Xingyi in Taiwan

Stopping back in Taiwan for another look at the Tang Shou Tao martial arts system.
This style represents a fusion of traditional Chinese arts with the structure and ranking borrowed from Japanese systems.
I love this stuff. Look at the beauty of the forms-- and I think the guy demonstrating the chicken and swallow forms may be Su Dong Chen, who went on to be a famous master in his own right.
From Wikipedia:

Tang Shou Tao is not a separate style of martial art, but rather a practical, step-by-step, systematic approach to learning internal martial arts and developing highly refined levels of skill. It incorporates elements of all three of the major Chinese internal arts (xingyiquan, baguazhang, and taijiquan) as well as Shaolin kung fu and qigong. However, the emphasis of this system is on xingyi and bagua. Although the system itself was formed and founded by Hung I-Hsiang during the 1950s and 1960s, the roots of using the commonalities of bagua and xingyi in practice and application can easily be traced back through Hung's teacher Chang Chun-Feng (張俊峰) to his teachers, Li Cunyi (李存義) and Gao Yisheng (高義盛).
When Hung I-Hsiang took a trip to Japan, he was very impressed with the way martial arts instruction was organized there. He liked the uniforms, the belt system, and the systematic approach to training. Subsequently, he adopted many of the Japanese style martial arts school characteristics when he opened his own school. The students had belt ranks, wore Japanese style uniforms, and Hung devised a more systematic approach to martial arts instruction than what was typical of most Chinese style schools.

--Very cool stuff...

Cultural Exchange

Part 1


Part 2

Boy am I gonna' be late for work...

I've been reading posts from our friends over at Formosa Neijia, some guys that are living and training in Taiwan. It has been very interesting reading about life and martial arts in the heart of traditional Asian fighting systems. Among other things they have discussed range from racism against whites or mixed race couples and children, racism against qualified black business applicants in Taiwanese companies, the current state of martial training in Taiwan as well as mundane but everyday things like choice of cola's and soft drinks available. Please check out their link on the right side of this blog...Formosa Neijia--
With this in mind, I found this great BBC documentary on martial arts in Taiwan. Here are the first two segments, I will post the second two tomorrow.
Enjoy...