A lineage, when viewed from the perspective of practice rather than from a library, is not a family tree. It is a human chain of information. What flows through it are things that have been demonstrated, corrected, felt through the hands, and then passed on to someone else who, in turn, has felt them. Nothing that really matters in this chain can be captured in a list of movements. The movements are the visible part – and therefore the part that is most easily copied, photographed, published and standardised.
The invisible part – the part that determines how the body organises itself to produce these movements – cannot be copied at a glance. It requires prolonged contact, manual correction: someone who places their hands on you and says, ‘No, not like that.’ It is for this reason that the most interesting forms of transmission have often been preserved within narrow, almost confidential circles, and that their history is difficult to record accurately.
The following story is one such example. It links a late nineteenth-century master, Yang Jianhou, to a man who died in 1987, Wang Yongquan, via a steward at a Manchu princely residence. It claims to have preserved, sheltered from public circulation, a form of Yang family taijiquan predating Yang Chengfu’s revisions. It is now known as 老六路, the six old forms. It has its devotees, it has its detractors, and it deserves better than the two usual knee-jerk reactions: enthusiastic endorsement or a shrug of the shoulders.
Yang Jianhou lived from 1839 to 1917. He belonged to the second generation of the Yang family, the one that received its teaching directly from Yang Luchan, the man who brought the art from Chenjiagou and introduced it to Beijing. He is often described as the second son, which is accurate in terms of the line of transmission but incorrect in terms of civil registration: the eldest, Yang Fenghou, died young, so Jianhou was in fact the third-born, but the second of the two sons who would carry on the tradition. This slight confusion persists in almost all the literature, both Western and Chinese, and it is best to be aware of it so as not to be baffled by two sources that appear to contradict one another when they are actually saying the same thing.
His elder brother, Yang Banhou, born in 1837 and died in 1892, is remembered within the discipline as a stern man.
Quick-tempered, brusque, and not one to go easy on anyone, he did not train many pupils and his branch of the art has dwindled. Jianhou is the opposite. Patient, methodical, able to explain, and above all capable of adapting what he demonstrates to the person in front of him. This is not a mere anecdotal difference in character; it is a difference that determines the future of the art: it is through Jianhou and his two sons, Yang Shaohou (born in 1862) and Yang Chengfu (born in 1883), that the bulk of its subsequent dissemination will take place. A method does not survive simply because it is good; it survives because someone has managed to make it teachable.
One must picture the Beijing in which all this took place, for the setting is not insignificant. Yang Luchan had been brought to the capital in the 1850s and 1860s to teach the Banner troops and in the great Manchu aristocratic households, but he did not care for them. The Yang style of taijiquan therefore did not initially spread as a popular park-side practice, as one might instinctively imagine today when seeing pensioners practising their forms in the early morning. It spread as an indoor art, taught behind closed doors to a high-ranking clientele, within a framework of service and discretion.
Jianhou inherited this position and taught within the same framework, notably in princely residences. This imposed constraints that are often underestimated. One does not teach in the same way to a prince who wishes to maintain his health and uphold his status, to a guard for whom it is his profession, and to a steward who has been serving you tea for fifteen years. There is no duplicity here; rather, there is a constant process of adaptation. Tradition holds that Jianhou practised a so-called ‘medium’ frame, situated between the ‘large’ frame—which would later become the norm—and the more compact and rapid forms associated with his son Shaohou.
This point is worth pausing over, because it nips a good many of the authenticity disputes in the bud. At the end of the nineteenth century, there was no single ‘Yang form’. There was a living repertoire, adapted according to the pupil, the objective at hand and the context. To ask which of the current versions is the true original form is to ask a question that made no sense at the time when the art was being passed down. The question that makes sense is a different one: which principle of internal organisation does a particular version preserve, and does this principle work when one places one’s hands on someone?
