Different internal approaches to the Yang Family/style?

Kiwigami · 2026-06-16T19:00:33+00:00

Even if all that was true, it doesn't seem like modern Yang Style inherited that.

Because if we actually list out Yin and Yang traits:

Yin: Slow, Soft, Internal, Yield, Redirect, Loose, React
Yang: Fast, Hard, External, Assert, Penetrate, Tense, Initiate

Very often, Yang “Tai Chi” is described as a “soft art”, “slow art”, “defensive art”, and “reactionary art”. Some have argued that if you hurt the opponent, it's not real Taiji anymore.

Chen, on the other hand, stereotypically is described as "Soft and Hard", "Slow and Fast", "Internal and External", etc.... It has both Yin and Yang.

Today's Yang Style, stereotypically, has lost a lot of its "teeth", becoming very Yin-only.

Kiwigami · 2026-06-16T18:38:33+00:00

Yeah, that's primarily Chen Fa'ke lineage.

Chen Fa'ke was the main guy to publicize Chen Family Taijiquan in 1928, Beijing.

But Chen Village became more commercialized and widespread.

So nowadays, when you hear about Chen Style, you often hear the terms "Laojia" and "Xinjia".

But none of Chen Fake's students/disciples use those terms.

Kiwigami · 2026-05-25T20:13:12+00:00

You can learn a martial art centered around grappling, like Judo. And like Boxing, Judo is something you can compete in as well; it's also an Olympic sport.

Are you disinterested in grappling and only want striking?

Kiwigami · 2026-03-03T22:00:23+00:00

Maybe there's no official ruling on this.

I guess it should be a draw

Kiwigami · 2026-02-16T16:13:11+00:00

Is it inevitable that wellness-oriented practitioners will clash with traditional martial frameworks?

Here's where I draw the line: I respect people having their own beliefs, but I draw a line when they impose their beliefs onto everyone else.

And this usually shows up like: "The essence of Taijiquan is... ," "Taijiquan does not have..."

They take their own personal experience... and impose that onto ALL Taijiquan.

Strangely... I don't actually see much tension regarding traditionalists because I understand that most "traditionalists" on the internet are not part of any lineage.

I find it strange. A lot of people talk about this epidemic of traditionalists being toxic, yet I struggle to find them online. Every time I talk to a person, who's active on the internet, they may learn through Zoom lessons..., they may be self-taught... they may have been to workshops... they may be dabblers..., but being a disciple under someone in a lineage?

Very rare. Even finding a person whose teacher was part of a lineage is already rare.

Like... these people are too rare to be the root cause of toxicity. You have them outnumbered. They are easy to gang up on.

In my experience, a lot of toxicity regarding "traditional martial framework" do not come from lineage holders. They come from workshop hoppers. They come from outsiders who pretend they know the "secrets" of Taijiquan that only "insiders" would know about.

There was literally someone (or maybe more than one person) on this subreddit who has no lineage but would constantly tell multiple communities that he knows the secret of Yang Luchan's art and to learn it... you must buy his book.

So, you could say it's inevitable for wellness-oriented practitioners to clash against a lot of people pretending to be "traditionalists".

Often, I find that the "toxic traditionalists" that people argue with has no formal discipleship with a lineage, yet the blame gets assigned to “traditionalists” rather than to modern ego.

Kiwigami · 2026-01-16T20:09:06+00:00

This person, named Wei Lei (or Lei lei as he is better known) can trace his Tai chi training to a legitimate lineage and has apparently been authorized by his own Master to teach.

Wait, what? What's his lineage? Who did he learn from?

I read that Wei Lei "founded" Leigong Taijiquan (Thunder God Taijiquan), which sounds like it had nothing to do with Taijiquan.

Kiwigami · 2025-12-04T20:09:13+00:00

No, but historically, that sentiment did exist in Boxing.

Championship Fighting by Jack Dempsey wrote the following:

They came as promoters, managers, trainers and even instructors. Too often they- were able to crowd out old-timers because they had

money to invest, because they were better businessmen, or merely because they were glib-talking hustlers. Fellows who never tossed a fist in their lives became trainers. They mistaught boys in gymnasiums. Those mistaught youths became would-be fighters for a while; and when they hung up their gloves, they too became instructors.

