This is an article from the 2343rd Issue of Ming Pao Weekly, as part of the continuing series on Hong Kong Wulin. The article was written as an expanded version of an interview with Master Ma Wei Huan 馬偉煥, a 5th Generation Master of Yang Taiji and student of Yang Shou Chung. It contains many interesting facts about the history of Yang Taiji that have been overlooked, such as debunking of the myth where Yang Taiji was "stolen" from Chen village and the relationship between archery and taiji principles. My Sifu CS Tang is also featured in the article
Taijiquan emerged during the reign of the Qing Emperor Daoguang (1820-1850), and during this 2-300 hundred year period of development until present day, so many styles have emerged that they can scarce be counted. Apart from the Chen Style of Taijiquan's birthplace in Chenjiagou in Henan, one can identify the Yang Style, Wu Style and Sun Style as the major branches. However, their practice methods and expression and very different. Among them, the Yang Style spread from the Guangping Magistracy in Henan to the royal palaces in the Capital, bringing this martial art that originated from the rough lifestyle of the villages to the upper echelons of society. In addition to the aristocracy and wealthy merchant class, it also spread widely among the literati and cultured classes.
In the early 1930s, the Yang Style was introduced to Hong Kong by Dong Ying Jie, the disciple of the 3rd Generation Taiji Grandmaster Yang Chenpu. As a result of the political instability in China in the 1950s, the Fourth Generation Grandmaster, Yang Shou Chung, also moved to Hong Kong, and set up his studio to teach Taijiquan, thus allowing Taijiquan to take root in our city.
As to the origin of Taijiquan, the historical records have conflicting stories. According to the "Dictionary of the System of Yijing" 《易經系辭》 it states, "The Change gives birth to Taiji, which gives rise to Liang Yi, and Liang Yi gives rise to Sixiang". Although there is a basis in philosophical principles, this does not necessarily mean that Taijiquan arose from these principles. The real emergence of Taijiquan is believed to have taken place two to three hundred years ago. As to the folk legend where Taijiiquan created by Zhang Sanfeng, the Fifth Generation Master Ma Weihuan state, "According to Chinese Tradition, every profession has its founding father: our Ancestor is Zhang Sanfeng, in the same was that the opera singers pay their respects to Master Hua Guang or the police pray to Guan Gong. But respect and tradition are one thing, and history is another."
From the Villages to the Royal Palace
Taijiquan as a proper noun, was first seen during the Hanfeng Year during the reign of the Daoguang Emperor in Wang Zong Yue's book - the Taijiquan Classic, which was authored in the 19th Century sometime during the middle of the Daoguang period. During that time, in Yongnian City in Guangping Magistracy in Henan there was a Pharmacy called Great Harmony Hall or Tai He Tang. The owner came from Chenjiagou, and as there was unrest in the countryside, he hired his neighbor Chen Chang Xing 陳長興 who was skilled at Taijiquan to guard his premises and protect him. At that time there was a Yang Lu Chuan working at the store, who studied Taijiquan under Chen Chang Xing. After graduating in the art, he followed Chen for a time in the protection service. However what really took Taijiquan from being a rough family style to a form of martial culture much beloved by the upper classes was the fact that Yang was subsequently hired as a bodyguard by one of the royal palaces in the capital, Beijing and he taught the art to many children of the aristocracy and formalized its principles into a coherent system. This is why the Yang Style differs so much in its artistic expression from the Chen Style that developed out of Chenjiagou.
During this period of "elevation", there were events that were fortuitous and aspects that developed out of necessity. Yang Luchan, whose ancestors were peasants, became famous because he helped recover stolen government silver, and thus became known to one of the Imperial Princes and was hired to come to protect his royal palace and to teach. The Manchu desire to promote a Han form of pugilism, was intimately connected with the desire of the Qing to absorb Han Culture after they had conquered China. Master Ma Wei Huan explains:
"After the Qing armies entered into China, they wanted to learn the culture of the central plains, at that time the Philosophy of Yin-Yang was extremely popular and promoted. The Nurchen started to study Han Culture from the most basic cosmology, and were receptive to the associated principles, and even the Emperor changed his name to the Great Ultimate Emperor 皇太極.