The master of the house in our story is called Pu Lun. He was a real, historically documented figure, a member of the waning imperial clan, who died in 1927 and was born, according to sources, in either 1869 or 1874. His genealogical position is unique. His father, Zaizhi, was the adopted heir of Yiwei, the eldest son of Emperor Daoguang. On paper, therefore, his branch is the senior branch of the imperial lineage, which is why he is commonly referred to as the eldest imperial grandson. In 1875, upon the death of Emperor Tongzhi, his name was mentioned amongst the possible successors. He was ruled out for a reason that the Chinese of the time took very seriously: his father’s lineage was adoptive rather than by blood.
Holding the title of beizi, the fourth rank of the imperial nobility, he nevertheless remained a prominent official figure. In 1904, he led the Chinese delegation to the St Louis World’s Fair, where he was received by President Roosevelt and had parts of his own Beijing residence reconstructed on site. He subsequently became President of the Consultative Assembly, then Minister of Agriculture, Industry and Trade, during the very final years of the regime. According to the lineage’s tradition, he was a pupil of Yang Jianhou, which is by no means implausible: at that time, having a taijiquan master attached to one’s household was as common in those circles as having a calligraphy teacher.
But the decisive link in the story is not the prince. It is his steward.
Wang Chonglu, steward of Pu Lun’s residence, was accepted by Yang Jianhou as a pupil who had ‘entered the chamber’, or the inner chamber. The expression is not a mere formality, and one must take the time to understand it, for it encapsulates almost the entire logic of what follows.
It derives from a passage in the Analects of Confucius, which distinguishes between one who has ‘ascended into the hall’ and one who has ‘entered the inner chamber’. To ‘ascend into the hall’ is to be received, to attend, to learn publicly, to be part of the circle. To ‘enter the chamber’ is to be admitted into the intimacy of the method. In the world of Chinese martial arts, the rushi dizi (Disciple) is not simply a good pupil or a long-standing pupil: he is a son within the lineage of transmission, with the duties that this entails—service, loyalty, discretion—and the corresponding right to receive what is not shown to others.
Herein lies the paradoxical nature of this lineage, and this is what makes it so fascinating from a human perspective. The prince is the prestigious pupil, the one whose name is remembered. The servant is the one who receives the heart of the method, because he deserves it. There is a very clear explanation for this: a steward is available every day; he is there in the morning and in the evening; he does not argue, he does not grow impatient, he does not compare what he sees with what he might have seen elsewhere, and he will live long enough alongside his master for time to do its work. A prince, on the other hand, has a busy schedule.
This same dynamic also explains the culture of silence that would characterise the branch for more than half a century. A steward of a princely residence does not publish works, does not seek the limelight, does not publicly challenge anyone, and does not seek to make a name for himself in a milieu where he has no social standing. He passes on this tradition to his son. What was once a forced choice would later, in the branch’s own discourse, become a virtue they claimed as their own. It is a classic mechanism, and there is no reason to hold it against anyone.
The son’s name is Wang Yongquan. He was born in Beijing in 1904 and goes by the social name Zaishan. At around the age of seven – that is, between 1911 and 1912 – he began to accompany his father and receive instruction from Yang Jianhou, as well as, according to several sources, from Yang Shaohou. He was thirteen when Jianhou died in 1917. He subsequently continued his training under Yang Chengfu.
This chronology is at the heart of the whole matter and must be viewed objectively, without embellishing or dismissing it. On the one hand, there were five or six years of daily contact with Jianhou, between the ages of seven and thirteen, within the domestic setting where his father was the household’s right-hand man. This was a genuine period of time, in an exceptionally favourable setting, and at an age when the body absorbs things deeply, without the need for words – which is precisely the mode of learning that this kind of art demands. On the other hand, we are talking about a child. What a ten-year-old boy receives from a seventy-five-year-old man is necessarily filtered through the father, and then through several decades of maturation, correction and personal reconstruction.
