I did this for myself. Between the OCR errors and Wade-Giles, I just wanted to read it in the same Pinyin as the other linked article. I also looked up most of the source material and included the links. A page search for “Luchan” will take you to most of the stories.
I started to comment on Wile and his conclusions, then decided it didn’t hold my interest. As the saying goes, “I have no dog in this fight.”
I’ll make one comment. There is a Confucian scholarly tradition that a person cannot make an innovation and claim credit for it. The idea being, “We stand on the shoulders of giants, how can we claim all the glory for ourselves?"
Over time, the practice became the more innovative something was the more ancient the idea and its roots had to be. In other words, all new things are a restoration or transmission of knowledge our ancestors had in the past.
The Founder: Yang Luchan
There are two major versions of Yang Luchan's
background one "official" and the other probably
historical. The "official" version emanates from
colleagues and students who may have wished to
conceal his humble origins.
Xu Yusheng, student of Luchan's son, Jianhou (1839-1917),
and author of Illustrated Manual of Taijiquan (Tàijí quán shì
tújiě) published in 1921, says that Luchan
along with fellow Yongnian villager, Li Baikui, on
hearing of Chen Changxing' s fame as a martial
artist, made haste to Chen Village to study with him.
Initially regarded as outsiders, they won over the master
by sheer determination and finally gained the complete
transmission, whereupon they returned to Yongnian.
Luchan later traveled to Peking, where he became
martial arts tutor to the Manchu nobility.3
https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/the-taiji-manual-of-xu-yusheng/Chen Weiming, student of Luchan's grandson, Chengfu,
in his 1925 Art of Taijiquan (Taijiquan shu) closely
follows Xu's account, adding a few embellishments.
Chen tells us that after arriving in Chen Village,
Yang heard loud sounds issuing from a nearby building.
Climbing a wall, he poked a hole in a window
and spied Changxing giving instruction in uprooting.
By nightly surveillance he learned all the secrets,
and when the master finally consented to accept him
as a student, he made such rapid progress that he soon
surpassed even the Chen family favorites.4
https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2012/10/27/answering-questions-about-taiji-taiji-da-wen/Thus, Yang Chengfu' s preface to his 1934 Complete
Principles and Applications of Taijiquan (Taijiquan ti yung
Quanshu), probably ghostwritten by Cheng Manqing,5
contains biographical information about the
Yang family, that not only respectfully glosses over
Luchan's background, but puts in the illiterate 19th
century Luchan's mouth the world view and political
agenda of the early 20th century conservative intelligentsia,
even fabricating an anachronistic dialogue
between Chengfu and his grandfather, Luchan,
who actually died eleven years before his grandson's
birth. Chengfu's account here, or more likely that of
his ghost-writer, has Luchan traveling to Chen Village
as a adult on the strength of Changxing's reputation,
and remaining for ten years before being accepted as
a student.6
Chen Kung's 1943 Taiji Hand Form, Broadsword,
Two-Edged Sword, Spear and Sparring (T' ai
chiquan tao chien kan sanshou hobian) is a remake
of Chen Weiming's account, except that he has
Luchan going to Chen Village as a young boy and
making a hole in the wall, that he claims could still be
seen in the 1940's. 7 a. k.a., Yearning K. Chen and Chen Yanlin
https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/methods-of-applying-taiji-boxing-taiji-quan-shiyong-fa/ Even the great martial arts scholar, Xu Zhen, fell
under the spell of Yang family well-wishers in his
1930 Summary of Chinese Martial Arts (Kuochi lunyueh),
uncritically reproducing Xu Yusheng's account.8
However, just six years later in his A Study of the Truth
of Taijiquan (Taijiquan kaoxin lu) Xu Zhen finally breaks
the taboo. It was Xu whose teacher,
Hao Yuexu, first showed him Li Yiyu's handwritten
copies of Wu Yuxiang's manuscripts. Noting that
Li's "Short Preface to Taijiquan" (Taijiquan
Xiaoxu) referred to Yang Luchan as "a certain
Yang of Nankuan," Xu resolved to examine the reason
for this circumlocution.
https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/methods-of-applying-taiji-boxing-taiji-quan-shiyong-fa/After interviewing the older generation of martial arts
enthusiasts in Yongnian, Chen Village, and Beijing,
he discovered that the Chen family owned a pharmacy in
Yongnian, the Hall of Great Harmony (Taihe tang). The proprietor
of the pharmacy, Chen Dehu, was one of the richest
men in Chen Village and he hired one of his clans-
men, Chen Changxing, to teach his sons the martial
arts. After many years of waiting on Changxing,
Luchan absorbed much of the art, and when he
began to prompt Changxing' s students, the master
was so impressed that he not only transmitted the art
to him but bought his freedom for fifty ounces of silver
and returned him to Yongnian.
Back in Yongnian, Luchan stayed in the Chen family Hall
of Harmony Pharmacy, whose local landlord was Wu Yuxiang
and his two brothers. The Wu brothers were a prominent
gentry family in Yongnian, and keenly interested in
the martial arts. Breaking class barriers, Yuxiang
studied with Luchan, which whetted his appetite to
seek out Luchan's teacher, Chen Changxing.
On his way to Chen Village, Yuxiang passed through
nearby Zhaobao Village, where the local innkeeper,
who coveted Yuxiang's room and board, told him
that Chen Qingping was superior to Changxing
and persuaded him to stay in Zhaobao. Xu concludes
that Li Yiyu in his "Short Preface" attempted
to protect the reputation of the Wu family by not revealing
the fact that his uncle, Yuxiang, was initiated into Taiji
by a man so poor he had been sold as a bond servant.