Chen Xiaoxing is the principal of the Chenjiagou Taijiquan School. Born in 1952, he is a lifelong resident of Chenjiagou known for his uncompromising and traditional teaching methods. Following is a composite of two interviews - the first took place during Chenjiagou Taijiquan GB’s 2005 training trip in China; the second during Chen Xiaoxing’s final international training camp in Slovenia in 2018. He discussed some of the features and background of the Xinjia (New Frame) routines to clear up several points of confusion. He offered some thoughts on the importance of fundamental training in order to reach the higher levels of Taijiquan and what it means to progress through the “five levels of skill.” Finally he touches on how the teacher-student relationship has changed over the years.
Q: From many years of training with you it’s clear that you place tremendous importance on jibengong (basic training exercises). Can you explain its importance and why you think that it is necessary even for experienced practitioners?
Chen Xiaoxing (CXX): The jibengong is the core foundation; if you haven’t grasped the jibengong you don’t have anything. It is important that you train from the feet upwards. Often times when you see people doing partner work, why is it so easy for one person to uproot the other person? The answer is found in your own body - whether you can relax and sink your strength into the ground. The emphasis is not about what you do with your arms and hands. When you feel all your weight naturally dropping into your feet to the ground; When you’re able to ground deeply your body will be fit and your health will be good. If you haven’t got that core foundation how can you be fit and well?
As you practise, look for the essence in the requirements. When you feel the strength in your legs, slowly work to increase the jin in your lower body. If you do this your skill will slowly and naturally accrue. This is why you often hear the saying “lian quan bu lian gong, dao tou yi chang kong” (training quan without training gong, at the end all is in vain). That’s why there is so much emphasis on the jibengong. A lot of my long term students still come to me to revise the jibengong. It is the least exciting and most repetitive aspect of training and not many people can withstand year after year of doing the basics.
Q: What are the benefits of training zhan zhuang (standing pole) regularly and how does it complement and add to the skills developed from training the form?
CXX: Zhan zhuang is a training method to get fundamental skill (gong). Why fundamental skill? Many people think that the basics involve stretching the legs and back etc... in fact the fundamental skill of Taijiquan involves focusing the intention and feeling the qi, as in the taolu (form routine). Whether it is zhan zhuang, chansigong (reeling silk exercises) or taolu, the fundamental skill is to mentally and physically enable the experience of intention and qi and the extent to which they can be achieved. Because zhan zhuang training is done in a static posture, it is easier to grasp and experience them, unlike in the form routine where one has to cope with a myriad of changes of directions and focus. The mental and energetic feel gleaned from zhan zhuang can then be incorporated into the form. This is the reason why zhan zhuang is important and is a part of training that cannot be missed.
Q: When you are teaching you usually follow zhan zhuang practice with quite a long time of chansigong (silk reeling exercises). How should one pay attention to and work towards incorporating the many requirements e.g. shun chan (natural flow) and ni chan (reverse flow) movements, sinking qi, changing weight correctly etc.
CXX: You should be natural and not exaggerate the movements. In the beginning the idea of shun chan and ni chan can be helpful as a guideline to practice. But it’s not absolute and you shouldn’t separate and break them down too much. They are both parts of the circle. Simply it’s like the principle of opening and closing, soft and hard or shun chan and ni chan, all taking place holistically within one yin-yang circle.
Q: In Chenjiagou several variants of the Taijiquan routines are practised. Can you talk about why that is and briefly about the Xinjia (New Frame) and where it fits among the other forms or frames of Chen Family Taijiquan?
CXX: In Chenjiagou we referred to our quan (martial arts or boxing) as Laojia (Old Frame) and Xiaojia (Small Frame), or more often in the old days as Dajia (Big Frame) and Xiaojia (Small Frame). There were objections by some that calling a frame Laojia implied an older lineage, so in Chenjiagou we would say Dajia. Xinjia is developed from Dajia (or Laojia of today). Two hundred years ago, as documented, the so called Laojia passed down through six generations to our fourteenth generation ancestor Chen Changxing. He rearranged the routines practised previously into the Yilu (First Routine) and Erlu (Second Routine or Cannon Fist) of today. The quality of the former is predominately soft and the latter predominately hard. This is in keeping with the principles of complementary and alternating hard and soft actions, underpinned by the characteristic spiralling and rotational movements.
Actually I don’t agree with the idea that Chen Changxing created Dajia and Chen Qingping created Xiaojia. In my opinion the training process is all about following the progression of your skill from big to medium, from medium to small and small to none. At the beginning you have to use your external movement to drive your qi so everything is big and expansive. When you start training you’re not aware of how your qi is moving so you don’t know the boundaries of your movements. Gradually you become familiar with the movements and start to feel the correct boundaries by which point you will start to use your internal feelings to guide your movements. Whereas at the beginning you use your hands to find the limit of a movement, when you’re very familiar you begin to use your body to find the limit. At that point you’re not so erratic and uncontrolled. All your movements are reduced and not so big. Nowadays people separate the Dajia and Xiaojia in a way they didn’t in the past. Really it should be about the quality of your movement, (not the routine you practise). I’m not going to say whether Dajia is better or Xiaojia is better. That’s not what it’s about. It’s whether or not you have fulfilled the movement principles and how well you express them.