In other words, what we are discussing here is not a direct transfer from Yang Jianhou to Wang Yongquan. It is a three-way transmission: from Jianhou to Chonglu to Yongquan, in which the father performs the task of interpretation and the son that of assimilation. To say this does not diminish the lineage; it describes it accurately. All transmissions work in this way, including those that claim otherwise.
From 1926 onwards, Wang Yongquan taught, albeit on a limited scale, to just a few people. He had direct access to the source of the Yang family’s secrets. He sought neither a large number of pupils, nor fame, nor publication. He lived through the Republic, the war, the occupation and the founding of the People’s Republic in this way, without ever becoming part of the public landscape of taijiquan. He had a loyal friend, also named ‘Wang’, with whom he exchanged many ideas. It is even said that it was thanks to Wang that he developed his martial effectiveness, before mastering the secrets of the ancient Yang form. Yet it was precisely during these very same decades that the public landscape took shape, centred on the figure of Yang Chengfu, his tours of Shanghai, Nanjing and Guangzhou, his photographs and his books.
There is a contrast here that must be considered. Two men, trained within the same family, from the same source, contemporaries of one another. One became the global face of the Yang style; the other remained unseen for sixty years. This is not a matter of merit or talent. It is a matter of social standing, temperament and the times.
Since this branch is defined in opposition to the standardised version, the latter must be described honestly, without caricature.
Yang Chengfu began teaching publicly in Beijing in the 1910s, notably in Zhongshan Park. Following his father’s death in 1917, he deepened his own practice, then gradually developed and established, throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the form that would become the global benchmark for the Yang style: the large, expansive, regular frame, maintained at a constant height, stripped of its accelerations, jumps and visible emissions.
This standardisation is documented by a series of publications that allow us to trace its stages. In 1921, Xu Yusheng’s book was published. In 1925, another book appeared, setting out the Taijiquan form by Chen Weiming based on Yang Chengfu’s teachings. In 1934, the final official book on the Yang form was published, presenting the canonical version. Between these milestones, we observe successive adjustments in the number and order of the postures, in the overall height, and in the handling of transitions.
The reasons for this work are entirely rational, and it would be childish to see it as a betrayal or a deliberate watering down. Teaching hundreds of people in a park, across several towns, to people of all ages, requires a form that is reproducible, learnable in a group, safe, and capable of being passed on through books and photographs. It also requires removing from public demonstration anything that is neither safe nor comprehensible without hands-on correction: sudden changes in rhythm, the release of energy, and a significant part of the internal work which, when shown without being explained through hands-on guidance, produces nothing but hollow imitations.
The proposal put forward by Wang Yongquan’s branch can therefore be formulated without controversy. Yang Chengfu’s grand framework is not a watered-down version; it is a version optimised for a new objective—mass dissemination and public health—an objective which, incidentally, it has fulfilled beyond all expectations. The older branch, for its part, claims to have preserved the earlier format – the one calibrated for a small number of people and for effectiveness in close combat.
The very name, 老六路 (the six old paths), refers to the organisation of the sequence into six sections or pathways and to the precedence that the branch claims over the standardised form. The count of movements varies depending on the lineage and the method of segmentation: eighty-nine is commonly cited, though sometimes eighty-eight.
This variability is not a lack of rigour; it is revealing. In this branch, numbering has never been a matter of doctrine, because form is not the primary focus here.
It serves as a framework. There is no debate over whether the simple whip should be counted once or three times, for the same reason that a serious musician does not argue over the number of bars in an exercise: what matters is what one is working on.
Wang Yongquan’s central proposition concerns internal work, or Nei Gong. He defines it as follows: internal power is a combination—a composition, in the almost chemical sense of the term—of the mind, intention and breath. And he immediately adds the clarification that makes all the difference: a combination, not a concentration.
The nuance seems speculative until one has experienced it, and it becomes brutally clear the moment one does. To concentrate is to gather at a single point. To gather at a single point within the body means to harden that spot, to bring tension to it, to create a density that the other person will sense immediately and upon which they can lean. Most practitioners who believe they are working on intention are in fact doing this: they create a mental hard point which becomes a physical hard point.