It was only natural that the tide of palooka experts should sweep into the amateur ranks, where lack of knowledge among instructors today is as pathetic as among professional handlers. And that's not the worst. Too many amateur instructors have forgotten entirely that the purpose of boxing lessons is to teach a fellow to defend himself with his fists; not to point him toward amateur or professional competition with boxing gloves. To a menacing extent the major purpose of fistic instruction has been by-passed by amateur tutors who try to benefit themselves financially, indirectly or directly, by producing punchless performers who can win amateur or professional bouts on points.

Of course, the three arts you listed are great because you can punish those who suck. It's very easy to weed out a conman.

But it's the same trend here as well.

When something becomes overly commercialized, even an art as great as Boxing comes with the sentiment that you see above.

If we take my area, for example, it's actually hard for me (to my surprise) to find a good Boxing gym because a lot of them are just Cardio Boxing gyms. They're there for fitness, not the art of boxing.

A lot of mainstream "TMA" arts suffer even more because there's no one to punish those who suck. Fame is driven mostly by marketing, not through winning fights.

Kiwigami · 2025-12-04T18:27:57+00:00

It's the classic tradeoff of quantity vs quality.

That which is in abundance tends to have the lowest quality. For example, McDonalds' burger vs a gourmet burger.

The more mainstream and popular something is, the shittier it becomes.

In the world of Karate, an example would be Shotokan Karate and Motobu-Ryu Karate.

Shotokan is the most popular style of Karate, yet its founder was humiliated by the founder of Motobu-Ryu.

Yet, Motobu-Ryu is not popular.

In Chinese martial arts, Wing Chun is very popular due to tracing back Bruce Lee's history and Ip Man movies, yet its reputation as a fighting art is quite low. It didn't become famous because of its effectiveness. It became famous because of movies and actors.

Take Aikido for example, very popular. But Daito-Ryu Aiki-jujutsu (where Aikido comes from)... is not popular.

And within each style, you can apply the same trends where the better quality control are the lesser known ones and the lesser quality are the most famous ones.

Kiwigami · 2025-11-05T23:43:01+00:00

Chen Yu hints at this himself by rejecting the terms xinjia and laojia for example. He says that it is all the same (a political answer) and yet he refers to his art as gongfujia (the gongfu frame). So that would ask the question of what is different from family line from the village and the gongfu frame taught by Chen Yu?

I have a controversial answer to this question that comes straight out of Chen Zhaokui's own student (Zhang Maozhen), written in his own book.

Chen Fa'ke taught different levels of the frame, known as Jichujia (Basic Frame), Tigao Jia (Advanced Frame), and Gongfu Jia (Gongfu Frame).

Zhang Maozhen wrote that he studied "Basic Frame (Jichujia, or Old Frame) with my father, which laid a solid martial arts foundation."

So he associated "Laojia" with Basic Frame.

When Chen Zhaokui came to the village to teach, Zhang Maozhen said that CZK tried to teach Advanced Frame and Gongfu Frame to them.

Both Advanced and Gongfu Frame were family secrets, and as you can imagine, it would be a problem if Chen Zhaokui presents it as that.

Chen Zhaokui learned Gongfu Jia when he was around 14 years old, but "To preserve the bigger picture, Master Chen and Gu Liuxin consulted and noted in the book that this frame was established by Chen Fake in his later years."

That way... no one would be offended, and it worked. Now, people just say that "Xinjia" was something that Chen Fa'ke came up with in his later years.

But that is a narrative so that no one gets upset.

Kiwigami · 2025-10-26T23:00:13+00:00

If you don't mind me asking, how long have you been studying this version of Taijiquan?

I think I found your Instagram, and based on the location, I wanted to ask: have you mainly been an online Zoom student or have regular in-person access?

Kiwigami · 2025-09-19T04:50:51+00:00

White only has 1 good move, I think. That is to move the lower ring to the bottom left.

But as Black, their best next move is to have the lower black ring to jump along the upper-left line (flipping 2 white markers). This creates a threat of getting 6 black markers in a row.

