The Kwan Ping Yang Of Tai Chi Chuan An interview of Yun Chun Chiang -- Inside Kung Fu Magazine Master Yang Pan-hou looked down at the young boy. Your father tells me that you want to learn Tai Chi Chuan. Yes, sir, answered Wong Jao-yu. But do you really? Yes, sir! I do not believe you, said Master Yang, turning to walk away. I have nothing to teach you. Jao-yu stared in disbelief. He was crushed ... and speechless. (image) Y. C. Chiang doing Guang Ping Yang Tai Chi Chuan Form Master Chiang poses in the Ward-Off position, one of the 13 postures of Kwan Ping Yang. Master Yang Pan-hou was famous throughout China. He was the personal instructor of the Emperor, the Emperors family, and the Emperors private guard. Stories of his exploits as a fighter were legendary, and Wong Jao-yu idolized the man. Please, master Yang, pleaded the boy, running after his hero. Ill do anything you ask... Ill work so hard... Ill do anything! The master looked at the boy again. Please, master Yang. Just give me a chance. Ill prove myself. (image) Acupuncture, like the internal aspects of Tai Chi Chuan, is revealed for the more advanced phases of learning. Y. C. Chiang giving a lecture on Chinese Medicine Very well, son. “Yang placed his hand on the boys shoulder, I will teach you one thing. Lets see what you can do with it So saying, Yang stepped back into a Tai Chi stance, then grabbed his right foot and effortlessly pulled himself downward until his chin touched his big toe. There! said Yang. I want you to practice that stretch for 100 days. Come to me when you can touch your chin to your toe as I just did. You have just one hundred days. Thats all. One hundred days. The 100 days chin-to-toe is a test for your mind, explains shih-fu Yun Chung Chiang of Oakland, California. Its a very difficult feat. And if you succeed, you demonstrate that you have cultivated your mind to the point where you have enough patience and the ability to do hard work, so that you can learn the art of Tai Chi Chuan. Shih-fu Chiang teaches a very rare style of Tai Chi Chuan. In fact, whereas there are only slight differences between most Tai Chi styles, the art that Chiang teaches provides radical contrast. To be specific, the movements tend to be longer, deeper, and more energetic. But more significantly, the movements contain obvious combat value. (image) Y.C. Chiang doing Pa Kua Chuan Master Y.C. Chiang poses in the Pa Kua Single Palm Change Posture Its like acupuncture surgery. continues Chiang. The same philosophy is at work. The acupuncturist will place the needle in the patient’s body. At first the patient experiences discomfort then numbness. Once the pain is gone, the doctor can operate. Similarly, during the 100 days the student experiences discomfort. The stretching’s hard work. Many people drop from the effort, eventually the student comes to understand pain, and becomes numb to it. Once the pain is gone, the teacher can teach him Tai Chi. Chiangs style of Tai Chi Chuan is the secret art of Yang Pan-hou called Kwan Ping Yang, which the famed master taught Wong Jao-yu. The reason for the arts secrecy revolves around the politics of 19th century China. At that time, most of the people in China considered themselves to be descendants of the Han Dynasty. The rulers of China however, came out of Manchuria. They spoke a slightly different language, had different customs, and were not descendants of the Han. The Emperor therefore was a foreigner who the Han served under penalty of death. When master Yang Pan-hou was asked to become the Emperors personal kung-fu instructor he could not refuse. Yet he felt no loyalty to the Manchu monarch. So Yang did indeed leach at the pleasure of the royal court, but he taught only what he pleased. Yang was determined not to allow his familys precious Kwan Ping Yang style of Tai Chi Chuan to be used in self-defense of the Emperor. He immediately set about creating an alternative system. This new system considerably inferior to the secret art. The movements were much less practical, must less powerful. The Tai Chi art that master Yang taught at the Imperial Palace soon spread throughout the capital city, and is still taught in Peking today. When the Wushu Troupe from the Peoples Republic of China toured the United States last summer, troupe members performed a routine taken from the Peking Yang style of Tai Chi Chuan created by Master Yang Pan-hou. And curiously enough, the Chinese government has begun to encourage all troupe members to study Yang s watered down version of Tai Chi Chuan. It seems that due to the emphasis on the Cultural Revolution, Wushu performers have forgotten how to fight. The government hopes that master Yangs Tai Chi Chuan will help revitalize the lost