I had the great pleasure recently to be invited by Byron Jacobs as a guest, along with Jarek Szymanski from China from Inside fame, to chew the fat and discuss a recent documentary about the early history of Xingyiquan (from a Shanxi perspective) put out by Chinese CCTV.
The video of the first session can be found here:
We covered a lot of ground in the first episode, from the role of Xingyiquan practitioners as bodyguards for Piaohao (the precursors of China’s modern banking system), the dates of when Li Luoneng studied with the Dai family, Guo Yunshen’s famous visit to Che Yizhai in Taigu (and the famous photo), etc.
For people who don’t have the time to listen to the whole thing, an edited transcript of the discussion can be found here:
As a kungfu nerd, I had a blast going down these historical rabbit holes with Byron and Jarek, and look forward to the next episode.