In other parts of the world, there were similar expressions; but the Chinese named the phenomena which were readily apparent and called them Yang. As for the hidden and invisible, and that whose existence relied on speculation or theory, they called that Yin. Any phenomenon has these two aspects. During the Han Dynasty the Philosopher Dong Zhong Shu 董仲舒 linked the phenomena of Yin-Yang, Five Elements and Bagua together and called these the 13 States 十三勢. Many people now state that Taijiquan evolved out of the Yijing, but the Yijing does not contain the five elements. Although the Yin-Yang, Five Elements and Bagua are the fundamental elements of Tajiquan, Yin and Yang are interconnected principles, they influence and balance one another and do not give rise to nor destroy the other. The beginning of Taiji principles coincided with the flourishing of the Neo-Confucianism School during the Sung and Ming Dynasties. At that time, the martial arts had begun to contemplate similar philosophical questions, for example discussing movement and stillness, and internal and external. Dong Zhong Shu, in his work "Mixed Discourse of the Spring and Autumn Period 《春秋繁露》, talk about the six harmonies: when there is up there necessarily is a down, if there is a forward there needs to be a backward, if there is right there is a left. So as soon as there is movement there needs to be a coming together / closing / retraction, as soon as one begins it gives rise to this."
From Principle to a Practical Martial Art
Master Ma also stated, there is also strong evidence for Yang Taiji originating in the Guangping Magistracy. "Many of the technical terms used in the Taiji Classic are also seen in the government examination halls and in Sung Neo-Confuciansim. Guangping Magistracy also happened to be the Examination Centre for many counties in Northern China. For example, the term "tuck and raise the ribcage" originates from a term that was used in archery for the examinations.
The Taiji Classic also has the term Zhong Ding 中定 or central axis, "Ding" does not mean unmoving, but means that one must maintain stillness and solidity when one is moving and one must maintain a state of stillness and solidity when one is not moving. If there is movement without stillness, one becomes merely an object, but a man is not an object, so one needs to seek non-movement within movement, and movement within non-movement. Whether this is actual fighting or training, the book places great emphasis on the problem of movement and stillness and on being in harmony with the external environment. Apart from movement and stillness, there is hardness and softness, and fullness and emptiness. These are the major elements of the operation of Taiji. Sung and Ming Neo-Confucianism used "Li or the Universal Principle" as the driving force behind all phenomena, but did not discourse upon martial arts and fighting applications in any detail, as the martial arts as "arts" were not part of mainstream culture and were still in a formative stage."
After being invited to the royal palace at Beixinqiao in Beijing, Yang began to teach many of the imperial princes and their children and for the next eighty years, the Yang family's base was in Beijing. "Yang Lu Chan did not have a title but his second son Yang Ban Hou was later made into [a high official]." Yang Lu Chuan, who was not well educated, hired his compatriot Wu Yu Xiang to come to Beijing to teach Yang Ban Hou the classics. Wu Yu Xiang was highly educated, and combined Wang Zhong Yue's "Taiji Classic" with the arts of war and his own Confucian education, and wrote his own treatise - "A mindful explanation of the moving art of the Thirteen States" 《十三勢行功心解》- and he created a martial arts form that combined both aspects of fighting and health cultivation and was to become the founder of Wu Taiji. No matter whether it is Yang or Wu Style, the expression of power was seen to be slow and soft in this form of "Cotton Boxing."
When the Qing Dynasty fell and the Republic began, the days of the imperial palaces were over. The third generation master Yang Chenpu (the third son of Yang Lu Chan's third son Yang Jian Hou) was first hired to the Beijing National Normal School to be a martial arts instructor, and was hired in 1907 to teach the capital's firemen. His family lived near Ci En Temple, and taught many students in Chungshan park, and started to widely disseminate what had been an art reserved for the royal families to the general public. In 1928, after the foundation of the Central Guoshu Institute in Nanjing, he was hired to become an instructor at the Zhejiang Province Guoshu Institute. In 1930 and 1934 respectively, he first moved his family to Shanghai and then to Guangzhou and finally died in 1936.
