Notes on chinese martial arts. Part 1

This was part of disscussion in one of Facebook groups. Planned to make a proper article based on those notes, but it would take quite a work, so finally decided to publish it in original form.

You can practice yiquan or taijiquan or other art for various reasons, not necessarily the fighting efficiency. But as the question is about this aspect, I will focus on this. As in many discussions I hear various people expressing oppinions which come from looking at this subject from various perspectives, I will try to talk at least about a few aspects.

Some people have kind of very idealistic and unrealistic view of asian martial arts. Actually the popularity of traditional asian martial arts in the west is in very big part due to this unrealistic ideas about them. There wouldn't be that big boom in 1960s-1980s if people were not nurturing unrealistic dreams... But later quite many became disillusioned and disappointed, in time of growing popularity of mma, muay thai, k-1 etc, where "traditionalists" got beating.

In the internal art cirles, and especially taijiquan, quite many people developed even higher level os illusion than in other arts. Less reality testing, and still thinking that what they do is the supreme fighting art.

Now, from point of view of yiquan, or point of view of Wang Xiangzhai, which in my opinion is quite realistic point of view, anything is evolving and can be further developed, and there is no end or limit to this process. At the same time this proces is not linear, there are ups and downs and thre is also moving in circles.

According to Wang Xiangzhai himself the period of developing of the chinese martial arts styles which we know presently was actually period mainly of actual degradation of martial art in China, the process going wrong way. He started yiquan in reaction to what he perceived as being not the right way.

On one hand he saw this as going back to the roots, removing wrong and unnecessary, revealing the essence again. On the other hand this was a start for process of further development.

Even now you can still see the same problems which Wang Xiangzhai noticed back then at beginning of 20th century. People doing forms and other methods, learning applications, but it's turning out quite useless when it comes to actual fighting test.

Now in my personal opinion, meeting many people who are proficient in various chinese martial arts, I see tons of valuable stuff inside them. But it seems to mee that maybe for too long periods those arts were quite deprived of reality tests regular enough to maintain the thorough understanding between using those training methods and actual fighting. Even in times of Manchurian dynasty, during uprisings, when many martial arts masters and creators of well known styles were fighting, they were actually fighting with WEAPONS. But in what we have now, weapons are taught almost exclusively as forms, without fighting, while stress is on empty hand fighting, which traditionally was something not so much stressed as less useful.

As for barehand fighting, China has very long history, from ancient times, of things like jueli, shoubo, xiangpu, which are now being described mostly as kinds of wrestling, but at those times often included hitting, also in competition. Yes long time history of competing in a way similiar to mma (except for groundwork). In some periods there were army units with members focusing just on training empty hand fighting and competing. Quite similiar to professional mma or k-1 teams nowadays. People could fight, because they had regular fighting practice, they had fighting experience, they could test how things work. Now and again there were periods where training martial arts was forbidden, but usually just relatively short periods at beginning of a new dynasty. Then under Mongolian dynasty this was forbidden completely. Under Manchurian dynasty it was the same for quite long time. Even wrestling competitions for quite long time were only for Manchurians. So while for long centuries from the beginning of China actual empty hand fighting skills could be regularly tested and improved, in the period in which most of presently practiced styles developed it didn't really continue. Instead there was developing forms, theories, interesting training methods, much of things quite interesing, valuable and useful, but there was lack of regular practical verification. Even situations of assault were mostly with weapons, at least sticks were used, not empty hands. Most of the time lack of possibility of testing your stuff against really top level barehand fighters.

So how could you compare something like this to present day professional fighters, training and actually testing regularly what they do? They verify their methods in actual fighting with other present day top level fighters, adapting and developing them. Now compare this to practicing style, where someone centuries ago maybe had this kind of experience, then through next generations there was very limited amount of practice based on reality testing and more and more focusing on forms and other methods, passing further more and more illusions, gradually more and more detached from reality.

Of course maybe it is a bit of exaggeration, but to some extent something like this was happening. Even if people creating some training methods had a lot of experience and possessed high skills, when those from next generations just repeat practicing those method, without element of practical testing, the knowledge probably will become distored and method will degrade.

Also it is important to realize that those traditional styles were created in some circumstances, where the way of fighting could depend on the local conditions, habits, clothes which they used to wear etc. In the style methods and concepts this could be preserved. But without having the experience of the creators, generations later it could become quite distorted. End even if not, then how could it be efficient nowadays, when confrontation is made under different conditions. So it is quite funny when people from some traditional style go to compete in a ring with some rules created by others, often not even realizing the fact, that methods and tactics of their style were created at different time for different condition. In other words, they don't actually know what they practice, and how it was supposed to relate to fighting (and what kind of fighting, under what kind of conditions).

O.K. I will continue talking about this later.