CHEN

yan shou gong chui

shou tou shi

The origins of the Chen family go back to Chen Pu who, from Shanxi, moved to and settled in Chen Jia Gou. This is the reason why he is considered sometimes as Chen clan’s first generation but there is no record, though, that can prove it with regard to the practise of boxing. The first documents in which the Chen family and boxing are related go back to Chén Wáng Tíng.

About the origin of the boxing that Chén Wáng Tíng practised, we can resume it to two versions:

CHEN WANG TING (1600-1680)

This is Tang Hao’s (historian in the 19.....) conclusion. He went to Chen Jia Gou, made some researches and discovered Chen Wang Ting’s poems where there was written that he loved researching about boxing whenever he was lazy and, when busy, he used to sow the field. He also wrote that the level attained by his children and grandchildren, after his instruction was finished (“tiger" or "dragon"), would depend on themselves. (Dragon is over tiger, higher category). Tang Ha, taking this poem as a base, deduced that Chen Wang Ting was the one who created tai-chi chuan.

JIANG FA (1574-1655)

Another version tells that Chen Wang Ting relied on the help of Jiang Fa –see "styles" "Zhao Bao"-, and modified so Chen family’s proper style, giving the seal of tai-chi chuan to it, transforming it into an internal style. That is, that Chen already counted on a proper boxing style, which they purified following Jiang Fa’s advices, and that they brought it so near the requirements ot what we call taiji quan

JI JI GUAN'S CONTRIBUTION:

By another way, other people say that at some point of the Chen’s boxing development, they adopted as their own 29 out of the 32 movements of the boxing that Ji Ji Guan (a famous general of the Ming dynasty) taught to his soldiers and which he compiled in a book. Among these 32 movements that Ji Ji Guan had compiled, a lot of them came from Zhäng Söng Xï’s internal style. He had met Ji Ji Guan at the Si Ming mountains, and so, indirectly, Chen style would have been nourished, as well, from the internal school (nei-jia, by contraposition to wai-jia). The "lan zha yi" movement, for example, comes out from the internal style that Zhang Song Xi used to practise.

In the margin of the difficulty to seriously establish the origin and development of this style (as of the rest of taiji quan), it can be said, with no doubt, that the Chen clan has given a lot to the development of tai-chi chuan.