Did Tai Chi REALLY Come From Zhang Sanfeng?

jangsan Fung is the legendary founder of taii boxing his tail is one of supernormal powers like energy Shields levitation and he fights enemies that have Palm techniques that can make stuff explode from 100 ft away oh and he also beats women well I mean she was like an evil witch with supernormal powers so I think that's okay but a lot of the movie adaptations of jangsan Fung are based on the novel iong or the heaven Sword and the dragon saber written by famous usia novelist jinyong despite fact being mixed up with fiction jangsan Fong has been upheld for many generations as the creator of taii boxing with references to him in many classic texts including records of supernormal Feats that he performed which aren't just about combat but also often about helping people and saving the lives of others taichi boxing is a profound art and was included in the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage in 2020 but UNESCO makes absolutely no mention of Jang San Fong on its website or in its video on taii instead only making reference to the Chen Village and showing a taiy lineage starting with Chen Wang tin now Chen wanting was born in 1580 several hundred years after jangsan Fong but he is still up held by UNESCO as the founder of the style and this Echoes the view of the general administration of sport in China they issued a plaque to the Chen Village or chenago in hnan province in 2007 proclaiming it the birth place of taiichi so what is the truth of the matter let's try and uncover it did Jang San Fong actually invent taii now in this video we are not trying to offend anyone the Chen Village has a long connection to chaii and it is home to many Masters of the Chen style which has unique features within the five family styles of taichi it's known as a more hard explosive style especially for its second form which emphasizes the famous Cannon fist or P tray technique that is a far cry from old ladies in the park practicing in slow motion so Chen style taiichi should be celebrated but this issue is one of the major controversies in the internal martial arts world and it is an interesting subject to delve into the common story of how taii spread across China goes that ylu Chan went to the Chen Village and after much effort managed to get a chen Master Chen Tang sing to teach him and he then created Yang style taii based off of the Chen style and spread that to the rest of China and that gave rise to all of the other styles so is it really that the Chen style is the original taichi and all of the other sty Styles came from the Chen well not so fast you see a couple of months after that plaque was awarded to the Chen Village it was taken down after a protest from other taii schools and practitioners there are manuscripts dating back hundreds of years that cite Jang San Fong as the founder and yang ran also always maintained that Jang San Fong was the founder so where did the idea that Chun Wang came up with ta Chi come from well a martial arts scholar named tangal who lived from 18 87 to 1959 is believed to be the one who started this notion he was a left-wing intellectual who studied in Japan he returned to China in 1930 and joined the central martial arts institute or Jang Guan in nanin where he was the head of the editorial Department he then visited Chen Village or Cheno in Hunan Province and upon his return proclaimed Chen Wang Ting as the founder and creator of taiichi his findings were presented in the book wuang k a study of Shaolin and wuang where he presented the double whammy of dispo both Shaolin Kung Fu and wuang martial arts legendary Founders bod Dharma and Jang xan fun he basically angered everyone in the martial arts world at the time he was branded a cultural traitor a Japanese sympathizer and he resigned in 1931 saying I realize I may have offended some people but the damage was done after the Communist Party took control of China in 1949 they adopted tonga's version as the official party line all other points of view were silenced for many decades as China went through its full-on communist period which included the cultural revolution where Traditions were trampled and temples were destroyed but in the last 20 years or so new evidence has come out that makes the case that Chan Wang Ting was someone who inherited the art and passed it on rather than inventing it himself and that opens the door for Jang San Fung to once again be cons considered the inventor of taii in his academic article titled fighting words Douglas Wilds lays out the fact that in addition to the Chen Village there are three more Villages nearby where it seems taii was practiced and in addition to that a certain Thousand-Year or tiai temple in the region that seems to be the Hub that strings the theory together so one of these Villages is Tong Village or Tang tun where most people have the surname Lee there have been sever veral documents produced by the families in the tong Village that point to their ancestors also practicing Tai Chi hundreds of years ago one collection of martial arts manuals was found hidden in the frame of a door in a house in the village and the oldest parts are dated 1591 some of these writings contain the exact same content as writings by another famous figure in the history of taii wangong remember that name for later in addition the writings contain taii movements that are identical to many of the postures in the Yang and Wu Styles not the Chen style now this is significant because Chen Wang Ting would have been 11 years old when the earliest parts of this document were written and yang luchan who created the yangar wasn't born until 1799 over 200 years later and guys I am massively simplifying this there are a load of different documents including the family genealogy and a treaties on taichi that were found if you want to read the whole article I will paste a link in the comments below then another nearby Village the Wang B Village or Wang B twin produced a spear manual that was reported on by local media in 2006 this manual is linked to a certain W family ancestor who studied Liang or six Harmony divine spear at the nearby Thousand-Year temple with a DS priest called dong bingen who lived from 1580 to 1679 the spear manual was written by Wang am Min in 1787 there are a few versions but in one version produced in 1846 it directly says that Dong's martial arts came from Jang sanong and that dong Bing Chen taught spear to the Wang Family and taii to the Chen family in the nearby jao town or ja Jin there were more documents discovered the earliest dated 1728 where Jang San Fong is acknowledged as the creator of taii practitioners of taii in jaau call their Style wudang taii as a homage to Jang sanong who spent time at wuang Mountain now