do taiji at any speed. The Taiwanese marines are famous for doing it real slow. There is even a 'bear' style where you do the movements with great tension.
Ahhh,but if you're practicing "The Real T'ai Chi" you'll just bounce off! Unless you go through the wall.That gets expensive.Unless of course,one is a priest of Shaolin. On a more serious note-martial function in TC is not dependent on solo forms.One could become proficient and never utilize the training method of the many postured solo form to get there,and by that I mean 108 or 16 postures.Slow or fast. Heresy? No,a few generations back the training sequence could be quite different than what it commonly is now.
I always thought I was under Zhang, but, since there was a charge every time you went there, I usually met with some of his students that didn't charge so much. I was a poor airman that made about 30 bucks a payday. I don't remember their names.
So how much actual time did you spend training/learning Cheng's TC there,and how far into the curriculum as you know it? As you have forgotten the names of your first instructors I'm guessing not much time? If you were there much they can be ID'd. For your future reference,it's Zheng.Or Cheng.Or Jeng.People may misunderstand with the "a" you use.
I was actually stationed in japan at the time, I would only come through tainan on the way to vietnam. I learned the tai chi chi gong first, then, later, they taught me the regular taiji. Zheng (if you like) wanted you to do it backwards, (left handed?) almost immediately. Again, I don't remember the instructors, but to develop the chi, they mostly wanted you to take daoism, other types of mediatation, chi gong, etc., from other instructors, That you should be picking up chi just from doing taiji, if you weren't doing so well, you should try these other things. so, I don't think I was ever on the 'straight path'. Besides, I think I was more interested in acupuncture, than taiji at the time. And for the name, I thought that Chan, Chun, Cheing, Chung, Jhang, etc. was written with the same chinese characters, but they were just pronounced differently, according to what village your ancestors came from originally?
Left handed,I take it you mean mirror image?Really? In pinyin,Wade-Giles,or Harvard it's spelled w/an "e". That's all. " That you should be picking up chi just from doing taiji, if you weren't doing so well, you should try these other things." I wonder what the ch'i gung system was you learned pre-the TC instruction. I don't know why you would be expected to learn others from outside the circle. That seems rather odd.Well,very odd,actually. Don't think you'd be getting acupuncture instruction descended from Cheng. Again, how much actual time did you spend training/learning Cheng's TC there,and how far into the curriculum as you know it? Who is the Wong you mentioned in another thread? A HI/PK practitioner?