Setting up a Studio in Wanchai and Accepting Disciples
However whether you consider Bejing or Yang Luchan's hometown of Guangping, and even though his descendent Yang Zhifang is still alive, the family has seen better days. As for the true transmission of Yang Taiji, one has to travel to Hong Kong. Master Ma states that Yang Taiji came to Hong Kong in 1936, when Dong Yingjie, the disciple of Yang Chenpu came to Hong Kong to teach. After 1949, his son Yang Shou Chung moved to Hong Kong.
"He came as a refugee in 1949 with his wife and daughter, to Yuen Long, where he accepted his first class of students. Three years later, he moved to Wanchai to open a studio, in about 1953. My master was very humble and low key, and never openly formed classes to teach Taiji and did not teach groups. He took after Dong Zhong Shu, only teaching one-on-one, as he felt that each person's natural endowments were different, so one could not set a common standard and had to teach according to the person's gifts. So the number of students he accepted at that time were few. Apart from the Chairman of Wing Lung Bank and some members of Hong Kong society, most of those who went to study with him tended to be well off". At that time his fees were not cheap, each month's tuition was about 680 Hong Kong dollars.
Ma Wei Huan who is now 77, is from Guangdong and studied under Master Yang in the mid sixties. In 1967, Master Yang was teaching in Lockhart Road in Wanchai, he went up and rang on the bell and asked to be taught. When he was young he had studied engineering in Shanghai's Tongji University, and had begun learning Taijquan in China. "When I arrived in Hong Kong, both Master Yang and Yang Taichi were very famous, so I went up to his home to ask for instruction. At that time I was working at Kadeshi (a Western Company), and my salary wasn't bad so I could pay the required fees. Everyday at 4.30 my colleagues would go to Wanchai to participate in the Tea Dances, but I would go to my Master to learn Taiji."
There is no difference between Big Frame and Small Frame
At that time Yang Shou Chung was already 60, and although he had emigrated to Hong Kong, he still insisted on the traditional methods of teaching Taiji. "Sifu stated that the old ancestral methods could not be changed, and we began by studying the 13 state moving method, which was a part of empty hand practice; and after that we learned pushing hands, and after pushing hands was free fighting. One did not discuss forms, but discussed applications and principles. So many of our movements were not decided by ourselves but were in response to the opponent's movements, and from a certain perspective were completely passive. After free fighting there were weapons, for short weapons there were sword and broadsword, for the long weapons there was the spear and halberd, and in the past had even included archery. However in China, archery had been banned after 1969, and the native archery was given up for western archery. The principles of traditional archery and Taiji are the same, in the Taiji Classic, it is recorded the body has to be upright, one does not lean forward or to the side, and this is the same as any archery manual."
Nowadays, many taiji styles maintain a difference between the large form and small form. According to Master Ma, there is no such differentiation. "Sifu states that there is only this one frame, even a little higher, a little lower is forbidden, this form is the most suitable and has been handed down from the ancestors." Thirty years ago, Master Ma specially made a trip to his teacher's hometown, and discovered that the Taiji practiced by the people there was not the same as his own. "For many people a large frame means that the stance is much lower and wider, and a small frame means that the stance is narrower, but the original meaning is the opposite - the large frame means that the opening stance is narrower because once you open, you could open very wide; the very low stance was what was called the small frame. The large frame was not stable and the small frame was not nimble, and this was recorded in the classics. Many people ask me if I am large frame or small frame, I only reply that my master taught me the one style, and do not discuss large or small. At that time there was no differentiation"
Master CS Tang, who started studying with Master Yang Shou Chung in the 1970s, had studied many forms of Hebei martial arts and has an understanding of Chen Style, Yang Style and Wu Style, "My favorite form of Taiji is Yang Style, because one is like a Sage when one practices it, it is very open and elegant, totally unlike the hard fierce Chen Style. Qinna and Silk reeling are loved by the young people; Wu Style's stance is comparatively narrow, Yang Style does not have Qinna and throwing, it only has fajin."
