Tai Zu Chang Quan - info?

[bawang]

wow thanks for all these cool info about taizuquan! i love learning about old chinese quan fa. a lot of things i thought i knew about shaolinquan is wrong , every time i read u i learn something new thank u for educating people about shaolin kung fu
mister canzonieri ,have u tried comparing their open door posture(signature move) and individual techniques? i find long fist all share the same techniques, just put in different order in the taolu, for example like u said, single whip, pat horse, etc

[Sal Canzonieri]

wow thanks for all these cool info about taizuquan! i love learning about old chinese quan fa. a lot of things i thought i knew about shaolinquan is wrong , every time i read u i learn something new thank u for educating people about shaolin kung fu
mister canzonieri ,have u tried comparing their open door posture(signature move) and individual techniques? i find long fist all share the same techniques, just put in different order in the taolu, for example like u said, single whip, pat horse, etc

Cool, thanks, much appreciated. You'll love my book then (once it finally comes out) as it has all the many years of research notes I gathered and tells the actual info on how one style is related to another style and how and why.

Yes, I have compared all these postures.

Basically, if you learn Shaolin Rou Quan sets, TZ Chang Quan set, and the old Big Swan Fist's Liu Bu Jia set, then you have already just about learned everything that is later seen in Shaolin Hong Quan, Pao Quan, Tongbi Quan, and so on, and just about most other Long Fist styles, especially Mi Zong / Yang Qing Quan, Mei Hua Quan, and so on.

[Sal Canzonieri]

The version I practice is probably closest to the second to the last Shaolin TZQ yt vid on Sal's initial post. I love it despite it not being the 'real internal way to do this set'

There's another Songshan Shaolin TZQ one here, a demo from Tiger Claw's KungFuMagazine.com Championships 2009. It starts at about 30 secs.

heheh, well, the way it's taught nowadays from Shaolin is missing some movements and postures, and doesn't show the soft / hard duality.
But, yes, it is a great set and you can learn a lot from it. I've been doing it for decades and still love it.

You can read all about the internal version of this set if Gene publishes the article I submitted to him a few weeks ago about this set and it's history and attributes.

[bawang]

hey man by the way, i was comparing qi jiguang's 32 taizu to taijiquan to see how the movements changed, i found 31 out of 32 but cant find the technique pao jiazi "抛架子". its stepping forward aggresively then pi and gua attacks. the name either means "throw away your stance", or "catapult" for the wide swinging pigua attack. do u know anything about this technique? im frustrated because i cant find this movement in taijiquan at all

[Sal Canzonieri]

hey man by the way, i was comparing qi jiguang's 32 taizu to taijiquan to see how the movements changed, i found 31 out of 32 but cant find the technique pao jia "抛架". its stepping forward aggresively then pi and gua attacks. the name either means "throw away your stance", or "catapult" for the wide swinging pigua attack. do u know anything about this technique?

Well, there's some confusion about this set based on how literal or liberal people are translating the language into English.
He never actually says that this is a Taizu set, people assume it is because it is 32 postures and on previous pages he talks about the 32 posture TZ set.

But, to me, it clearly says that this set is samples of the best moves from Ming era styles, from 16 of the best ones that he named previously.

Ever since, people have thought that the stuff shown is directions to do a routine, but they are not, the movements don't go into each other, you have to force them to do so (yes, there are people that have done this very well, but their was never any actual routine shown in Qi's book).

Chen TJQ to retrofit what they do (and obscure that they got it all from Shaolin and Tongbei Quan) renamed their postures using General Qi's book whenever they found something that kinda looked like a Chen TJQ posture.

BUT, the truth is that about three of the 32 postures are from the Ba Shan Fan (now called Fanzi Quan) style; they are the postures not seen in Chen TJQ.

There's been a lot written about this in Chinese articles. The actual Shaolin TZ Chang Quan 32 set can be followed alongside Chen TJQ Yi Lu, and this is even mentioned in newer Chen TJQ books that have been published. Since the cat is out of the bag with so many articles proving it.
My own articles have been translated into Chinese by people and published in TJQ magazines (I gave permission some years ago for the translations to be made).

[bawang]

thanks man, i was suspecting the same thing. this is what i hate about chinese kung fu, there is a lot of misinformation

i still think that qijiguang's 32 postures is written gold, it gives a good insight into what was considered good quan fa
chen family changing technique names to qijiguang's book is possible, stilll it doesnt rule out some can be techniques changed over time, some times movements can change so much its hard to believe

[Royal Dragon]

heheh, well, the way it's taught nowadays from Shaolin is missing some movements and postures, and doesn't show the soft / hard duality.
But, yes, it is a great set and you can learn a lot from it. I've been doing it for decades and still love it.