knowledge. People do not realize it today, recalls shih-fu Chiang, but back in the old days (before World War II), kung-fu was taught differently. At that time a teacher might only teach one or two students before he dies. It was hard for a teacher to find good students. And it was equally hard for a good student to find a good teacher. Usually the teacher would start the student out with elementary techniques while he checked out the students personality; his heart, his mind, whether he was a good or a bad person. If the teacher found the student to be a bad person, he abandoned him, but if the teacher judged him to be a good person, he would begin to teach him his arts secret techniques.” Apparently the chin-to-toes stretch in 100 days was master Yang Pan-hou s method for evaluating the personality of Wong Jao-yu. “After master Pan-hou changed the style, says shih-fu Chiang, “he taught the real art, the Kwan Ping Yang, to one studentÖWong Jao-yu Wong. Wong Jao-yu was my Grand teacher. At the time, master Yang Pan-hou instructed Wong Jao-yu to keep the real art secret for as long as the Manchu’s were on the throne. If he ever demonstrated movements which were different from what master Yang taught at the palace, Yang and all of his relatives would have been executed.” Of course, the Imperial family did fall with the establishment of the first Chinese Republic. So when it came time for Wong Jao-yu to pass the art on to a student, he naturally used the chin-to-toes stretch to test for worthiness. Its like constructing a building, explains shih-fu Chiang. “If the foundations not good the building will fall down. “The martial arts are the same way. Wong Jao-yu needed to find a student who could perpetuate the secret art. The Kwan Ping Yang style is a very special art. The movements encompass both big and small circle techniques. And the essence of the method is contained in two words: relaxation and sinking (of energy). The stance work is very low, lower, than other forms of Tai Chi Chuan. Usually, the beginner will spend two years studying solo exercise at medium speed, with occasional lapses of very fast movements The intermediate student then learns the techniques in reverse. His energy must sink another four or five inches. And the whole solo exercise should take about 40 minutes to complete. After another two years of reverse Tai Chi, the students foundation should be strong enough to begin the advanced techniques, or the mind/body Tai Chi. At this stage, the mind controls the body completely, the fighting applications of the art become mastered, and the solo exercise is increased to an hour and a half. The fighting tactics of Kwan Ping Yang embrace the original 13 postures: 1) central equilibrium, 2) advance, 3) retreat, 4) look to the left, 5) look to the right, 6) ward-off, 7) rollback back, 8) press, 9) push, 10) pull, 11) split, 12) elbow, and 13) shoulder. These tactics are finely honed through pushing-hands drills and the 64-movement solo-exercise. This style of Tai Chi Chuan can clearly be used in combat situations. Guang Ping Yang Lineage Wang Jiao-Yu taught the system to Kuo Lien Ying and Wang Chih Chien, BOTH of whom passed on the art to the fifth generation, Dr. Yun Chung Chiang. The secrecy and the disparity in Yang Ban-Hous Tai Chi were later confirmed by Pu Ru, the brother of the last Ching dynastys emperor. Pu Ru was a renowned artist from whom Dr. Chiang learned Chinese calligraphy and Northern style painting. Without doubt the rigorous training required to master master Yang Pan-hous secret art required a determined athlete. The chin-to-toes stretch provided Wong Jao-yu with a way to choose his successor. My teacher, Kuo Lien Ying, says shih-fu Chiang, like Wong Jao-yu before him, was able to touch his chin to his toes before 100 days passed. And I was able to repeat the feat after him. None of shih-fu Kuos students before me were able to touch their chin to their toes in 100 days. And in 20 years as a teacher myself, no one else has repeated the feat. So theres no one before me, and no one After me . After him! After him ! The town sheriff shouted commands to his group of nine deputized pursuers. Dont let him get away! Chi-Li was known as the most elusive and clever burglar in the Shantung area. He possessed great talent and was trained in a very high skill of Chinese Martial Arts. He could easily leap across a canal over twenty feet wide or just as easily jump up eight feet to roof tops to escape capture. On many moonlit nights, villagers would watch in awe this agile, nimble, dark silhouette accentuated by the giant moon shining high above in the sky as he skipped from roof top to roof top with a bag of loot tied around his shoulder. On this night, the