Chenjiagou Taijiquan Gongfu School

I had enrolled in the Chenjiagou Taijiquan Gongfu School run by Grandmaster Chen Zhaosen.   Chen Jun (June), my Shenzhen sifu (website), was trained by Chen Zhaosen and also used to work at the school.  So she referred me there and helped arrange my visit.

I had found June while I was researching the possibility of training in Chenjiagou thanks to Anthony Fidler's very useful China Taichi Guide (link).    Other sources of information were ChenStyle Taijiquan by Davidine Sim and David Gaffney's, the school's own website (link), an old website about Chen Village (link), and the lovely blog by Sarah, a student of the school (link)

June is the only fluent english-speaker in the village and used to run a tea-house where all the foreign-students visiting the village could meet-up.   So she is a real celebrity in the tai-chi world!

I was very lucky that June had planned to visit Chenjiagou at the same time as my holiday, and she helped me a lot by translating, organizing and explaining.    But I also think Id have had a rewarding time visiting on my own.

The school is a 3-story building with a dining-room, training room and offices on the ground floor.   And a large outside courtyard where students train.    On the upper floors are bed-rooms for the students, and some class-rooms.  The 4th floor is a flat roof with corrugated iron roof providing shade.

The photo above shows the view from the roof looking East across the village.  The photo below shows the view looking north-west across the fields.

And looking south across the fields towards the temple.  

The school also has a small orchard nearby which is used as a training-ground, especially in summer when the trees provide some shade from the sun.

This is Chen Zhaosen practicing standing-post meditation in the early morning

The school has been extended recently with a new dining-room and kitchen.    

The school has a cook who provides breakfast (7am), lunch (12am) and dinner (6pm).

This is the cook with Chen Zhaosen's cute granddaughter.

And in his kitchen

The meals are very healthy with a lot of vegetable dishes,  rice or grain porridge or noodles and home-made bread.

I liked the food very much and was glad to be eating so much vegetables and almost no meat.   Arguably the taste is a little bland, and most people spiced it up by adding chili-sauces.  

Training at the school begins at 6:30 with an optional run.

I did this a couple of times and enjoyed it, but I had to be careful not to over-exert my legs.

The early-morning run is followed by exercises - like punching practice below.   Then breakfast (7am).

The main training sessions are 9:00am - 11:30am and 2:30pm - 5:30pm.   Each session starts with a roll-call and a short warm-up run.  This is followed by basic kicking and punching practice.

Then warm-up stretches and a run-through of the Chen Old Form 1st section (74-forms).    The students range in ability from complete beginners to very advanced.   There seems to be a core of long-term students and a regular turn-over of short-term visitors like myself.   I was interested to see that one of the visiting students had Downs Syndrome (front-left in photo below).  

I joined the small beginners group which trained inside.   This group included the other foreigners, June's student Dave who visited for a few days, and later Xi An a french writer of vietnamese descent who was starting a 3-month visit.

Initially we focused on basics like the forward and backward steps, and silk-reeling exercises.  Then move-on to work our way through the first third of the Old Form learning 2 new forms each session.

The correct stance for traditional Chen-style requires a lot of leg strength and stamina, since the basic stance is a squat with 60-70% weight on one leg.  This is very very tiring and we needed to have frequent breaks to rest our legs.   I was very glad I had been training my legs since January.

The main group of students worked out-side on a range of skills. This group seemed to be mainly long-term students of university-age who are perhaps training to become taiji teachers.

They trained on hand forms, and various weapons such as straight-sword and saber (above).

Chen Zhaosen is particularly famous for his skill with the Spring-and-Autumn Halberd (Chun Qiu Da Dao), so many students seem to be specializing in that weapon.

Practice weapons in the store-room.

The students also practiced wrestling.

And push-hands exercises.

Overall the school had a nice family atmosphere with students of different levels all working away to improve their skills.

The grandmaster seems to be a very nice man who clearly loves being a family-man.  And his school has a very nice relaxed atmosphere.   This is his grand-daughter (above)., and here he is training with his grand-son(?).  

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).

Wadaiko Performance

On Saturday we headed down to Tai Po to see Hannah perform with her school Wadaiko (Japanese big drums) group at the Tai Po Youth Arts Festival.

The festival was held at a school in the middle of Tai Po New Town.   I was interested to see the school's equipment to teach the local children how to queue.

Hannah's Wadaiko group opened the festival at around 11am, performing on a stage in front of a giant video screen.   Hannah Papa found this technology quite impressive (it has been many years since I went to a festival).

I was very intrigued by what they played over the video/sound system as the Wadaiko group was setting-up.   Songs in english about living in Hong Kong and Tai Po with cute animated video.

"Tonight everythings alright, just hold that bottle tight.  This is where I belong.  Lan Kwai Fong!".  I  assume that was the work of local musicians and artists.

I liked the songs but I  wasn't sure the subject was entirely appropriate for a school event.  

I guess I should be grateful they didn't play anything worse :  "Tonight Im looking', smokin' girls r hookin', going-down getting-high, in Wan Chai!")

