Originally Posted by
Minghequan
With my very, very limited knowledge it seems to me that Fukien arts (Crane, Ngo Cho Kun etc) are much harder in appearance and energy than that arising from Fuzhou.
To me, what I have seen of the Fukien stuff is far to external and lacking in Rou Jin and Soong. It's just how it makes me "feel" about it.
One can see a lot of upper body strength being used. The tension and muscular contraction in the upper body cause stiffness and hardness to set in. The moment this happens, the rooting effect of the foot disappears or is lost. Thus, when two person trains at the single hand push, each one tries to win by deploying more strength - muscular contraction. With such concepts, how could the White Crane be soft subtle and powerful. Muscular strength disappears with aged or reduce greatly with age. Whereas Jin or internal power increases with age. I know of White Crane teachers who were very strong during their first 30 years of training, but, the moment they turn 50 odd and more, muscular degeneration sets in. This is an inevitable fact.
Another simple comparison: when you look at the abundance of Youtube of so many "White Crane" guys teaching the art, some are so hard that it looks mechanical. Exertion with the physical muscular strength is more common. Fang Qiniang was a lady so common sense would tell us that if she were required to engage in combat, how is it possible to use muscular strength to counter the brute strength of a full grown male. Very unlikely, so there must be something more to the art, other than angles, alignment and speed, all of which deteriorates through time.
Xie Zhong Xiang was slowly softening the Crane's form into a higher level. This was not to say that the crane was hard in the beginning, it was soft, but Xie being a Taoist wanted it even more softer. Our White Crane is getting softer and more fluid which is what the old masters always intended.
But then, I only know very little.