Re: Yang Shaohou's legacy and sociological insight
Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2024 3:18 pm
YMAA Cape Cod wrote: When Yang, Cheng-fu (楊澄甫) was traveling and teaching in 20s - 30s, it was a period of battle between the communist party and Chiang Kai-shek (from 1928 - 49). Many teachers hid their skills, both in fighting and healing, to avoid various kinds of trouble with the communists.
Have no idea what you mean... In the civil war they were busy fighting.
But Yang, Cheng-fu was a lineage holder with a responsibility to teach everything he had learned. He DID have indoor disciples who secretly learned and preserved the martial aspects of taijiquan,
YCF is well known as the person who made Tai Chi public. He started in Beijing teaching large public groups. Then he moved to Shanghai in 2025 and taught in public there. First a couple of years later the civil war spread to Shanghai. At this time Shanghai was controlled by the KMT. Mao's soldiers tried to take over Shanghai in 1927, but the CPC was quickly suppressed. The CPC never controlled Shanghai in the 1930s, so YCF could teach openly. Shanghai was very open and vital in the 1930s, and also very "western" oriented.
the most well-known of which was Dong, Yingjie (董英傑)
Eh.... No he was not. He was the last of the Five Tigers (Chen Weiming (陈微明), Wu Huichuan (武汇川), Tian Zhaolin (田兆麟), Chu Guiting (褚桂亭) and Dong Yingjie (董英杰).) Tian Zhaolin, Chen Weiming and also YCF's favorite student Li Yaxuan were all more well-known than Dong. This is not because Dong should be inferior, but because Dong for many years was seldom near YCF as he helped YCF set up schools in Suzhou, Hangzhou and Nanjing. Other students that helped YCF in Beijing and Shanghai are more well-known as they were more frequently together with YCF. And also, the other four of the Five tigers took care of more challenge matches. Dong was a formidable fighter nevertheless. When he got to Hangzhou he swept the floor with the whole Hangzhou Guoshu (Sanda) team.
who also learned from Lu-Chan. The arts and forms from those chaotic years are fractured and confusing, like the "Dong" style he created and our own "old" Yang form at YMAA.
Impossibru. Dong was born ten years later than Yang Cheng Fu.