In 1928 my grandfather Chen Fake went to Beijing to teach Taijiquan. Over the years in Beijing, based on his experience and understanding he incorporated a number of new ideas and techniques into the existing form. These changes didn’t take place all at once but over many years. In 1965 his son, my uncle Chen Zhaokui, came back to Chenjiagou to teach us. The form he taught is the variant form that Chen Fake had created. The main difference is the more visible changing of jin and the expression of short jin. He had also incorporated many additional small movements. At that time it really appealed to the younger people because of the many more dynamic and explosive actions. As it is different from the form practised in the village, after some discussion, it was deemed sensible to call the centuries-old routine the Old Frame (Laojia) and the decades-old routine the New Frame (Xinjia). Laojia and Xinjia therefore should not be viewed as separate forms because both are foundation forms [and both fall within the classification of Dajia]. In Chenjiagou, Laojia is used as the foundation form because it is less flamboyant and steady, and learners are able to understand and realise the movement principle more clearly. In Chenjiagou people have the advantage of knowing and training both routines.
Q: Form training is considered to be the most important basic training method of Chen Taijiquan. How can a practitioner get the most from this core aspect of practice?
CXX: To learn the sequence of movements of the form is really very easy and even the most stupid person will have learned it within one to four months. To learn the movement principles however you need someone to instruct you. On top of this you need to be prepared to put in hard work. Even training a few movements can be enough to make you ache, never mind training the routine ten or twenty times. The crux of the skill is in the consistency of practice. There’s a saying that if you want to develop Taijiquan skill you must be able to “treat one year as if it were a day.” Gongfu (fundamental skill) is really about time. It is only from lengthy and constant practice that you realise the skill. People often visit the school in Chenjiagou for short periods of intensive training and during these times [with the motivation that comes from being in the environment and seeing people of a good standard practising all around you] training ten times [repeating the form] in one day is not difficult. The question is can you go back home and persevere with the same intensity for three or five years?
Whatever skill you are hoping to develop, you need to reach a certain level in order to open up the next level. This is because when you are at one level you have certain feelings. [Chen Xiaoxing illustrated this point by pointing to the square tiles on the floor. Approaching the boundary of one tile it seems as if you have reached the limit. But as soon as you cross over the boundary a whole expanse opens up before encountering the next one]. That’s why in Taijiquan there is what we term as “five levels of gongfu”. Proceeding through these five levels, one level opens up to the next. Only at the third level you can correct yourself and carry out self-adjustments because only then you can feel what is right and wrong. Even at this level it is best that you can check that you stay on the right path. If there is nobody to guide you you can still go down the wrong tangent. With self-adjustment, or having someone adjust you, the most important part is still training and practice, or you’ll stagnate and stop improving (or even go backward - many good practitioners who leave their teachers too soon or stop learning suffer this fate).
The first thing a person must do then is to train the frame, until specific internal qi emerges. This must be realised before one is eligible to train tuishou (push hands). Because practising tuishou merely allows you to grasp a few more obvious attacking techniques than that learnt in the form. Without learning the form it is difficult to achieve the highest level of Taijquan. When you encounter an external interference, you are invariably unable to neutralise or escape it. You will not be able to execute the "four ounces to deflect a thousand pounds" principle. In the process of learning, put into practice the essential principles. Ignorance of the essential principles, or failure to put them into practice, results in nothing no matter how many forms you learn.
Q: Can you talk a little more about the five levels of gongfu and the process of working through each level?
CXX: The five levels are a means of describing your ability in relation to the yin-yang balance you are able to express when you are training Taijiquan. Briefly, the first level is referred to as ‘nine yang – one yin’. A person at this level is extremely stiff and has not yet learned how to be loose. They’re brittle and as soon as someone touches them they fall over. During the second level ‘eight yang – two yin’ it’s all about the arms [the extremities]. In combat when practitioners at this level face each other they tend to flail about wildly relying on external strength. Practitioners at the third level ‘seven yang – three yin’ although better still rely on too much strength. By the fourth level ‘six yang – four yin’ basically a person is getting nearer to principles and it’s difficult for people to get them. However, even at this stage the neigong (internal strength) has still not been fully realised. The fifth and highest level ‘five yang – five yin’ is when every part of the body is perfectly balanced. At this stage the saying that “every part of the body is a weapon” applies. Whichever part of the body a person touches jin is present. This jin can be used at will.
Q: You’ve practised Taijiquan since your early childhood and obviously gone through different stages of development and understanding. What can you say about your understanding of Taijiquan now?
CXX: When I was young I didn’t understand how to train, having the simple idea that the more I did the better. There wasn’t a lot of thought behind my practice. I was born into an environment where I was expected to train Taijiquan. Doing each training session was just like doing my duty. In time I came to realise that Taijiquan represents the balance of the yin and yang that encompasses all things. That’s why the ancestors formulate the five levels and aim to reach the fifth and highest level where there is a perfect balance between the two. Within Taijiquan, the quan (martial art and the physical aspect of the art) is only the smaller part. It is not just the quan. The width of your understanding of the Taiji philosophy and how much you are able to encompass it determines how big your Taijiquan is.
Q: You touched earlier upon the teacher – student relationship. In the past I understand that it was different than today. In the past people don’t pay, but today it is conducted like a commercial exchange - what is your opinion [This question was posed by one of the students in the group]?
CXX: This view is wrong. In the past they do take payment, but the payment method was different. Nowadays, the student comes and negotiates with the teacher and says how much for an hour - and that hour is given to the person. People think that in the past no payment was required. This doesn’t make sense. Take for example, my uncle Chen Zhaokui. As he travelled around teaching, if he did not get payment, how could he survive?
Another thing that’s different is that in the past they were no fixed teaching times and the teacher taught when he felt like it or when they had some spare time. Often payment was made in kind, like helping out in the house, on the land or doing labour for the teacher; Or bringing a sack of flour, some meat and vegetables when they come to learn. One of my grandfather’s (Chen Fake) students worked in a medicine shop - although he didn’t pay to learn whenever anyone in the family was sick, he would bring medicine without charging. There was also a tradition of the richer paying a bit more, but the poor didn’t - so the rich subsidise the learning of the poor who want to learn but have no money. Even today the children of the village who come to learn at my school do not have to pay.