Master Tang found that many of the people who studied under Master Yang had a very high level of culture and education, "Those with a low level of education rarely came to study, because they liked to use muscle to fight; however Yang style never talked about fighting, it was very slow. For Taiji soft overcomes hard, and can help maintain health, but Sifu never talked about health" Even during the time of Yang Chenpu, students included the likes of Chen Weiming and Zhang Manqing who were literati with a very deep knowledge of Guoshu. This first was the teacher of the Emperor Xuantong; the latter was the master of Painting, Calligraphy and poetry as well as the martial arts. The two people had jointly published the book Taijiquan Ti Yong Quan Shu in the 1920s, which discussed the essence of Yang Chen Pu's Taijiquan, they were like Wu Yu Xiang and played an important role in completing the theoretical foundation for Taijiquan.
From the Villages to the Royal Palace
Taijiquan as a proper noun, was first seen during the Hanfeng Year during the reign of the Daoguang Emperor in Wang Zong Yue's book - the Taijiquan Classic, which was authored in the 19th Century sometime during the middle of the Daoguang period. During that time, in Yongnian City in Guangping Magistracy in Henan there was a Pharmacy called Great Harmony Hall or Tai He Tang. The owner came from Chenjiagou, and as there was unrest in the countryside, he hired his neighbor Chen Chang Xing 陳長興 who was skilled at Taijiquan to guard his premises and protect him. At that time there was a Yang Lu Chuan working at the store, who studied Taijiquan under Chen Chang Xing. After graduating in the art, he followed Chen for a time in the protection service. However what really took Taijiquan from being a rough family style to a form of martial culture much beloved by the upper classes was the fact that Yang was subsequently hired as a bodyguard by one of the royal palaces in the capital, Beijing and he taught the art to many children of the aristocracy and formalized its principles into a coherent system. This is why the Yang Style differs so much in its artistic expression from the Chen Style that developed out of Chenjiagou.
During this period of "elevation", there were events that were fortuitous and aspects that developed out of necessity. Yang Luchan, whose ancestors were peasants, became famous because he helped recover stolen government silver, and thus became known to one of the Imperial Princes and was hired to come to protect his royal palace and to teach. The Manchu desire to promote a Han form of pugilism, was intimately connected with the desire of the Qing to absorb Han Culture after they had conquered China. Master Ma Wei Huan explains:
"After the Qing armies entered into China, they wanted to learn the culture of the central plains, at that time the Philosophy of Yin-Yang was extremely popular and promoted. The Nurchen started to study Han Culture from the most basic cosmology, and were receptive to the associated principles, and even the Emperor changed his name to the Great Ultimate Emperor 皇太極.
In other parts of the world, there were similar expressions; but the Chinese named the phenomena which were readily apparent and called them Yang. As for the hidden and invisible, and that whose existence relied on speculation or theory, they called that Yin. Any phenomenon has these two aspects. During the Han Dynasty the Philosopher Dong Zhong Shu 董仲舒 linked the phenomena of Yin-Yang, Five Elements and Bagua together and called these the 13 States 十三勢. Many people now state that Taijiquan evolved out of the Yijing, but the Yijing does not contain the five elements. Although the Yin-Yang, Five Elements and Bagua are the fundamental elements of Tajiquan, Yin and Yang are interconnected principles, they influence and balance one another and do not give rise to nor destroy the other. The beginning of Taiji principles coincided with the flourishing of the Neo-Confucianism School during the Sung and Ming Dynasties. At that time, the martial arts had begun to contemplate similar philosophical questions, for example discussing movement and stillness, and internal and external. Dong Zhong Shu, in his work "Mixed Discourse of the Spring and Autumn Period 《春秋繁露》, talk about the six harmonies: when there is up there necessarily is a down, if there is a forward there needs to be a backward, if there is right there is a left. So as soon as there is movement there needs to be a coming together / closing / retraction, as soon as one begins it gives rise to this."