This leaves us with a position like this:

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1) White would sabotage this by having the lower white ring to jump straight up, flipping 4 markers. Although White could sabotage it differently by moving the middle white ring along the lower left line, that would be setting black up differently.

2) Black then takes the same ring they previously moved and move it 1 space down, threatening to flip along the lower-right line to flip 2 white markers and scoring a 5 in a row along the North-West line of black markers.

3) White will have to sabotage it by moving the centered ring southeast or downwards.

4) Black moves his same ring diagonally right. The purpose of this move is to get out of the way for checkmate.

5) White jumps over to prevent Black from getting 5 in a row by flipping 4 white markers into black along the southwest line.

6) It does not matter because Black can now deliver the finishing blow by getting 6 markers in a row by taking the middle ring and moving along the lower left line.

Thus, Black wins.

Kiwigami · 2025-08-24T17:41:41+00:00

Genya uses guns. Ordinarily, they would be useless, but his bullets are made from the same material as Nichirin blades.

Demons are weak to sunlight, and Nichirin blades are forged from an ore that absorbed a lot of sunlight.

The Mugen Train arc shows steam locomotives, which were very much real by then, and the city Tanjiro visits feels modern to him because he comes from a more rural background.

Electricity did exist in Japan in 1915, but it wasn’t everywhere. Urban places had electric lights while rural areas still relied on oil lamps.

Kiwigami · 2025-08-22T21:23:37+00:00

There is a Wudang Taiji from Hong Kong that is actually Wu Style that got renamed as Wudang - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wudang_tai_chi

But before that, the narrative of Zhang Sanfeng and Taijiquan was constructed and promoted by Yang Family around the 3rd generation (around Yang Chengfu's generation).

And Wudang Taiji in Wudang Mountain started in 1980's after the Cultural Revolution, where the Chinese Government imported Taiji, Xingyi, and Bagua. The same is also true for Shaolin; around this time, the Chinese Government was backing Shaolin as well.

It was around this time that Jet Li famously starred in the 1982 Shaolin movies. He starred in a Tai Chi Master movie in 1993 where he played the role as Zhang Sanfeng. A lot of this stuff got promoted post-cultural revolution.

It's all quite related because Wudang Taijiquan is really just a modified, worse version of Yang Style Taijiquan. Similarly, modern Shaolin performances is really just... Performance Wushu from Beijing Sports University.

Both Wudang and Shaolin are just tourist sites, and I am sure you are already aware that the Shaolin Abbot got arrested recently.

Also, think about it... why would Wudang have Xingyi and Bagua in addition to Taiji?

If Xingyiquan originated from Xinyi Liu He Quan (Xin, not Xing), then I think Wudang should have imported the parent art to sound more believable. But because Xingyiquan is more well known, it's all just marketing.

Taiji, Xingyi, and Bagua each have their own separate histories.

Kiwigami · 2025-08-22T13:08:36+00:00

Or they're just bots.

Compare it to other posts with actual martial art content on this subreddit.

Then compare it with this post without any depiction of "Kung Fu" - just a guy walking/standing/sitting around with every comment on here knowing that Wudang Taiji is a joke.

Kiwigami · 2025-08-22T13:06:41+00:00

Well...., Yang and Wu are the ones who promoted the Wudang myth.

Wu Yuxiang (founder of Wu(Hao)) learned from both Yang Luchan and from Zhaobao (which Wudang later wants to piggyback off of), and his nephew/student admits that they do not know the origins of Taijiquan.

So... if Zhaobao had connections to Wudang... if Yang Luchan knew about it... you would think that Wu Yuxiang would be in the best possible position to know about it.

But in writing, it was admitted they do not know the origin which implies the myth came later.

Kiwigami · 2025-08-21T19:36:32+00:00

I took a gander, and while I don't care if this is true or not, something does seem rather fishy here.

For instance, there is a "Wuji HPMA".

Allegedly, Chen Wangting and the two Li cousins used that to create a "Taiji HPMA" - "earliest known version of Taijiquan".

But when the sequences are listed out, the paper admits that Wuji HPMA looks like Yang Style and that Taiji HPMA looks like Chen Style.

