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II The original Wu style and the modern history of tai-chi-chuan: "The Yang and Wu families".
III Some striking characteristics of Wu Chian-Chuan's Original Wu style tai chi chuan
IV Original Wu style tai chi in Europe: the present state of affairs.
By now, Wu style master Ma Jiang-Bao, grandson of Wu Chian-Chuan, has been staying and teaching in Europe for about 9 years. For 7 years he has been living in the Netherlands. The first 2 years he lived and taught in Germany, in the city of Düsseldorf.
During that 9 year period, gradually a nucleus of students from different countries has been forming, mainly consisting of people that are aware of the unique opportunity that his permanent stay in western Europe offers to their t.c.c. studies.
They are determined to seize this opportunity and have first hand instruction in all the ins and outs of the extremely versatile martial art that t.c.c. undoubtedly is. With master Ma Jiang-Bao, for the first time there is somebody living in Europe on a permanent basis, who is a direct descendent of one of the main Tai-Chi families and who incorporates the whole integral system of tai chi chuan. Moreover, he has the ability, the experience and the willingness to be a teacher.
Everybody who has been engaged in t.c.c. for a longer period of time, knows that 8 years is fairly short in terms of time needed to build up real t.c.c. skills, unless maybe one were to be instructed every single day and would be able to practice every day too for many hours on end. As it is, however, we deem ourselves already very lucky to have at least a few hours of real good instruction every week, thus receiving more than enough material to practice with throughout the week, everybody as much as he or she can. One might say, that this way the seed has been sown and that the first plants have started to grow firmly. It still may take a number of years for the first flowers to appear, but they will, there is no doubt about that.
Although master Ma's stay in Germany lasted only 2 years, a considerable part of his momentary students is still German. Besides German students, there are also French, English, some Swiss and of course Dutch students by now. Though the number of students that are directly taught by master Ma on a weekly basis is growing steadily, it is not increasing as quickly as one might wish, or expect. Most of the Dutch students live in the district "Noord-Limburg", where they form one group of students together with the Germans residing in the Ruhr area, coming over from cities like Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Essen, Wuppertal etc. Besides this larger group, there are smaller ones in the Dutch districts The Hague, Rotterdam-Dordrecht and Arnhem. Master Ma is also active within the Dutch Chinese community, that is in fact directly responsible for his staying in the Netherlands by having invited him. The scope of his activities there however is largely beyond my sight, so I cannot be specific on that.
By now, a few pupils, who have attained the proper level, have successfully taken up original Wu style instruction in the Ruhr area, in South Germany and in the South of the Netherlands, of course under master Ma's direct supervision.
It is remarkable, by the way, that apart from a few exceptions, almost none of his students come from existing t.c.c. circles, which in the Netherlands are mostly Yang style students of any kind.
A substantial portion, however, of his pupils comes from the "external" martial arts setting, people that have been practicing for instance shaolin, karate, pentjak silat or Aikido for many years. Most of them got somehow stuck in their development, because they were unable to find somebody within reach to assist in further progress, or because they reached an age where the body starts to protest vehemently the rough physical training methods that are usually applied. Practicing t.c.c. with master Ma offers them the new perspective that they were looking for, providing them with the answers to martial arts questions they were vainly looking for within their own discipline.
Apart from these, there are of course the fresh starters, who come to t.c.c. for all the generally known reasons, varying from being attracted by the beauty of the movements to specific medical needs or martial expectations.
We sometimes wonder why it is , that so few people, who have already had t.c.c. experience for maybe several years, seek information, let alone join.
I am myself indeed one of those few that had been practicing Yang style for some 5 to 6 years, (in my case Cheng Man-Ching's version), before I met master Ma and the original Wu style. I happened to meet him at the time in Amsterdam, where he gave demonstrations together with his father Ma Yueh-Liang, who was then 85 years old. For me it was at once clear, that for the first time I had witnessed the real thing.
I imagine that there must be people out there, just like myself at that time, who after having practiced t.c.c. for some time, develop an awareness of the well meant, but nevertheless, rather crippled and disintegrated way t.c.c. is often taught in this country as well as in the rest of Europe for that matter. Really qualified teachers are hardly available and the few that maybe are, have to come from overseas to stay for only a couple of days every year. So they are only available on a very limited scale mostly for short as well as very expensive seminars.
The material that is offered this way, is neither very consistent nor very coherent: in general it is scattered bits and pieces of different versions of the large whole that t.c.c. is.
