Han Quing Tan Systems Historical Videos

[Rivington]

In my defence, at no point did I ask for a discussion or demand to hear peoples opinions. I posted something which I found interesting, perhaps daring to hope that a discussion might blossom, like a beautiful flower, watered with your words and warmed by the gentle sunshine of your wisdom.

The problem is that if everyone did that, bullshido would be drowning in youtube videos and people offering no comment other than "What do you think?" Drowning, I tell you.

The telling part here is that you didn't recognize a two-man set when you saw one. I'm not familiar with this style at all, but I do know the difference between an extended drill and a sparring session. One thing that could have made this conversation go better is an admission of ignorance—you should have said up front that you thought the vid was of "slowed down sparring," then we could have corrected you on that and gone on from there without this long side trip on How To Post A Video.

Only start a thread about a video if you actually have something to say about it, even if what you have to say is incorrect. K?

[Bezmond]

Sorry Dad.

Sorry Ming.

[Ming Loyalist]

It feels like you're saying I'm not pulling my weight around here. I'm sorry.

In my defence, at no point did I ask for a discussion or demand to hear peoples opinions. I posted something which I found interesting, perhaps daring to hope that a discussion might blossom, like a beautiful flower, watered with your words and warmed by the gentle sunshine of your wisdom.

I tried real hard to generate an opinion all of my own when I replied to Rivingtons post. If this wasn't enough, then, again, I'm sorry.

I promise to try harder in future.

you have to realize that we get trolled here all the time, so we have zero tolerance for anything that looks like trolling (i still think you might be a troll.)

if you really want to "pull your weight" here, then you need to read the stickies. yes, ALL of them. they will explain a lot, and you won't make the kind of mistakes that lead to endless posts of "i'm sorry".

as to your video, it shows that the same sorts of compliant demos have been used in china to wow uneducated onlookers since at least the time of that video. since it is a compliant set, we can't know if they can actually fight at all. sure they have good forms, but that only means that they dance well.

CMA without fighting is cultural dance. if you don't get punched in the face and thrown around hard, then your sifu isn't teaching you fighting. it makes me profoundly sad that real CMA is so hard to find, even in hong kong, san francisco, and new york (which were the main places to find CMA in the past.) you can find plenty of bravado, exaggerated stories, charlatans, and flim-flam artists, but very little in the way of fighting.

i don't enjoy telling people to avoid CMA, but i can't in good conscience tell people to seek it out, because of the high rate of bullshit. your video did nothing to change my opinion.

you train taiji in china, what are your classes like? does a session of push hands get you thrown around or is it pattycake? do you ever put on boxing gloves and hit each other? has your sifu ever knocked you silly when sparring? does your sifu have a history of fighting in lei tai or sanda matches? so any of his senior students?

[W. Rabbit]

I posted something which I found interesting, perhaps daring to hope that a discussion might blossom, like a beautiful flower, watered with your words and warmed by the gentle sunshine of your wisdom.

Nothing can be grown from words.

The only warmth you will get here is the slap friction from the back of Bullshido's pimp hand for not reading stickies.

I tried real hard to generate an opinion all of my own

I promise to try harder in future.

Try softer. Lurk more, read more, post less.

[Bezmond]

Firstly, thank you all for your responses, I have been lurking here a while and have genuine respect for your knowledge and experience, I wouldn't still be plugging away if I didn't. Ming, I can assure you I'm not a troll.

I don't like looking like a doofus, so I did read all the stickies. An oversight on my part, plus a slightly disingenuous original post. I didn't really understand what I was looking at and should have said that.

Thanks Ming for taking the time to respond to what you suspected may be a troll. I shall try to answer all of your questions...

I train 4 times a week for 2 or 3 hours with my sifu, a man named He Jie who is a student of Lu Dehe who was a student of Li Jingwu. He has 5 or 6 other students who tend to come out a couple of times per week. I made it very clear from when we met that I was interested in fighting, not dancing. I arrived in China as a freshly minted black belt from a respected Karate club in England with a healthy skepticism about Taiji. I had experienced various flippy floppy church hall taiji groups back home and wasn't convinced. I originally planned to find a San Da class, but was introduced to He sifu though a friend and thought I would give it a chance.

Blah, blah, blah. In a nutshell, our push hands practice is about as vigorous as it can get without injury. I like to go home a little bashed up. It normally starts fairly restrained but ends up as free sparring with punches, kicks, sweeps and joint locks (from him not me, my joint locks are a joke) Yes, he does occasionally knock me silly.

We don't do this as often as I would like, his other students aren't interested in anything more dangerous than silk reeling exercises. They look on Taiji as a refined gentleman's pursuit, like calligraphy. I wouldn't bet on any of them in a fight.

I don't know if he has any history with organised fights. I would doubt it. He's a working class, private man who likes to keep his head down. The only time I've ever seen him "fight" was when someone took him for an easy mark, as he's mid forties, slightly built, short and balding, and tried to walk off with his phone. The (much bigger) guy was on his back and the phone was back in sifus hand remarkably quickly. The lack of interest or emotion he displayed during this suggested to me that it wasn't the first time he'd tussled with someone.

I do find his "taiji is the best and nothing else matters" outlook frustrating sometimes, but he is very good at it so I can sort of understand his point of view. I do take the opportunity to spar with other people, some young lads practice western boxing in my park and until recently one of my colleagues was a pretty sharp Muay Thai fighter.

So. I think my teacher does a lot of things brilliantly and I can learn a great deal from him, I do think that he's one of the good guys, and I wouldn't like to fight him. There is no bravado to the man, he never wears silk PJs and rarely, if ever mentions Qi.

I don't think that Taiji is the only thing out there, but I think that it has improved my abilities at closer ranges, something my Karate lacked. I also concede that if I fought a decent grappler, it would probably end badly.

That's about it.

All the best.

[It is Fake]

Too many words:

Does your Tui Shou or pushands look like this:


This:



Or This:


No, don't give us any "well sorta," "it is a mix" and other dodging answers.

[Bezmond]

Hello Fake.

As Ming took the time to write a sizable response I considered it only polite to spend a little time replying to him.

Can't see it buddy. Can you post the links and I'll look at it over a proxy.

I imagine it looks like the most deadly of the two.

[It is Fake]

Hello Fake. Can't see it buddy. Can you post the links and I'll look at it over a proxy.

I imagine it looks like the most deadly of the two.

If you click the quote button, you will see the links.

[Bezmond]

Thanks.

I'll have to look at this at work.

[Rivington]

I'm not sure why "It's a mix" would be a bad answer. I'm sure the guys in the first two videos spent at least some of their time doing the drilling patterns demonstrated in the third.