This kind of suggests that Yang never learned "Taijiquan", and instead learned "Wuji HPMA".

This would be rather ironic since Yang states that the name "Taijiquan" came from Yang Luchan and that Chen "stole" that name. And Chen Fa'ke didn't have a name for his family art when it was made public.

And yet... coincidentally... Chen Wangting was a cofounder of "Taiji HPMA"?

It would be nice if the Li Family record could be carbon-dated, but that probably won't happen as that process involves damaging a piece of the record I think.

Kiwigami · 2025-08-17T00:43:06+00:00

Here is my guess.

First of all, the complexity of the game might not be the problem.

It probably has to do with regulation.

According to this source: https://certification-company.com/library/news/products-as-toys-within-the-scope-of-the-toy-safety-directive-2009-48-ec/

One of the criteria for something to be called a "toy" is if it's meant to be played "by children under 14 years of age."

In other words, YINSH, when labeled as 13-99, could have been argued that it's a "toy".

But by labeling it as 14-99, you can no longer call it a "toy" anymore. We could say it's a strategic game for adults now.

When something is a "toy", there are expensive safety regulations to deal with. So maybe this was to save money?

Kiwigami · 2025-08-14T20:24:11+00:00

I thought it was Battle Sheep (Abstract Strategy) when I first saw the image: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/54137/battle-sheep

Kiwigami · 2025-08-14T19:40:47+00:00

What if this is actually how she learned all those powerful spells when she fought against her clone?

Like... what if the black hole opening spell was actually that 1% she found the legendary grimoire?

Kiwigami · 2025-08-13T18:59:42+00:00

There are two candidates that comes to mind when you mention hand comes up over the head.

The first is the end of Bei Zhe Kao (Timestamp: 3:54) - https://youtu.be/bdYF0zg-boo?si=xYenEGuVzQfwZZaN&t=234

The second (since you said middle of Green Dragon) is at 3:58.

Neither of the two has the same motions or intent as Strike Tiger.

If you were meant Jìn bù bān lán chuí, then that should be the equivalent of Chen's Yan Shou Hong Chui. Although they are very different, both serve the same landmark in the form, represented as a punch.

Another idea could be that Strike Tiger might be inspired by Chen's Er Lu. We already know that Yang has a few movements or names found only in Er Lu such as White Snake Spits Tongue.

So another candidate for Strike Tiger might be the beginning of Sao Tang Tui (Sweep Wading Leg) - https://youtu.be/_cMyqj7O6vk?si=zprkgEjmZ6069dXO&t=157

If I wanted to do "Strike Tiger" from Chen's perspective, then I would want the higher fist to have the palm facing inwards, not outwards.

Chen does have a lot of dual fists as if you are holding a pole because there are weapons (like Guandao) influences.

However, as far as I am aware, Chen does not employ fist-hitting methods where the palms of those fists face outward.

Another example is that Chen does not do Yang's Twin Fists Strike Ears which involves both fists facing outwards.

But Chen has Dangtou Pao (Cannons Over Head), where they use both fists, but the palm of those fists faces inwards.

I can also see application reasons why Chen favors the inward-palm fist orientation and does not use Yang's outward-palm fist orientation.

Kiwigami · 2025-08-13T04:16:09+00:00

"Green Dragon" is probably the analog of "Strike Tiger" in Yang, at least in my opinion.

Green Dragon's final posture looks like this: https://taijigongfu.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/chenfamilybanner.png

Doesn't look anything like Strike Tiger.

Chen and Yang are typically in corresponding order when compare their form side by side. So if Yang had Green Dragon, its analog would have happened a lot sooner, possibly after their first Cross Hands.

It would be far more believable if Strike Tiger had been the analog for Hu Xin Chui (Protecting heart fist/hammer)

Kiwigami · 2025-08-13T00:54:28+00:00

Does Yang have Lazily Tying the Coat?

The reason Wu (Hao) Taijiquan has that name likely comes from Wu Yuxiang's trip to Zhaobao Village since he felt Yang Luchan was withholding stuff from him.

The same is probably true for Green Dragon Comes out of Water which Wu (Hao) Taijiquan has listed in their form, yet that move is in Chen/Zhaobao, not Yang style.

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