this has attracted government pressure and the license of the jaen association was even revoked by the County government now what does this all mean well the idea is basically that it was the Thousand-Year temple tianai temple where taii and other DST Arts were being transmitted people from The Villages nearby learned from the DS priests at the temple but they kept it a secret at first unfortunately this Temple has been long since destroyed now in 2010 taii magazine published an article by a Mr Lee Wan bin that strings it all together this is the mic drop moment if you will Lee researched the family genealogy of wangong Y remember that name from earlier Lee views him as a Ming Dynasty figure whereas the Chen Clan tried to place him later on in the Ching Dynasty so after chenang King but the Ming Origins were backed up by a panel of ERS in the village where he was supposedly from that dated him as living from 1525 to 16006 Lee explains it as follows Wang learned taii from a disciple of jangan who was a wondering DST he then taught it to janga who returned to ja in 16003 at the age of 72 janga then taught Tai to CH another alternative theory is that W taught both and but this this still produces the same result Lee goes on to explain that this is why the old frame first form in the Chen style is the same as the Jawal style then as taii evolved in the Chen Village it was combined with the tong Kung Fu or Tong Chen that they already practiced and became harder and more explosive with the Canon fist technique that they are known for but Lee theorized that Chen changing who lived between 1771 and 1853 was the only Chen Tai Chi Master to Pres reserve the so-called true taii of jangsan Fung and that is what he taught to Yang luchan because Yang was a student that had exceptional prospects and this is why the Yang style looks different to the Chen style and why many of the documents found in nearby Villages dated from before yangu Chan's time show movements more similar to the Yang style than the Chen it is plausible to assume that at this time CH changing acknowledged the style did come from jangan Fung and that is why yang passed that on in his teachings as well because that's what Chen Chang Xing perhaps told him so what is my opinion on this well the documents that were uncovered in other Villages nearby could of course be fake okay that is one criticism that some Scholars have made and one angle that you could use to argue against the Jung San fun story then also why did they just release these documents now why not earlier they've been sitting on them for decades well I can understand the reason why these documents could have been hidden for many years when China went through the cultural revolution having any kind of connection to a religion would have got you and your family in trouble yet people still knew that this knowledge was valuable so this explains why documents were hidden but not destroyed and it also explains the desire to deny the connection to a DST figure on the part of Chen Clan and to make taii into something secular that was just invented by their ancestor Chen Wang Ting who had served in the military the Chens perhaps already held this view from the early 1900 unds since this is the conclusion that Tang how came to after visiting the Chen Village but living under communism probably set it in stone personally I find it hard to believe that it was invented by Chen Wang Ting if you look at most of these arts in China like martial arts chiong anything like that they normally all Trace their Origins back to dsts in the mountains or to Buddhist temples dyran showed up in Beijing in the 1800s with the new very unique style of Baja and he said he learned it from a DST in the mountains in the external martial arts they also acknowledge that their Arts evolved from The Shaolin Temple so why would Tai Chi be the exception that was just made up by some dude living in normal society in the Chen Village not going through the rigorous self-cultivation of a Buddhist monk or DST disciple which Chinese people believe opens your wisdom and allows you to create profound things what complicates it even more though is that the idea of Chen wangting creating all of taii has now become part of a political agenda like the CCP saying that Taiwan is a part of China or saying that the traditional Chinese spiritual practice of falungong which bases itself on truthfulness compassion and tolerance is evil and should be banned the real situation of these issues offers inconvenient truths to the CCP Taiwan is actually doing better as a democratic country than it probably would do as a province of China fallong gong is actually a beneficial spiritual practice and there stage show shenyun displays the culture that the CCP tried to destroy in the cultural revolution making the CCP look really bad so the idea that taii has no DST spiritual figure behind it is certainly very appealing to the CCP there are about a 100 million people who practice taii in China you wouldn't want to have them all believing in a set of spiritual values attributed to a DST Sage would you they might place that belief above communism they might rise up against the government in something like the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 so you have the CCP the self-interest of the Chen Village and other people involved plus already almost 100 Years of the Chun Wang King Theory and this I think has led to the denial of one of the greatest figures in Chinese history Jang San Fong all right guys that is the video for today once again I want to emphasize that we are not trying to attack the Chen family or Chen taii okay Chen taii is a perfectly good style to go and learn and there are people teaching it all over the world as well as obviously in China it has more hard explosive movements and there are possibly more people teaching it as combat rather than just for health so it may even be a more enticing style for young people to go and learn but if you believe the Jung San Fung Theory and getting to the source is important to you then you may want to check out the old Yang style which is believed to be closer to the original or other taichi schools that claim they are s Fung Pai or Jung San Fung High okay claim that they're more similar to the original obviously you need to do your own research here and I'm not going to vouch for any particular school over another but there's a whole world out there of people teaching Tai for you to check out thank you so much for watching guys leave your comments below be kind to each other down there and to me all right remember this is just theories no one is really 100% sure of any of this so we are just theorizing please subscribe to the channel if you're new and we'll see you next time bye-bye