Combining is something else entirely. It is allowing three registers to merge into a new quality that resembles none of the three taken separately, just as two gases form a liquid that no longer possesses the properties of either. The result is not localised anywhere. There is nothing to grasp, because there is no point.
This way of seeing things dictates a progression which the discipline readily breaks down into three stages, and which is an excellent tool for assessing one’s own level honestly. At the first stage, one works on techniques: a particular posture responds to a particular attack; one learns a vocabulary of movement; one builds up a repertoire of responses. This is essential and it is where everyone begins, but it is also the level at which one remains a prisoner of the situation, since one must recognise the attack in order to choose the response, and recognition always takes time that one does not have.
On the second level, we work on energies: we stop thinking in terms of movements and start thinking in terms of qualities of force, directions, spirals and points of support. The repertoire of movements becomes secondary, because the same quality manifests itself in ten different postures and we no longer need to know which one we are performing. This is a considerable leap, and many good practitioners stop there, which is already a very respectable level.
On the third level, we work on the breath and enter a realm where it is no longer the contact that decides, but what precedes it. It is difficult to describe but very easy to recognise: the opponent has already lost their balance before anything has happened, and they cannot say at what precise moment.
A word of warning is needed straight away, as this is precisely where things go wrong in many schools. This third level does not negate the first two; it builds upon them.
One cannot start at the end. A practitioner who has never built up their repertoire or developed their strength, and who speaks straight away of breath and intention, is not working at the third level: they are working in the basement, having simply dispensed with the building altogether. The distinction becomes clear within three seconds of contact with someone who is not playing along, and there is no shame in checking this regularly.
From this proposition follows the formula that structures the foundational work in this discipline: 松散通空. Four characters, and above all four successive states, which must under no circumstances be interpreted as four synonyms for ‘relaxation’.
松, song, to relax. To release unnecessary tension without slumping. The structure remains supportive; the skeleton continues to do its job; it is the tensions that have no business being there that are released. This is the stage that almost everyone is familiar with, and it is also the one where almost everyone stops, because it already produces a pleasant sensation and is mistaken for the final goal.
散, san, to disperse. Do not confine the relaxation to one area; do not turn it into a small pool of well-being somewhere in the abdomen or shoulders, but let it spread out to the extremities, to the fingertips, beneath the skin and a little beyond. Many people relax and then hold on to it. This is a trap, because what is held on to in turn becomes a localised mass.
通, tong, to make passable. Establish continuity from the foot to the top of the skull and down to the hands, without any stopping point, without any joint that cuts it off. The test is simple and unforgiving: pressure applied to one hand must be felt all the way to the ground, and if it stops somewhere along the way, the place where it stops is exactly what you still need to work on.
空, kong, to empty. To offer no further substance to be grasped. Your opponent seeks your structure and finds nothing upon which to apply their force. This is the stage that is most difficult to describe and yet easiest to recognise when encountered in another person, because one has the unpleasant sensation of pushing into a void and falling forwards without having been pushed.
Each of these four terms refers to a verifiable state in one-on-one contact. None refers to a state of mind. This is the fundamental difference between a vocabulary of method and a vocabulary of atmosphere, and it is probably the best criterion for judging a school: ask yourself whether what it says can be tested on a partner within the next hour.
Another very characteristic feature of this discipline is the representation of the body by three horizontal rings: the three circles of breath. One circle at shoulder height, one at the waist, and one at the hips.
These are not poetic images, nor is it a matter of visualising pretty halos. They are working reference points, and they serve three very practical purposes.
Firstly, to organise the practitioner’s own volume: the body ceases to be a vertical line with arms hanging down; it becomes an occupied volume, which completely changes the way it receives a push. Secondly, to distribute pressure rather than localising it in the arms – which is where the overwhelming majority of beginners concentrate it, and where it is most easily neutralised. Thirdly, to define a zone which the opponent cannot penetrate without being deflected before even reaching the body.
