Celebrating Chenjiagou’s Unique Inhabitants

Chenjiagou today

I first visited Chenjiagou two decades ago and have been back close on twenty times now, the last time just a few months ago. Over that time the transformation of the village has been nothing short of staggering.  In the early years there was still a rural, raw and unregimented feel to the place, now it is really like a small town. Two months ago I stood on the seventh floor of Chen Ziqiang’s new seven-storey building to take in the panorama of modern Chenjiagou with its own stadium, high rise museum, modern supermarkets and wide roads. Some changes are welcome eg. well stocked pharmacies, good roads instead of mud tracks and internet access. Others are less positive - where before you could walk across open fields to visit and train near to the memorials of past generations of Chen ancestors, today you have to pay and go through a turnstile where the memorial stones are set inside a Taiji theme park and managed by the local tourist board. The event showcasing the Taijiquan skills of the people of Chenjiagou provided a timely reflection on this change and the need to celebrate the uniqueness of the village and the villagers themselves.

 

Chen Bing declares the event open!

Last week Chen Bing’s Taijiquan Academy in Chenjiagou reported on a new event created to showcase the village’s own Taijiquan players with the announcement that: “on the third day of Chinese New Year the inaugural Chenjiagou Taijiquan Exchange and Competition took place … the first meeting in several centuries of Chenjiagou’s Taijiquan players”. The event was a celebration of Chen Village Taijiquan, rather than being a showcase for any one particular school or lineage.

 

Opening the first Chenjiagou Taijiquan Exchange and Competition

Spring Festival Reunion


92 year old Chen Quanzhong returning to Chenjiagou after more than seventy years

The Spring Festival is the most important festival for Chinese people and is by tradition the time when families come together for “family reunion”. It dates back to the Shang Dynasty (1600 BC – 1100 BC) when people would sacrifice to gods and ancestors at the end of an old year and beginning of a new one. All people living away from home do their utmost to go back to their families and, during this time China’s transportation system of planes, trains and automobiles groans under the stain of the largest annual migration of people on the planet.  Taking advantage of the many practitioners coming home to Chenjiagou, Chen Bing, organiser of the event, brought together a dazzling array of Taiji talent. Over 300 people took part. Internationally feted masters demonstrated alongside practitioners who have stayed in the village quietly training away from the eyes of the world. Spanning the generations, the oldest practitioner was close on 100 years old – the youngest four years old.



Well-known Taijiquan players present included the 92-year-old Chen Quanzhong returning to Chenjiagou for the new year for the first time in more than seventy years. He was publicly thanked by Chen Bing for travelling from Xian to support the event. Chen Quanzhong  was joined by a who’s who of Chenjiagou talent - Chen Xiaowang, Chen Xiaoxing, Zhu Tiancai, Chen Lifa, Chen Shitong, Chen Shuying, Chen Shuzheng, Chen Zhaosheng, Chen Changliu, Chen Junling, Zhu Laohu, Chen Peilin and Chen Peiju ...   

Chen Xia - Laojia Yilu

Also attending were Chen Xia and Chen Zhiqiang (not to be confused with Chen Ziqiang), both of whom I first encountered way back in 1997 during our first visit to Chenjiagou. On that sweltering July day instructors of the Chenjiagou Taijiquan School treated us to a series of demonstrations in the main hall of the school. Chen Xia demonstrated Laojia Yilu and her performance still sticks in my mind as one of the best demos I have seen by a female practitioner.  After the various performances of forms and weapons had finished it was announced that there would be a demo of push hands. I’d had some success in British push hands competitions and was put forward as one of three people to try push hands Chenjiagou style against  Chen Zhiqiang.  He was intense and powerful and gave us a reality check on what competitive push hands was really about! Afterwards we found out he was the reigning China National 75kgs champion.  I’ve heard little of Chen Xia and Chen Zhiqiang in the intervening years - in China there are many accomplished practitioners that we don’t  hear about in the West. The Chenjiagou Taijiquan Exchange and Competition is planned to be an annual New Year event to showcase the continuity of taijiquan in the village.     

Carrying on a tradition - one of the youngest performers 

“Taiji Families” Event

The event itself consisted of the expected forms, weapons and push hands divisions, but the highlight was a “Taiji Families Team” category. This novel category encouraged Taiji families comprising of a minimum of five people, or alternatively teams spanning three generations, to come out and perform together. Seasoned veterans performing alongside their children and grandchildren - a celebration of participation with widely varying levels of skill, but a shared enjoyment of just doing it.  Chen Quanzhong and Chen Bing were among those leading their respective families.  In today’s celebrity worshipping culture people tend to focus exclusively on a few elite Taijiquan performers and forget about the contribution and participation of countless grass-roots participants who may never become acclaimed masters but draw a lifetime’s fulfilment pursuing Taijiquan.  

