Apologies for the lack of posts this year, like many of my readers I have been caught up dealing with the Covid-19 bug which has hit so many countries all over the world. Hope all of you are staying safe, wherever you may be.
Fortunately, one of the upsides of being housebound during the enforced lockdown is that it has given me more time to catch up on some of the martial arts podcasts I have been meaning to listen to, one of which is the Talking Fists podcast by Ryan Saint George, an American martial artist who spent several years living in China and who has been putting out a series of very interesting interviews on various kungfu / Chinese Martial Art (CMA) related topics.
The most recent is an interview with New Zealander Jon Dyer, who spent over a decade studying both Xinyi Liuhe and Dai style xinyi, first in New Zealand and later directly with his teacher Yan Longchang in Shanxi.
The link to the podcast is here:
Jon’s Dai style teacher, Yan Longchang, is a direct grandstudent of Dai Kui and the kungfu brother of Guo Jingang, one of the Dai style teachers I met during our trip to Taigu last year, so it was especially interesting for me to hear what he had to say.
Jon’s comments confirmed my impressions: that Dai style, certainly at the beginning, places much more emphasis on softness than most branches of Xinyi Liuhe. Fajin – in Dai style generally called kuai jin (fast power) – is only taught once the student has mastered the basic body method (dantian, spine, breathing, coordination, etc), which can take several years.
Jon is also particularly unlucky, as he has encountered many of the problems common when studying CMA – such as being deliberately taught incorrect or incomplete material, teachers holding back and/or being overly commercial, also little or no practice of applications and sparring in a lot of schools. It was because of these problems that Jon eventually gave up CMA and switched over to Muay Thai and Brazilian jiu-jitsu. His interview – along with the other interviews in this series – should be compulsory listening for anyone planning to study traditional CMA styles in China.
Wishing both Jon and Ryan more power in their future training!