Anyway the drums were eventually set-up and the group gave skilled and spirited performance.

My heart burst with pride to see Hannah perform so well.

June Chen Tai Chi

In January I started private lessons in traditional Chen-style tai-chi with June Chen in Shenzhen.

June is a 12th-generation descendent in the Chen-family Tai Chi lineage and hails from Chen Village, Henan province, the birth-place of Tai Chi.  She learnt personally from Grandmaster Chen Zhaosen and worked at Chenjiagou Taijiquan Gongfu School before moving to Shenzhen to start her own school.

June has won various awards in competitions including the prestigious Chen Style world championship competition in Henan:  World Champion in Chen Style Taiji; National Champion in Halberd (video); World 5th place in Chen Sword; 3rd place in China National Martial Art TaiChi Open Tournament.  (Videos on You tube 2015, 2011).

June's Tai Chi is traditional and very neat and beautiful.  She has a very clear and precise teaching style.  And best-of-all, from my perspective, she is fluent in English!  (MKMA interview).    So she can give me very clear explanations and corrections.

She is also an incredibly nice and sociable person.  And rather a celebrity Chen Tai Chi world since she used to run a tea-shop in Chenjioagou, which was a meeting-place for the international students training in Chen Village.

I found June thanks to Anthony Fidler's very helpful 'China Taichi Guide' when I was researching my visit to Chen Village (link, Chen-Jun page).  I'd found it surprisingly hard to find quality Tai Chi classes in Hong Kong in English, but it never occurred to me to look across the boarder in Shenzhen!  

June also has a blog (link) and website (link), Facebook ('chenjiagoutaiji'), and Youtube ('chenjiagoutaiji'), and can be contacted by e-mail at chenjiagoutaiji@126.com.

I've been learning Tai Chi since 2012 with the Li Fai school mainly with Sit Sifu, and have been very happy with the teaching and my progress.  I do think the Li Fai school is an option worth trying for English-speaking students looking for high-quality instruction (Cantonese webpage - but perhaps best to visit the Center in North Point with a Cantonese-speaking friend initially).

Although Sit Sifu don't speak English, she demonstrates the forms and corrections very clearly, so I found I could follow quite well, just by watching carefully and getting occasional explanations from English-speaking class-mates.   And once I'd read a few good books (especially 'Chen Style Taichi', Amazon link) which clearly explained fundamental points of technique and the key Chinese terms, I felt I understood 80% of what was going on, even when it was in Chinese!

At the Li Fai school I was able to learn several forms to a decent standard : Chen 56 competition form, combined 42-form, Yang 40-form, and Chen straight-sword.  Plus half-learning several other forms including the Chen new frame 'Xin Jia'.   I really like Sifu's classes, which have been the highlight of my week for several years.   So I have mixed feelings about starting with another teacher!

One difficulty I faced was that once I'd learnt the outward forms, I wanted to go deeper into the fundamental skills, especially the internal techniques (link) which you can't learn just by copying.  Although Sifu explained this to some extent, it was the 20% I couldn't understand!  

Also I was beginning to suffer from painful knees, and I felt this might be because I'd missed some fundamental points of the technique.   I've received plenty of attention and corrections from Sifu (probably more than my share), but I felt I needed a course of one-on-one lessons to really get it right.

Another factor is that in English, the best books on technique (e.g. link, link, link), and the best blogs (e.g. link), are based on the traditional Chen style from Chen Village.  So it seemed natural to try to train in this style, which is a little different from 'Wushu' sport-oriented Tai chi, with a stronger emphasis on martial-arts and working with internal power and 'chi'.

June and her dog Pichu

So I started weekly lessons with June in January.  We started from the beginning with silk-reeling exercises and basic forward and backward steps.  Then a course of standing meditation exercises.   I wanted to work on basics before my planned trip to Chen Village in late Feb, and starting on the Old Frame routine (Lao Jia Yi Lu).

Traditional Chen style is really, really demanding on the legs, and initially I could only manage a few 5-minute sets before my legs would start shaking.   But through regular practice of the basic exercises (and some help from my physio) I gradually built-up strength.   In fact my thighs changed shape markedly over a couple of months!   This seemed to take some pressure off my knees and the correct stance began to feel more comfortable.

The standing meditation was another revelation, although I only scratched the surface.   It was surprisingly demanding physically.   I had to maintain the posture for a long time while trying to achiever deeper levels of relaxation.  Apparently most of the benefit is achieved in the final part, when you are sweating hot-and-cold, and your body is screaming in agony for you to stop!    So not at all the pleasant relaxation I'd expected!

But, subsequent to this work, whenever I did the forms with appropriately related arms and breathing, I'd get a warm sensation in my hands, which I gather is a manifestation of chi and a sign you're on the right track.

So my initial indication is that June's Tai Chi teaching is the 'real deal', and I feel very lucky to be able to have regular classes with her one-to-one.   My plan is to have a weekly lesson, and more when possible, practice diligently during the week, and see where it takes me.