 

Chen families playing Taijiquan:

Chen Quanzhong's family

Chen Bing's family

Chen Shitong's family

Chen Lifa's family

 

Taijiquan's Form Training – Storehouse for Combat Skills

I was inspired to write this post after listening to a podcast by Iain Abernethy of the World Combat Association. The subject of said podcast was the nature of Karate’s kata and the misunderstanding of many modern practitioners as to their role in traditional training. “Jumping off point” was the following quote from Gichin Funakoshi, founding father of Shotokan Karate:

  

“Like textbooks to a student or tactical exercises to a soldier, kata are the most important element of karate”.

Sensei Abernethy concluded that kata serve the dual functions of acting as a repository of knowledge passed down from past masters and as a tactical training exercise. While Taijiquan forms differ in many respects to Karate kata the above conclusion could also be applied. The quote contains two clear analogies pointing to the real nature of forms training within the various forms of traditional Asian martial arts. To liken forms to a textbook is to understand them as a bank of knowledge preserved in a way that can be passed on to future generations. Where a book may contain the perspective and knowledge of its author, Chen Taijiquan forms represent the accumulated and hard-won knowledge of many generations of adepts. Just as owning a text book gives no guarantee of success in an examination, forms must be brought to life by careful study, understanding and eventually application of its principles.

CTGB's Craig Watterson examining the Chen Taijiquan form

Form training is fighting training! 

A common misrepresentation in vogue among many current practitioners sees form training as one thing and fighting as something else altogether. Only in recent times have people taken to assessing an exponent’s level of skill by giving marks out of ten for a form performance. In the past a person was deemed skilful if they could apply the form in a real situation against a live opponent. In many, if not most cases, form competitions are more a demonstration of aesthetics than of functional capabilities. In his article Training for Sparring, Chen Zhaokui explicitly cautioned against mistaking the flamboyant for the effective: “The goal of training must be clearly defined.  We must not be like Beijing opera stars who present a spear dance.  Flashy displays like that are for show, but are useless in function”.  Looking back at the renowned practitioners through the generations it’s clear that they are remembered first and foremost for their real combat skills.  Even today, it is no coincidence that the Taijiquan practitioners with the best fighting skills invariably place great emphasis on strict and exact form training.

Chen Yu - Combat skills and strict exact form training - no coincidence!

      

Forms are not a series of fixed applications!

Another common misunderstanding of forms is to think of them as a series of fixed applications. To paraphrase Abernethy, “forms are not solo re-enactments of an imaginary confrontation! Instead, they represent a repository of knowledge that, when correctly approached, can be freely and flexibly applied in the ever-changing world of conflict”.  What Taijiquan’s forms do contain is the core syllabus of Taijiquan and clear examples of the combative principles and methods underpinning the application of that syllabus. Approached in the correct way they help to train the ability to be able to adapt and vary one’s actions according to the opponent’s strengths and weaknesses.

Having emphasised the important role of form training, let’s be clear, merely possessing knowledge of the sequence of a form is useless in terms of practical application.  What is needed is more than just knowledge of the external form, but knowledge of how it should be applied.  Forms record methods of striking, locking, throwing, kicking, sweeping etc. At the heart of any study of the functional use of the Taijiquan form is the study of eight essential capabilities (or the “eight energies”): Peng (Ward Off); Lu (Divert); Ji (Squeeze); An (Press); Cai (Pluck); Lie (Split); Zhou (Elbow); and Kao (Bump). Every movement needs to be analysed and examined to understand the possibilities within.  Without intense single movement training a practitioner will develop little real gongfu.

Form training needs to be systematic!

GM Chen Xiaowang adjusting Davidine Sim's form

Form training, therefore, needs to be systematic if we are to get the maximum benefit from it.  I wrote an article some time ago about the distinct stages that one must go through. Other teachers or lineages may describe the process a little differently but essentially most traditional schools  go through something similar. The six stages are: xue jiazi (learning the frame); lien xi jiazi (practising the frame); nie jiazi (correcting the frame); shun jiazi (smoothening out the frame); pan jiazi (examining the frame) and cai jiazi (dismantling the frame).  Anyone interested in reading the whole article can find it at this link: Chen Taijiquan's Six Stages of Learning.  

At the end of the day, it is impossible to know the exact detail of a combat situation ahead of time.  Logically, the movements within the form can never be the same as a real confrontation. Disciplined form training, however, can help to build a set of skills based upon an intuitive and habitual understanding that makes a positive outcome more likely.