Taiji Demonstration

On Saturday morning we were invited to attend a Taichi demonstration by famous Chen Village grandmasters, in honor of a visiting provincial governor (although we never found out what province).   

This is Grandmaster Chen Bing (above) who runs a major taiji school (link) with affiliate branches in the US.

Video:  Chen Bing demonstrating Chen New Frame
[to be posted when I can figure-out how to export from the new version of IMovie]

And 'my' Grandmaster Chen Zhousen, who runs the Chenjiagou Taiji and Gongfu School.   

Foreign students from the schools were invited to the demonstration.  Perhaps to show that the schools were attracting foreign students.  I met a nice group of ladies from Kobe Japan who were training at Chen Bing's school.

Video:   Chen Style Old Frame (1st c. 20 forms)

[to be posted when I can figure-out how to export from the new version of IMovie]

We were very. lucky to be able to see this

Chenjiagou Taiji Museum

On Saturday morning, my first day, the school was scheduled to give a demonstration in the park of the Taiji museum.  It appears that the various schools take-turns in this task to support tourism.

So we walked through town to the Tai-chi Museum.   The above photo shows 'main street' and the entrance to the wide street that runs east-west from the Main Street to the Chen ditch, where the  entrance to the largest taichi-school and the Taiji museum are located.   The wide street now has impressive ornamental gates both ends.  

Above:  Looking west down 'wide street' from outside museum entrance, towards the ornamental gate opening onto Main Street.   The red pagoda-like structure is the largest Taiji school.

Above:  My teacher Chen Jun (in posture 'white ape presents fruit')

Below:  Entrance to Taiji Museum.

The Taiji Museum and Park seems to have been built fairly recently on former fields to the north of town, significantly expanding the former Chen family temple.

There is now an impressive new temple area with colonnades memorializing former and current Chen Taiji greats.

Including Chen Zhousen, the grandmaster of my school (fortunately still very much alive).

While we were there another stone memorial was being installed.

Further into the complex was a nice new temple which I intended to return to look-at but never found time.

And statue of Chen Wangting (1580–1660) the founder of Chen Taiji (wiki link)

Behind the temples is a lovely park, a big ying-yang sign and a large pagoda-like structure housing the Taiji Museum.

The museum is seems pretty informative (if you read chinese), and I intended to come back to have a closer look.    And there is a good view from the top of the museum  

This is looking south back toward the temples and the buildings of the large Taiji school buildings at the back-right

And this is looking west towards the newly-built stadium and the buildings of the large hotel-shopping complex, which is not yet occupied.

On the way out we visited the graves area next to the temple and paid respects to Chen Wanting.

In the street outside the museum there was a lot go work going-on developing the area for tourism.   New trees and paving of the street, electronic information screens, and 'upgrading' the facades of the buildings.    

I had wanted to visit the historic Chenjiagou village before it changed forever under tourism-related development, and it seems I was just in time (or which more in later posts).

Chenjiagou Orientation

Over the Easter holiday I achieved my dream of training at a taiji school in Chenjiagou, the birth-place of Taiji.  It was a short trip of 10 nights, with 8 full days training and one day of tourism.  

Chenjiagou is such a small place that it was even hard to find on Google Maps, so here is a geographical orientation.   First orientation point is Zhengzhou in Henan province, which is about 1,400km almost due north from Hong Kong (in blue at the top of this map).   Zhenhzhou is a city of about 9 million inhabitants and an ancient capital of China (wiki link for Zhengzhou).

I flew there on Easter Friday by direct Dragonair flight to 'Zhengzhou Xinzheng International Airport'.  This is south of Zhengzhou near Xinzheng and close to the G4 motorway (see map below).   I was picked up by my teacher June in a taxi.

We didn't go into Zhengzhou city, and instead circled around it, going north on the G4 motorway then west on the G30 parallel-to and south-of the yellow river, heading towards Gongyi (wiki link), then turning north, crossing the Yellow River towards Wenxian and finally heading east to Chenjiagou.  About 2 hours driving through a very historic area.

In the above map,  Chengiagou is marked by a white circle in the upper middle-left, Zhengzhou airport is near green 'G4' label in lower middle-right.    Note that Chenjiagou is close to the Yellow River and four historic cities:  Luoyang (west, wiki link), Gonyi (west), Zhengzhou (middle) and Kaifeng (right, wiki link).

We crossed the Yellow River just above where the Yilou river joins the Yellow River.   This is apparently an important area in the development of Taoism, and the sight of the different colored waters mixing is reputed to be the origin of the Ying-Yang sign.

Chenjiagou is a small farming village.   It was named after Chen Family ('Chen jia') who established it around 1375 and the drainage ditch (gou) they dig.  The ditch  can be seen in the right of the photo below as a green line of trees running north-south.  The village is bounded on the west side by a modern canal, which is part of a system moving water from the wet south of China to the dry north.

More recently the government is trying to develop Chenjiagou as a tourist destination to capitalize on the growing worldwide interest in Taiji.   They have recently built a stadium for competitions to the north of the village (below the big ying-yang sign in the photo),  a hotel complex nearby to house competitors, and a Tai chi museum and surrounding park (around the small ying-yang sign).

The main road thought he village, which I'll call Main Street, runs north-south.   The largest and most famous taiji  school is on the main road next to the entrance to the museum (to the left of where it says 'Taiji Quanzuci').   The school I enrolled in, was 'Chenjiagou Taijiquan Gongfu School' on the west side of the village with a nice view over fields.    Across the field to the south of the school it is a temple.  My teacher June has a house in the south a bit below where it says 'N 1st St'

Chengiagou is a small village so takes only about 10 min to walk from the school to the the main street or June's house.  There are 2-3 restaurants, just a few shops and one supermarket, although there is a market every 10-days in the road to the sough of the village (bottom right in photo).