If there is one practical consequence to bear in mind, it is this: in this approach, it is not the hand that meets the opponent, but the body’s volume.
Next comes a distinction that Wang Yongquan makes with great care, and which is perhaps the most immediately useful of all his teachings: that between the centre of gravity and the centre.
The centre of gravity is a mechanical fact, linked to the distribution of weight. It shifts, it can be manipulated, and it can be attacked. The centre is something else entirely: it is the point of internal organisation, the source of intention, the point of decision-making. The whole practice of contact consists in never exposing the latter, no matter what happens to the former.
This distinction explains two phenomena that every practitioner has observed without always knowing how to describe them. Firstly, why some practitioners appear to allow themselves to be thrown off balance, adopt positions that seem compromised, yet are never actually affected: their centre of gravity shifts, their centre remains untouched, and they return to wherever they choose. Secondly, why do others collapse even though their posture seemed perfect: the structure was intact, but the centre had already been found and occupied, often even before contact was made, by a simple intention.
Working in pairs, in this discipline, is not called ‘pushing hands’, but ‘kneading hands’. The change in wording signifies a change in focus, and this is not merely a refinement of vocabulary.
We do not push. We knead, we feel, we listen, we follow the other person’s body until it reveals its points of rigidity, and these points are always there, in everyone, including the person facing you with twenty years’ practice. The sequence of movements is traditionally described in five stages: receiving, guiding, dissolving, grasping, and releasing.
One must consider the proportions. The release is the last and shortest of the five stages, the one that lasts but a moment and yet is the only one shown in videos, the only one that makes an impression, the only one beginners want to learn. The bulk of the actual work takes place in the first three stages, in a realm that is almost invisible to the outside observer. A practice that focuses all its time on the fifth stage produces people who push hard – something any reasonably strong body can already do without ten years’ study.
Wang Yongquan organises his entire method around two complementary strands, and this structure is simple yet remarkably illuminating: the work of self-awareness, which takes place through the form and internal work, and the work of understanding the other, which takes place through contact.
The mistake is symmetrical and can be found everywhere, in both directions. Those who practise only the form gradually build up a highly satisfying inner coherence—sometimes very beautiful to behold—which does not withstand thirty seconds of the first genuine contact, because it has never been subjected to anything other than itself. Those who practise only contact accumulate reflexes that are effective in the short term but without foundation, and they plateau at the level their physical condition allows, then decline along with it.
The two aspects are not two disciplines to be practised alternately. They validate one another.
Form gives contact something to work with; contact reveals whether form is merely making things up.
There remains the criterion which, in this discipline, settles the question of the intensity and quantity of work, and which can be summed up in six characters: Using intention nourishes; using muscular force damages.
This is not a health-and-wellbeing maxim, nor is it an invitation to laziness. It is a test that can be applied to every session, and which has the advantage of not depending on any external judgement. The question is: has what I have just done for an hour left me feeling more or less capable than before? A session done correctly leaves the body more supple, the breathing deeper, the mood more stable, and makes you want to do it again the next day. A session where muscular strength has taken over leaves you stiff, drained, with tension in the neck and forearms, and a vague sense of moral satisfaction at having suffered – which has no place here.
Over the decades, it is this criterion—and not the number of hours accumulated—that makes the difference between a seventy-year-old practitioner who still has something to pass on and a seventy-year-old practitioner who is in pain all over.
If one were to summarise in a single sentence what is truly passed on in this branch, it is not just another sequence of movements. It is a hierarchy. Internal work governs the structure, the structure governs the movement, and the movement governs nothing at all.
Hence the saying that circulates within this lineage to describe what one must unlearn, and which always takes one aback when first heard: the hands do not work of their own accord. The hand is a terminal. It reflects what is happening elsewhere. As soon as it takes the initiative, as soon as it decides on its own trajectory, it cuts itself off from the rest and becomes, once again, an arm that pushes.