I know of a number of people that try to build some kind of unity out of the different parts they have gathered this way, dancing so to say at different weddings, sometimes even bringing in material they "borrow" from outside, incorporating for instance Ba Gua and other methods, being unaware of the fact that t.c.c. in principle cán provide everything they need, because of its all embracing and systematic character.
The people that do not have the time or money to frequent these seminars, have to make do with what is offered by indeed enthusiastic and busy persons, but which is perforce second hand (if one is lucky), if not third or fourth hand material, alas, being presented as the real thing. And then I do not mention the kind of "teachers", that learned their "skills", while following a two, three or four week training stage somewhere, sometimes maybe even in China, and consequently advocate themselves as "experts" in the matter at hand. It is a pity, but I have to conclude, that the growing demand for t.c.c. instructors has led to increasing wild growth in Europe too.
I know for instance of somebody who learned somewhere the beginning part of the solo form up to a certain point and consequently started his own "white cloud" t.c.c. style, more or less called after the posture where he left the learning process. He is now successfully posing himself as an original grand master in his "style".
Also there are people of external styles who, becoming aware of the growing interest in t.c.c., simply sort of slow down the speed of their external fighting and make other people believe that it is original t.c.c. they are doing, giving it an exotic name like for instance "Lama" style, the roots of which of course are proclaimed to be dating back a few thousand years in Chinese history.
For promotional purposes of their own, people like that incidently "borrow" photographs and health results of those who are doing the real thing. Or in some occasion the root problem is simply dodged by giving the activities a name like "practical" t.c.c. or something similar.
I firmly agree with Mike Sigman, who at last belled the cat in T'ai Chi Magazine of April 1992 (Wayfarer Publications, 2610 Silver Ridge Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90039), aiming at the situation in the USA. He eloquently marked the problem and tried to design a kind of profile of what one may or may not expect of a good t.c.c. teacher in terms of background, training, knowledge and level of skills.
It is not my intention on this occasion to initiate the same discussion on our side of the ocean, but I think all the same, that the time is near when the interest of proper development of t.c.c. in Europe will force us to contemplate the matter: our situation is not that different from the one in the USA.
Anyway, the availability of competent teachers in Europe is not so satisfying, that one could rightfully ignore an authentic master of one of the major family styles landing, so to speak, on one's doorstep. In this case the one that "landed" is the grandson of the famous Wu Chian-Chuan, son of the equally famous grandmasters Ma Yueh-Liang and Wu Ying-Hua, Wu Chian-Chuan's daughter, who are both in their nineties now but still "going very strong" t.c.c. wise, presenting themselves as living testimonies of what t.c.c. can do for mankind if properly practiced.
So the reaction on this event is rather poor. Why? One can only guess. There may be a number of reasons.
Perhaps there is an (exaggerated and misplaced) feeling of loyalty towards native instructors, that enhances a sense of betrayal if one were to inquire elsewhere?
Or maybe a kind of self complacency has crept in, that makes us overestimate our ability to "creatively" handle the material that we picked up randomly at seminars and workshops.
Maybe a reason is also to be found in the tendency towards the romantic spiritual and mysterious element, that somehow became too prominently connected to the practice of our noble art, as it drifted into the West, floating on the stream of the deconfessionalisation and the search for spiritual alternatives of the last two decades. This tendency echoes in what is presently known as "New Age tai chi". The romantic spiritual view does not match very well with the "no nonsense" t.c.c. approach that master Ma, like all real masters, for instance advocates.
Of course, there is indeed a spiritual side to t.c.c.. After all its name "tai chi" denotes the "Grand-Ultimate" and the practicing of tai chi chuan has arisen from and is closely connected to the taoist philosophy and way of life.
The relationship between taoism and t.c.c. is not unlike the way japanese budo and zen-budism are intertwined. In t.c.c. the coherence is so strong to the point that the patterns of the movements themselves and the principles that govern them directly reflect the basics of taoism. What this means for t.c.c. as a martial art is laid down in the "classics"!
Nevertheless t.c.c. contains two at least equally important aspects, besides the spiritual one: the first one is the healing or health aspect that is expressed in the aiming for a long life or "eternal youth" (Yang San Feng).
The second aspect is the "chuan" element, the self-defence or martial art aspect.
Each of these three aspects is equally important, but at the same time if taken separately one does not necessarily need to practice t.c.c. to go after them. If one, for instance, is interested in spiritual matters, taoism provides one with countless meditation methods extensive literature and rites. Whoever is aiming for a long life and good health, or seeks curing of a specific disease, may choose out of a great number of special chi-kung exercises or look into traditional chinese taoist medicine in one of its forms. And last but not least, if one wants only martial techniques and ability, there is more at one's disposal in China than can be learned in one lifetime.