You can read all about the internal version of this set if Gene publishes the article I submitted to him a few weeks ago about this set and it's history and attributes.

Reply]
At some point, you should really get together with Gene, and show him your version of this set. I am sure he'd appreciate it considering he loves this set so much.

I know a good 14 versions of it now. The two I learned from you are by far my favorites.

The other 12 sort of all got jumbled, and I end up mixing and matching them. I never do it the same way twice when I reveiew them.

[Tainan Mantis]

Qi Jiguang's chapter 'Fist Classic' only attributes one technique to Song Taizu.

Patting Horse was passed down from Taizu all postures can be lowered and changed, charging forward to attack withdrawing retreating to shun, able to change a weak position to a strong one. The extreme perfect and best of short fist.

Again, in his ‘Chiu Liu Maneuver’ it mentions ‘pat on horse,’

”Switching and changing evenly from pat on horse, striking people and taking their life.”

(from the book, The Dragons of Shanghai).

Couldn't find it on Amazon, where could I find this book?

Taizu's nephew went to battle against the Khitan, sadly lost, but his invention of the Jade Maiden afterwards makes for interesting history.

Tai Mountain Crushes the Top

[GeneChing]

Funny you should mention that, Sal. I was toying with the idea of doing a piece that fleshes some of the fundamental taiji principles out of that very form. I see plenty of internal methods within it, but perhaps I'm projecting. I tend to do that with a lot of forms. It's a result of having so many teachers, especially with the Songshan Shaolin forms. Sometimes I fill gaps with other material. That being said, I've only learned one version of TZQ, and that's from my current teacher Yan Fei.

[Sal Canzonieri]

Funny you should mention that, Sal. I was toying with the idea of doing a piece that fleshes some of the fundamental taiji principles out of that very form. I see plenty of internal methods within it, but perhaps I'm projecting. I tend to do that with a lot of forms. It's a result of having so many teachers, especially with the Songshan Shaolin forms. Sometimes I fill gaps with other material. That being said, I've only learned one version of TZQ, and that's from my current teacher Yan Fei.

Cool, then you should read the article about that set that I emailed you a few weeks ago, it details the internal aspects of the set. You can use it to help you with your article.
(and if you print my article, it would make a cool TZ Chang Quan themed issue!)

[Sal Canzonieri]

Couldn't find it on Amazon, where could I find this book?

That book is not available for sale. You can only get it on inter-library loans, with permission from the publisher. I was able to read it that way only.
It's a beautiful large sized format book about the history of the Shanghai Henan Shaolin school that moved to NYC and then Canada.

[Sal Canzonieri]

When I later learned Rou Quan though, everything in the internal version of TZ Chang Quan totally made a million times more sense.

Then, Chen and other TJQ made more sense, and so did Henan Tongbei Quan too.

TZ Chang Quan is a very important set, and clearly is the Grand Ancestor of Shaolin martial arts.

BUT< one thing that seems to be lost to modern practitioners, the fact that it is called Chang Quan makes people think that it is a "Long Fist" set like the Shandong martial arts of Cha and Hua Quan.
But in this case Chang meant FLOWING (like HONG too), like a long river.
The set is done like a river flowing suddenly one way and then suddenly another way.
In fact, it's fighting applications are to close the gap "using long to go short".
It is considered a "Duan Da", close strike, martial art in the old Shaolin teachings about this set.
It represents what the Song era martial arts were like, especially the Wen Family martial art (such as Ba Shan Fan and so on), they were close range attacks using long movements to bridge first and then close in.

Royal Dragon can attest how I did this very thing in applications on him. He was on the floor very fast and smoothly, from a far bridge touch to a near takedown finish.

[GeneChing]

I'll give it a harder look soon for sure, once I clear some things on the current issue in production. While a TZQ themed-issue is appealing to me in a scholarly sense, it's way too secular for the newsstands. But I might run your piece and mine in a shotgun parallel fashion. I've done that before and it can produce some interesting results. We'll see. I'll let you more via email, when I get to the next submission review.

[Sal Canzonieri]

Here's an illustration of a connection between TZ Chang Quan and TJQ:

The "signature" movement of Zhao Kuangyin was the Qi Shou Rising Hands, which in TJQ is called Ward Off or Peng. In the TZ Chang Quan set, it is the second posture, right after "Dredging Ocean for the Moon" (1st posture).

In this video, of TJQ Peng / Ward Off application, it is IDENTICAL to TZ Chang Quan Lifting Hands application (and to Rou Quan's Luohan 13 Gong - first posture "Old Man Splits Wood"):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy1uF8MdN54

[Sal Canzonieri]

Here's one of the best explanations I've seen that matches how the opening movements of Taizu Chang Quan operate (and links it to how internal martial arts operate):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjrKxXVBbmA