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A short introduction to Tian style Xingyiquan

Posted by on Feb 10, 2011 in Xingyiquan | 15 comments

Third generation Tian style Xingyiquan practitioner Tadzio Goldgewicht in Paoquan posture.

I have been living and training XYQ in it’s birthplace, Shanxi province, China, for13 years. During this time I have met practitioners from many different local lines and styles of XYQ. The major lines being passed down in Shanxi are Song and Che families, and other styles directly derived from those lines. Some other styles, like the Li Guichang one are a mix of many diffferent arts (Li Guichang’s style is a mix of mostly Hebei Xingyi (with few Song family XYQ elements in it), Yang Taijiquan, Baguazhang and some Shaolin based techniques. Each of these lines have, of course, their own characteristics and training methods, and I am fairly familiar with most of them, but no XYQ that I have seen here (or anywhere else for that matter) appealed to me as much as Tian Style XYQ. Tian style XYQ is the line coming down through Master Tian Zhonglan, disciple of Song Tielin.

Even though Master Tian learned directly from Song Tielin he also received instruction from other members of the Song family (notably Song Huchen) and went training to become a very famous fighter in the Shanxi area, known for never losing a fight in his career. The XYQ that he passed on to his sons and disciples was the result of a lifetime of research, hard training and real fighting experience, and it became very different from the XYQ practiced by the Song family. Even though there are obvious Song family XYQ elements in what he transmited, he promoted changes in the system and as a result created his own style. To establish our starting point in this article it should be clear that Tian style XYQ has its roots in Song family XYQ, bey these two lines are different and independent.
What attracted me to Tian style XYQ was, in fact, a couple of elements that I recognized as missing in the schools I have met. They were:

  1. Very strong and explosive power issuing, different that anything I have ever seen here (and I’ve seen a lot…)
  2. No nonsense approach to fighting and training
  3. Fighting theory that was expressed in daily training.
  4. The fact that Tian style XYQ is not watered down or mixed with other martial arts.

Power: I have seen, crossed hands and experienced power from renowned practitioners from different lines, and although some of them had, to some extent, a kind of power, there was always a problem with it. Some lines rely on issuing power from a certain distance, some others try to unbalance the opponent before issuing. What I have seen in Tian style XYQ that impressed me from day one was how raw and violent the power is. Absolutely refined but at the same time crude, raw, violent and very explosive.

Anyone that knows a bit about XYQ’s history knows that, as a martial art, it is supposed to be fierce and direct. Not what I generally saw throughout my years here. Well most teachers will still talk about how direct and how fighting oriented XYQ was or is supposed to be, some will also show you some applications but basically this is where the “fighting oriented” martial art stops, because to be honest I haven’t seen fighting oriented training here. In fact, more than once, I have had lineage holders telling me they don’t train fighting. There are, of course, people that still try to develop certain fighting skills and I certainly believe that some practitioners here are more than able to defend themselves, but the point is that even for these people their so called “fighting skills” (fight training) doesn’t seem to be, as it was before, an important part of what they teach. It’s there somewhere but it is never something that will be considered a most important practice, something you will see from day one.It is something that you will probably never see, some mysterious goal that exists almost as if it was some kind of legend. And if you eventually get to the point where you begin to learn some of it, my personal experience tells me that it wont be very useful for a real street fight and most of what you learn might fit better in a cooperative push hands exercise. Not that you can’t learn a few things that would be useful in a street fight, you can, but it seems that you can learn only bits and pieces, a number of techniques thrown at you as “useful for fighting”. This is not what you want. What you want is a system where those techniques fit. This is what I found in Tian style XYQ, an entire system that was created to give a student the tools that he will need in actual combat. Solo and 2 men exercises that train skills needed in real fights. Push hands thought not as a goal, an end game, but as a tool, reality based forms, sparring sessions etc.

XYQ was created as a martial art. It wasn’t created as a way to keep fit, as a way to attain spiritual advance or as a way to become a better person. Even though all these can be attained through the regular practice of XYQ, the main objective still was and is fighting. It isn’t anymore. I have heard (yes, I talk a lot to other practitioners) from a lineage holder that his style doesn’t train fighting because we don’t need to know how to fight in our modern society. From my experience I’d say that most practitioners here agree with this person. This shows us two things: the current state of XYQ as a martial art and the poor understanding that people have of martial training and the advantages that come out of it. Not only knowing how to fight is still (very) necessary, people don’t realize that correct martial training prepares the body, the mind and the spirit in very specific ways, forging a person’s spirit and personality. Because of this lack of understanding of the nature of martial training it is only but natural that modern XYQ training lacks in the very same thing that is XYQ’s soul: martial attitude.

No martial attitude, obviously, no martial training. There is all the talk about XYQ’s theory (which is 100% martial), about using your hands in this way, about issuing this and that kind of power, about the effectiveness of this or that element, or about the qualities of a certain animal in fighting, but this talk is not translated into everyday practice. Of course people still train their entire curriculum, but I don’t seem to see where all that martial attitude that permeates XYQ’s theory is in everyday practice. You don’t see all this theory talk in fighting and most people will tell you that it takes time and that sparring and fighting with XYQ are advanced practices. They are not. You don’t need endless years of practice, you need correct practice, martial oriented practice. Anything less than a martial oriented curriculum and you are back to the “you need to train hard for many years before you can actually learn how to fight” game. It seems that XYQ sparring or fighting is something that comes only after years and years of hard training in the basics, or at least that’s what they will tell you. What impressed me on Tian style XYQ is how fighting is stressed from day one. The training, everything in it, has just one objective that is teach the student how to become proficient in fighting, to allow the student to acquire martial ability. Because this is the “starting point” of Tian style XYQ, the whole training is devised in a way as to allow the student to acquire martial skill in the shortest period of time. Therefore, the theory is expressed in daily training and the student can actually understand how it applies into training and real fighting situations.

“Pure” is a tricky word. One of the reasons I came to Shanxi was because I never wanted to hear from other people about what XYQ was in its birthplace, I wanted first hand experience, I wanted the real thing. Throughout my years here I have noticed how some lines have been watered down. The reasons might make a good article but I won’t discuss them in this one. The fact is that most XYQ I’ve seen is not trained as is was in the past anymore, it became like a kind of gymnastics exercise and most people will never pass push hands. In fact it also seems that for many people ability in push hands is a main goal, as opposed to ability in a real fight, true martial ability. Over the generations the lack of martial training has watered down modern XYQ to the point where, in some cases, what we have is but a shadow of what we had before. This is not the case with Tian style XYQ and the training we have now follow the same principles of the training my predecessors had before me: it’s martial oriented.

Now, as I wrote above, I was able to identify interesting elements in many different lines in Shanxi, but the Tian style was the only one where I found all these elements combined into one system, and once I learned of it and had my first contact with it I knew I didn’t have to look anywhere else for what I was looking for.