However, if a person is after the understanding of all three aspects at the same time and the interaction between them, his best options are the so called internal martial arts, t.c.c. being the most prominent of these.
Within t.c.c. all three aspects are inseparably melted together in one whole. You cannot overemphasize or take out one of the ingredients without decisively crippling the system. Therefore, only a t.c.c. that represents all three elements in a balanced way and conforms to the "classics", deserves in my opinion to be rightfully called t.c.c.. It is possible though that a student in the beginning is attracted by one or two facets, or even by something completely different, for instance the pure aesthetical beauty of its movements.
In what I called "New Age" tai chi, mainly a romantic spiritual and/or magical approach is stressed at the expense of the martial chi kung aspect of t.c.c.. The spiritual claim apparently being that t.c.c. is originally designed ónly to be a kind of "highway to enlightment". One merely has to remind oneself of the opening sentence of the Tao Teh King, to see how absurd such a proposition is, because "The Tao (or Way) that can be said is not the eternal Tao". This statement goes also for t.c.c. as an integral martial system, and even more so for a heavily mutilated system like the new-age variant, where the "meditative" aspect is being overemphasized, even singled out.
The result: lack of balance, showing in there being only soft without hard, only expansion without compression, only open without closed, and only empty without full. All this is reflected in the vagueness, in the lack of accuracy and the floating that the new-age forms show. In this scene "Tui-Shou" (pushing hands) is a dirty word, a curse, just like "t.c.c. fighting".
Strictly speaking, however, I do not oppose the use of t.c.c. like movements for any purpose whatsoever, be it meditative, magical use, or for the fighting of stress or for anything else for that matter. I even can imagine that the movements lend themselves to a certain point for a number of these purposes and certainly can make one "feel good", especially the slow forms.
However, whereas the utmost precise practice of the slow forms promote awareness and by being awake provokes a learning process that denies automatism and sleepiness, new-age "spiritual" t.c.c. practice, by its floating and vagueness, invites automatism and sleepiness back in, right through the front door sometimes even accompanied by music!
So if people want to do t.c.c.-like movements while dreaming about "enlightment" and "feeling really good", it is all right with me. Only it should be clear that in such cases no longer t.c.c. is being practiced, but something else that only lóóks like t.c.c. at first glance, but in fact is not, because what people are aiming at is not the understanding of t.c.c. from the perspective of its three basic elements, but rather the "magic' of it all. Therefore it also should not be called t.c.c..
By the way, as far as the "magic' approach is concerned, I again have to agree with Mike Sigman, when he states that by digging our heels in at the magic we imagine, we may miss the real magic that exists.
Looking for the extraordinary, we may easily forget, that the sometimes magical seeming functions of t.c.c. are in fact inherent: that is, everyone is born with them. It is not a specific product of manmade means. (Wu Ying-Hwa in T'ai Chi magazine of April 1992, page 15).
If there is a key word in t.c.c., it is probably "natural ness": t.c.c. is about restoring the inner and outer natural balance of our physical, mental and spiritual apparatus, the instrument so to say. Only on an undamaged and well-tuned instrument may one be able to play beatiful music.
As I see it, although integral t.c.c. has to comprise all three aspects mentioned before, the actual health, martial, and spiritual effects are really side-effects, the spin off of being engaged in a restoring process, that has to start with becoming aware of the imbalances on all levels, while practicing. Gradually the man made lumber that has been gathering on the instrument since day one of its being born, may loose some of its suffocating grip on the functioning of the same, thus becoming more and more the pliable instrument that nature originally designed for us and that indeed may work "miracles" in the end. It is hard work though, and much perseverance is needed: in fact, engaging in t.c.c. means engaging in a life long commitment, a never ending process.
Looking at what happened since master Ma Jiang-Bao arrived in Europe, we sometimes wonder if people are really interested in learning t.c.c., for what it really stands for.
An attempt, for instance to organize a weekend workshop with master Ma in Amsterdam at the end of '91, totally failed: not enough people were interested.
A number of times however, he has been asked to teach only the Tui-Shou that the original Wu style is famous for: growing interest for the practical, martial side of t.c.c. has gradually brought to light that there are many legendary tales, but that in general there is very little real knowledge and ability available as far as this aspect of t.c.c. is concerned. Teachers with real t.c.c. skills, including Tui-Shou ability, are exceptionally hard to find. With Tui-Shou however the situation is even more difficult than with the forms; one simply cannot learn Tui-Shou on some spare afternoon, as seems to be possible with some "simplified" forms if one might believe certain people.