From Principle to a Practical Martial Art
Master Ma also stated, there is also strong evidence for Yang Taiji originating in the Guangping Magistracy. "Many of the technical terms used in the Taiji Classic are also seen in the government examination halls and in Sung Neo-Confuciansim. Guangping Magistracy also happened to be the Examination Centre for many counties in Northern China. For example, the term "tuck and raise the ribcage" originates from a term that was used in archery for the examinations.
The Taiji Classic also has the term Zhong Ding 中定 or central axis, "Ding" does not mean unmoving, but means that one must maintain stillness and solidity when one is moving and one must maintain a state of stillness and solidity when one is not moving. If there is movement without stillness, one becomes merely an object, but a man is not an object, so one needs to seek non-movement within movement, and movement within non-movement. Whether this is actual fighting or training, the book places great emphasis on the problem of movement and stillness and on being in harmony with the external environment. Apart from movement and stillness, there is hardness and softness, and fullness and emptiness. These are the major elements of the operation of Taiji. Sung and Ming Neo-Confucianism used "Li or the Universal Principle" as the driving force behind all phenomena, but did not discourse upon martial arts and fighting applications in any detail, as the martial arts as "arts" were not part of mainstream culture and were still in a formative stage."
After being invited to the royal palace at Beixinqiao in Beijing, Yang began to teach many of the imperial princes and their children and for the next eighty years, the Yang family's base was in Beijing. "Yang Lu Chan did not have a title but his second son Yang Ban Hou was later made into [a high official]." Yang Lu Chuan, who was not well educated, hired his compatriot Wu Yu Xiang to come to Beijing to teach Yang Ban Hou the classics. Wu Yu Xiang was highly educated, and combined Wang Zhong Yue's "Taiji Classic" with the arts of war and his own Confucian education, and wrote his own treatise - "A mindful explanation of the moving art of the Thirteen States" 《十三勢行功心解》- and he created a martial arts form that combined both aspects of fighting and health cultivation and was to become the founder of Wu Taiji. No matter whether it is Yang or Wu Style, the expression of power was seen to be slow and soft in this form of "Cotton Boxing."
When the Qing Dynasty fell and the Republic began, the days of the imperial palaces were over. The third generation master Yang Chenpu (the third son of Yang Lu Chan's third son Yang Jian Hou) was first hired to the Beijing National Normal School to be a martial arts instructor, and was hired in 1907 to teach the capital's firemen. His family lived near Ci En Temple, and taught many students in Chungshan park, and started to widely disseminate what had been an art reserved for the royal families to the general public. In 1928, after the foundation of the Central Guoshu Institute in Nanjing, he was hired to become an instructor at the Zhejiang Province Guoshu Institute. In 1930 and 1934 respectively, he first moved his family to Shanghai and then to Guangzhou and finally died in 1936.
Setting up a Studio in Wanchai and Accepting Disciples
However whether you consider Bejing or Yang Luchan's hometown of Guangping, and even though his descendent Yang Zhifang is still alive, the family has seen better days. As for the true transmission of Yang Taiji, one has to travel to Hong Kong. Master Ma states that Yang Taiji came to Hong Kong in 1936, when Dong Yingjie, the disciple of Yang Chenpu came to Hong Kong to teach. After 1949, his son Yang Shou Chung moved to Hong Kong.
"He came as a refugee in 1949 with his wife and daughter, to Yuen Long, where he accepted his first class of students. Three years later, he moved to Wanchai to open a studio, in about 1953. My master was very humble and low key, and never openly formed classes to teach Taiji and did not teach groups. He took after Dong Zhong Shu, only teaching one-on-one, as he felt that each person's natural endowments were different, so one could not set a common standard and had to teach according to the person's gifts. So the number of students he accepted at that time were few. Apart from the Chairman of Wing Lung Bank and some members of Hong Kong society, most of those who went to study with him tended to be well off". At that time his fees were not cheap, each month's tuition was about 680 Hong Kong dollars.