This is probably the longest learning process of all, because it does not involve acquiring something but rather letting go of an automatic reflex ingrained since childhood. There are no shortcuts and there is no magic exercise. There are years during which someone keeps telling you that you’ve just done it with your hand again.
It remains to be told how all this emerged from silence, because the story of its publication sheds light on many things.
Three milestones. In 1957, Wang set up a group in Beijing and formally accepted his first disciples: Zhu Huaiyuan, Sun Deshan, Zhang Guangling, Gao Zhankui and Zhang Xiaoda. This marked the first institutionalisation of the branch, but it remained local and low-key – one circle amongst many in a city that had plenty of them.
From 1977 onwards, following the Cultural Revolution, he resumed teaching and led the taijiquan group at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. This detail changed everything. The audience was no longer made up of security guards, domestic staff or neighbours, but of researchers, philosophers and academics.
People whose profession consists precisely of conceptualising, recording, comparing, systematising and publishing.
In 1990, three years after his death, an important book was published: the ‘True Account of Yang-style Taijiquan’, compiled from his teachings and notes by Wei Shuren and the philosopher Qi Yi. It was this book that brought the style into the Chinese public sphere. This was followed by works by Wei Shuren, then the dissemination of the art by several of his students and other instructors, and the gradual arrival of the method in the West.
Here we can see a cultural shift that must be faced head-on. A method passed down for sixty years within a family setting, in relative obscurity, passed into the hands of the academic world within the space of a decade. In doing so, it gains formalisation, a written vocabulary, a presentable coherence, and wider dissemination. It loses, as always, some of the implicit understanding that underpinned it, and it exposes itself to a type of criticism to which it had never before been subjected: documentary criticism. This criticism was not long in coming.
What are we to make of all this when we are practising, rather than simply reading about it?
Firstly, maintain the sequence of learning, which matters more than the repertoire. This discipline teaches internal organisation first and form second, as a support. Reversing the order produces a practitioner who knows many movements but has nothing to put into them – which is by far the most common and most discouraging sight to observe.
Next, use the terminology as a tool for verification, not as mere embellishment. The three circles, the centre distinguished from the centre of gravity: each of these terms denotes a state that can be tested in a partner drill, straight away, without waiting to have understood the theory. Terminology that cannot be tested is not technical terminology; it is literature.
Next, apply the criterion that nurtures rather than the one that undermines, session after session, just as one would record data. It is more reliable than any subjective assessment of the quality of a training session.
Next, practise contact by seeking to perceive rather than to win. The day you want to win, you stop learning, you resort to force, and you’re back to square one for another ten years. This is not a moral requirement, it is a technical constraint: you cannot listen and force at the same time.
Finally, maintain a certain humility of understanding, which is as much a part of the practice as everything else. Knowing what you know, what you assume, and what you repeat simply because you’ve heard it is a discipline of exactly the same order as knowing where your weight is. A practitioner who cannot distinguish between these three levels in their speech is highly likely not to distinguish them in their body either.
For those who already practise another version of Yang-style taijiquan, there is no reason to change everything.
The methodological content in question here is not specific to any particular sequence. It can be practised within any serious form, provided one is willing to start from the beginning – which is always unpleasant but always worthwhile. Many people believe they need to change schools when all they really need to do is change the way they interpret what they are already doing.
A tradition almost never survives through prestigious channels. It survives through narrow, peripheral channels, often invisible to those who write the official history. A steward rather than a prince. A seven-year-old child rather than a designated heir. Sixty years of silence rather than a career. A group of researchers at an institute in 1970s Beijing rather than a sports federation.
It survives because someone kept training with someone else, for a very long time, without anyone noticing and without reaping any rewards. This is true of this particular lineage, and it is probably true of all those that are worth preserving.
Which, deep down, should be reassuring. It means that what is happening today in a hall where three people are working hard, without an audience and without any titles, is of the same order as what was happening in the courtyard of a Beijing residence 130 years ago. The setup hasn’t changed, and there is no reason to believe it will change.
