Guang Ping Yang Tai Chi Chuan - History of Guang Ping Yang Tai Chi

History of Guang Ping Yang Tai Chi

The Guang Ping form is traced back to the great t'ai chi Master Yang Luchan (1799–1872), who had been adopted by the Chen family and had learned the Chen-style t'ai chi ch'uan from them. Yang Luchan moved his family from the Chen village to the town of Guang Ping, and developed Yang-style tai chi chuan. The stances of this modified form were not as low as the Chen-style t'ai chi ch'uan form, with a combination of hard and soft styles, long and small circles and incorporated double jump kicks, and other wide sweeping kicks. The movements were long and deep, more energetic, with more apparent martial combat character. This Yang-style tai chi chuan became known as Guang Ping Yang Tai Chi Chuan.

Yang Luchan taught his son, Yang Pan-hou, the Guang Ping Yang Tai Chi Chuan.Yang Pan-hou was reportedly the official teacher for the Imperial court of the Manchus. The indigenous Chinese, known as the Han, had been subjugated by the Manchus and therefore Yang Pan-hou did not want to pass down the family's true art to them. Also, the Manchurians were aristocrats and were not inclined to the more strenuous exercises, so Yang Pan-Hou adapted his father’s Guang Ping form to be more subtle and taught them a very elegant, middle-to-small frame form. This is the Yang-style t'ai chi ch'uan style that has come to be known as the Beijing Yang-style. Yang Pan-hou secretly taught his father’s form (the Guang Ping style) only to select students who were not his family, who then taught it to only a few of their students and the art was subsequently lost to the Yang family.

Yang Pan-hou's lineage-holding disciple was Wang Jiao-Yu, a Han (native Chinese) and a stableman for the Imperial family. As the legend goes, one day Yang Pan-hou heard a noise over the fence and looked to see Wang Jiao-Yu practicing the Guang Ping form. He confronted Wang Jiao-Yu and demanded an explanation. Wang Jaio-Yu told him he had been secretly watching Yang Pan-hou practicing the Guang Ping form during the magic hours of 3:00 to 5:00 a.m. Yang Pan-hou told Wang Jiao-Yu that if he could put his chin to his toe in the chin-to-toe exercise within 100 days, he would teach Wang Jiao-Yu. And succeed Jiao-Yu did. Since Wang Jiao-Yu was a Han, Yang Pan-hou took Wang Jiao-yu as his student and trained him in the secret Guang Ping style, and made him promise not to teach this art as long as the dynasty was in power.

Wang Jiao-Yu kept this promise, and only began teaching the Guang Ping Yang Tai Chi Chuan much later in his life.

Kuo Lien Ying learned the form from Wang Jiao-Yu. Wang Jiao-Yu, purportedly 112 years of age at the time, accepted Kuo as one of very few disciples. From Wang's teaching, it is said that Kuo learned all the true skill and essence of Guang Ping Yang Tai Chi Chuan.

Kuo Lien Ying moved to San Francisco in the early 1960s and opened one of the first t'ai chi ch'uan studios in America with the help of Sifu David Chin. Sifu Chin first practiced with Kuo on the rooftop of the Sam Wong Hotel in Chinatown. Sifu Chin is the only living student of Kuo's to learn a second set of what he asserts Sifu Kuo called 'the Original Yang t'ai chi,' and that this 'Application Set' is crucial for the development of the boxing art that Kuo passed on. Sifu Chin taught the Application Set to Tim Smith (Raleigh, NC) in 1996.