Ma Wei Huan who is now 77, is from Guangdong and studied under Master Yang in the mid sixties. In 1967, Master Yang was teaching in Lockhart Road in Wanchai, he went up and rang on the bell and asked to be taught. When he was young he had studied engineering in Shanghai's Tongji University, and had begun learning Taijquan in China. "When I arrived in Hong Kong, both Master Yang and Yang Taichi were very famous, so I went up to his home to ask for instruction. At that time I was working at Kadeshi (a Western Company), and my salary wasn't bad so I could pay the required fees. Everyday at 4.30 my colleagues would go to Wanchai to participate in the Tea Dances, but I would go to my Master to learn Taiji."
There is no difference between Big Frame and Small Frame
At that time Yang Shou Chung was already 60, and although he had emigrated to Hong Kong, he still insisted on the traditional methods of teaching Taiji. "Sifu stated that the old ancestral methods could not be changed, and we began by studying the 13 state moving method, which was a part of empty hand practice; and after that we learned pushing hands, and after pushing hands was free fighting. One did not discuss forms, but discussed applications and principles. So many of our movements were not decided by ourselves but were in response to the opponent's movements, and from a certain perspective were completely passive. After free fighting there were weapons, for short weapons there were sword and broadsword, for the long weapons there was the spear and halberd, and in the past had even included archery. However in China, archery had been banned after 1969, and the native archery was given up for western archery. The principles of traditional archery and Taiji are the same, in the Taiji Classic, it is recorded the body has to be upright, one does not lean forward or to the side, and this is the same as any archery manual."
Nowadays, many taiji styles maintain a difference between the large form and small form. According to Master Ma, there is no such differentiation. "Sifu states that there is only this one frame, even a little higher, a little lower is forbidden, this form is the most suitable and has been handed down from the ancestors." Thirty years ago, Master Ma specially made a trip to his teacher's hometown, and discovered that the Taiji practiced by the people there was not the same as his own. "For many people a large frame means that the stance is much lower and wider, and a small frame means that the stance is narrower, but the original meaning is the opposite - the large frame means that the opening stance is narrower because once you open, you could open very wide; the very low stance was what was called the small frame. The large frame was not stable and the small frame was not nimble, and this was recorded in the classics. Many people ask me if I am large frame or small frame, I only reply that my master taught me the one style, and do not discuss large or small. At that time there was no differentiation"
Master CS Tang, who started studying with Master Yang Shou Chung in the 1970s, had studied many forms of Hebei martial arts and has an understanding of Chen Style, Yang Style and Wu Style, "My favorite form of Taiji is Yang Style, because one is like a Sage when one practices it, it is very open and elegant, totally unlike the hard fierce Chen Style. Qinna and Silk reeling are loved by the young people; Wu Style's stance is comparatively narrow, Yang Style does not have Qinna and throwing, it only has fajin."
Master Tang found that many of the people who studied under Master Yang had a very high level of culture and education, "Those with a low level of education rarely came to study, because they liked to use muscle to fight; however Yang style never talked about fighting, it was very slow. For Taiji soft overcomes hard, and can help maintain health, but Sifu never talked about health" Even during the time of Yang Chenpu, students included the likes of Chen Weiming and Zhang Manqing who were literati with a very deep knowledge of Guoshu. This first was the teacher of the Emperor Xuantong; the latter was the master of Painting, Calligraphy and poetry as well as the martial arts. The two people had jointly published the book Taijiquan Ti Yong Quan Shu in the 1920s, which discussed the essence of Yang Chen Pu's Taijiquan, they were like Wu Yu Xiang and played an important role in completing the theoretical foundation for Taijiquan.
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