Tui-Shou is a very necessary, very difficult and very vast side of t.c.c. that is tightly connected to the forms and their precision. The relationship between the two is complementary. Tui-Shou however is much harder to learn and expert teaching on a personal basis is absolutely necessary since the "jing" (soft t'ai chi strength) has to be "fed". Also while doing the forms, one may be able to "hide" oneself up to a certain degree by compensating lack of central equilibrium with balancing, more or less like a tight-rope walker. In Tui-Shou this is impossible: every lack of "connectedness" within the body as a whole, will unfailingly be exposed by our partners. Once we recognize this, the actual learning can start as a process where forms and Tui-Shou have a mutually fertilizing effect on each other, unless of course we start to compensate in Tui-Shou too, for instance by taking to brute force or "bull-fighting".
Requests to teach Tui-Shou in an isolated way have until now always been denied by master Ma. It is his view, that in the original Wu style slow form and Tui-Shou (and all the rest too, for that matter) are one indivisible interconnected whole. Whoever wants to learn Wu style Tui-Shou, Ta-Lu, fast form, weapon forms and at last Lan-Cai-Hua, has to start with the first step: the slow solo form as designed by Wu Chian-Chuan which serves as center of the whole system, as summary, textbook and course of instruction at the same time, since it contains all the fundamentals of t.c.c. as it has been passed on until now within the family since Chuan-Yuo, one of the three famous master students of Yang Lu-Chan.
The only concession he may make to this, by exception, is that he sometimes allows somebody, if well prepared, to more or less start parallel learning of form and Tui-Shou, whereas normally it would take at least about 1 1/2 year before Tui-Shou is even introduced to a person.
For people who have already been practicing t.c.c. for some time, this procedure certainly forms a barrier, that has to be overcome. For nobody likes the idea of having to start all over again something of which he or she thought to be well on his/her way, already having put in considerable time, energy and money.
Of course, the time, energy and money that one spends, are by no means lost: I can talk from my own experience. However it may feel that way, initially, when regular confrontation with real expertise somewhat slows down our tendency towards "free finding and invention", not to mention the dents that our image of "t.c.c. expert" gets from this.
In short, it takes some courage, a dose of open-mindedness and above all unlimited studiousness and love of work to take such a step.
Nevertheless, if anybody really wants to learn t.c.c...... I think, by the way, that it can be very meaningful to seriously practice more than one style at the same time, if one has the opportunity to do so. Something like that can give one beautiful material for study and comparison. When looked at against the background of the classical undisputed fundamentals, the division in "styles" is somewhat artificial anyway. In fact the division is more an invention of the students than of the masters themselves, who meet, recognize and value each other not on the basis of the style they practice but on the basis of personal "kung fu". Meanwhile the most important thing a student is responsible for himself is to find the very best teacher he can possibly get, whatever the style this person may practice.
Summarizing one might say that there are two sides to master Ma's 9 year's stay in western Europe.
On one side there is the steadily growing number of students coming from different countries, that somehow "smell out" his presence and react to it. Also a stable nucleus has been formed of enthusiastic students that receive instruction on a weekly basis, who are ready to "go all the way" and work hard towards the understanding of t.c.c. in all its aspects.
On the other side, there is the somewhat poor response from "established" t.c.c. circles, from the people that one would expect to be most interested in his presence.
Whatever the reasons may be for this, it is also a fact that many potentially interested people may as yet still be unaware of him being available to them, since this fact, until now, has not been brought to anyone's attention other than on a very limited scale.
Possibly, this writing of mine will bring a change, but I am not sure if master Ma is really keen on that. He himself gives the impression that he is not so much waiting for large numbers of students as for serious ones, who really want to learn and study hard.
As for me personally, the situation is perfect as it is: my needs are amply covered by first class instruction and almost undivided.
Why then this article? Well, mainly because I would consider it a pity, if the seriously interested people that I know to be around, who put in a lot of effort to get a foothold in t.c.c., would miss a select chance to get in touch with an original source of authentic material, for the only reason that they never came to know about the possibilities within reach.
I myself remember only too well how thrilled I was, when I stumbled on the exact fulfillment of my needs at that time, as I met grandmaster Ma Yueh-Liang and his son master Ma Jiang-Bao.
I'm grateful to fate and to them for what has been given so far. Let me conclude with a sentence that I read somewhere, which perfectly depicts the impression one receives when watching master Ma perform his slow form: "..., but the essential stillness is the heart itself of every movement".