sheriff and his deputies chased Chi-Li into a dead-end alley, which lead to an ancient temple. When the pursuers rounded the corner into the alley leading to the temple, they saw Chi-Lis figure lying on the ground, knocked out cold with no sign of movement. The sheriff and his men were amazed and puzzled as to what had happened to this lifeless figure lying on the ground before them. As they looked about the ground for some explanation to this puzzlement, they saw an old man sitting on the granite steps leading to the main entrance of the old temple. This old man was known to the towns people as The old man selling tea at the old temple. He dressed in dark blue cotton clothing. He wore loosely fitted trousers with the pant legs tied firmly around his ankles. He wore brown socks with black slippers. His loosely fitted jacket had a straight row of cloth loops around cloth buttons (what the modern age calls Frog Buttons) up to his neck. He demeanor was calm as he sat cross-legged with palms resting gently on top of his knees. He sat behind a dilapidated make-shift wooden stand, very much worn by the weather. On top of the stand were many varieties of dried tea leaves in dark and light-colored bamboo woven baskets, which filled the summer breeze with a variety of fragrant aromas. As the sheriff questioned the old man, his eyes were slightly closed and his head with short cropped hair rested on a relaxed erect posture. He calmly denied having any knowledge of what had happened to the burglar, Chi-Li. When the sheriff and his men paraded through town proudly with Chi-Li in tow and bound by ropes, words were buzzing through the town that The old man selling tea at the old temple possessed great skill in Kung-Fu. From that day on the townspeople, young and old, went to the temple grounds daily hoping to get a glimpse of the old man practicing kung-fu. Some begged and begged to become his disciple and learn from him. However, the old man always denied that he knew anything about martial arts, but was just an ordinary person selling tea to support his life. As the days and weeks passed people who had waited from morning to night hoping to see kung-fu gave up and slowly disappeared from the temple grounds. Eventually, everyone had given up, except for one persistent young man. This young man changed his sleeping habit to during the day so that he could observe the old man at night. Night after night, he would go to the temple after dark and wait until dawn before going home to sleep. After three fruitless nights, half an hour after hearing the towns time keeper bong! bong! bong! bong! the sound of four beats (representing 4 am), which came from a stick banging against a hollowed piece of bamboo, as he was about to doze off, all of a sudden a dark figure appeared amongst a group of young trees waving his arms and hands in total coordination of his body and legs, like a slow dance. Whenever he would push forward with his palms, the nearby tree branches would bend with leaves rustling as though they were being blown by a strong wind. The dark figure moved slowly and smoothly like gentle clouds floating in the sky. With each step, going to and fro, his feet were placed on the ground very gently and precisely. Yet, even with each movement being performed very slowly, he could see and feel the great power projecting out. When the news of the Tea Seller having such great Kung Fu abilities got out, everyone who could walk wanted to study with him. Finally the Tea Seller, Wang Jiao Yu. accepted four disciples. One of the four was Kuo Lien Ying, who in 1965 brought the unique style of Guang Ping Yang Tai Chi to San Franciscos Chinatown. --By Henry Look Tai Chi Chuan Gets Its Name --by Peter Lim Tian Tek When Yang Lu Chan first taught the art in Yung Nien, his art was referred to as Mien Quan or (Cotton Fist) or Hua Quan (Neutralising Fist), it was not yet called Tai Chi Chuan. Whilst teaching at the Imperial Court, Yang met many challenges, some friendly some not. But he invariably won and in so convincingly using his soft techniques that he gained a great reputation. Many who frequented the imperial households would come to view his matches. At one such gatherings at which Yang had won against several reputable opponents. The scholar Ong Tong He was present and was so impressed by the way Yang moved and executed his techniques and felt that his movements and techniques expressed the physical manifestation of the principles of Tai Chi (the philosophy) wrote for him a matching verse: Hands Holding Tai Chi shakes the whole world, a chest containing ultimate skill defeats a gathering of heros.
Posted on: Sun, 01 Dec 2013 01:56:43 +0000
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