As part of my ongoing quest to improve my pushing hands, at the tail end of the summer I made contact with a teacher named Liu who is well known for his push hands and in fact was a Beijing push hands ‘champion’ (i.e. won an official citywide competition) 15-20 years ago.
Liu’s father had studied extensively for decades with the Sun style taiji and xingyi master Li Tianji, and although he also taught the official standardised 24-step and 48-step Yang style forms it’s fair to say that his gongfu mainly came from his Sun style training under Li Tianji.
Arriving at Chaoyang park one sweltering evening near the tail end of the Beijing summer, I had expected to maybe do some stance training and then be put through some of the common single hand pushing methods (possibly including vertical / diagonal circles).
Imagine my surprise when Liu shifu spent 45 minutes ‘teaching’ me Santi!
Having practiced xingyi for 10 years by this point I was able to adjust my normal Song style Santi to something more approaching his criteria (more backweighted, different back hand position, more ‘intent’ in the fingers etc) and he did comment that I was picking it up relatively quickly.
When, towards the end of the hour, we did actually do some pushing hands it was very obvious to me that he was using xingyi’s ming jin (obvious force) in his pushing hands – to someone that has practiced either art for any sustained length of time the ‘jin’ of the two arts is very different, xingyi’s ming jin is a much more linear, aggressive, hard to resist power, constantly on the brink of forcing the opponent off his root.
Liu did not have the inflated, expansive ball-like quality in his jin which I associate with good taiji players.
This is not to say he did not have gongfu, in fact I am sure that very few casual park taiji players would be able to withstand the very strong xingyi jin Liu was putting out.
However, for people seeking the ‘pure’ art, it does act as a cautionary tale. I can think of several famous teachers, both in the north and south of China, who are famous for a certain art such as taiji or bagua, but whose gongfu in fact comes from another art which they may have studied earlier on in life such as tongbei or shuaijiao. Caveat emptor!