From:
http://www.emptyflower.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=Xing;action=display;num=1103648653
"Following the allied invasion of 1900 (Ba Guo Lian Jun), and the subsequent overthrow of Manchu dynasty, China went from a feudal, archiac society toward modernization. Attitude toward traditional martial art (both empty-hand and cold weapon) changed drastically as a result. By then it was obvious that, in terms of practical usage (battlefield, police work, etc, whereever force is required), traditional martial skills have been supplented by modern firearm and tactics. Another words, there is no social need for traditional martial art skills.
Consequently the number of people studying it, the intensity, and professionalism of the training, were not the same level as the previous generation. People like Yang Lu Chan, Dong Hai Chuan, they started out at the lowest level in society, and fought their way to the top with their real fighting skills. In the subsequent generations, up until the 20's, this is more or less still true. In Taiji group, we know Yang Ban Hou, and later Yang Shao Hou, were very famous fighters. After all, part of their notoriety was that they actually seriously injuried many people during fights.
Chen family had plenty of well-documented, famous fighters before 1920's. In the Yang lineage, we had the famous warrior scholars like Wu Yu Xiang, his student Li Yi Yu, and Li's student Hao. To give you an idea how good Wu Yu Xiang was, other than his own father, Wu was the one person Yang Ban Hou feared and admired most throughout his life. Ban Hou was sent to Wu by his father to pursue traditional studies. After a while, in a famous letter, Wu writes back to Yang "Ban Hou is average as a student of traditional academics, but his Taiji is coming along nicely, he seemed to have a native talent for that." Upon reading this Yang wrote back "[sigh], then from now on please focus his efforts on martial art". Wu was so good that Yang Lu Chan entrusted him with his son's Taiji training.
Li Yi Yu was a renowned fighter as well, despite the fact he was near-sighted. One touch and he can send people flying. From his writings, which today is part of the core Taiji Classics, you can say his understanding of real life martial art skill is of highest level.
Of Yang's students in Beijing, we know people considered Wan Chun, Ling Shan, and Quan You to be his 3 top students. Wan Chun has the hardest fa jin, Ling Shan threw people the farthest, and Quan You had the best soft/neutrailizing skill.
And let's not foget Yang other famous student Li Run Dong, who was regarded as one of the best fighters of his generation. His and his student Gao Rui Zhou's exploits are legendary. They later created what's is called Li Style Taiji today, of which Ma Jin Long is the current generation lineage holder.
Yang Chen Fu's fighting experience we talked about exhaustively in an earlier thread. On the Wu side, Quan You's student Wang Mao Zhai was a very famous fighter. He was considered the best in Beijing at the time. He became famous on the strength of his fighting skill (he was widely respected within the community but totally unknown to the outside world until mayor Yuan Liang became his student). Until Yang Cheng Fu opened the door to public, he was the most prolific Taiji Quan teacher in history.
You can imagine the kind of fights before the modernization of China, when martial art victories meant money, famous, and status (ex. Yang Lu Chan, Dong Hai Chuan, Yin Fu, Guo Yun Shen, Ma Gui). Afterwards, the world changed completely, traditional martial art went from a solid, real life skill to a hobbie overnight, like many other human body based skills replaced by technology (ex. traditional hand knitting in manufacturing of clothing).
One of the best illustration of this change in status is the life of Ma Gui. He was highly respected and successful during Qing dynasty, teaching the prince who was at one time the designated heir to the throne. After the fall he lead a very poor, unsuccessful life. Here was someone with miraculous skill, but in a world that would soon be fighting its largest war ever with machine guns, tanks, fighter planes, and poison gas, these skills were suddenly relics of the past, like the beautiful bronze swords we see in museums today.
If you have read the second part of Wang Pei Sheng biography in Tai Chi Magazine, you probably picked up a lot of this. By Master Wang's time, 1930's, real life fights of life-and-death, fame-or-ruin were already becoming rare. According to Master Wang, before his time most of the serious fights were carried out using weapons. By the time he was studying, the volume of weapons training could not be compared to the previous generation, high level knowledge in that area already started to become rare. So he lived through some of that. But in terms of spending an entire lifetime dealing with traditional fighting at its deadlist, most intense, and consequential level, Li Shu Wen's generation was probably the last.
There is a Chinese saying 'wen wu di yi, wu wu di er' - there's no number one is civilian art, there's no number two in martial art. If you lived in a city with two masters, and one beat the other, how many students do you think the no. 2 teacher will have?
When the field, and the larger world changed, the contests changed too. In these days the reasons for serious fights using martial arts are gone. And in a world where martial art is increasing perceived as irrelavent, it's in the endangered profession's interest to have everyone in it work together to grow it in another direction, not to self-destruct through continuous fighting amongst each other.
By this time there is already a strong bond of friendship between the 3 big internal art schools, and given everyone has so much to lose in a public fight, even when they occured, you don't hear about them. Sun Lu Tang is a classical example: he's one of the first nationally famous martial art master who was never defeated, and not known to have fought anyone famous. With Guo, Yang, and Dong, they were like the professional boxers of today, fighting was the only way to become famous. Sun was a product of a different times. Back then martial artist were not expected to write, much less write well, about their secrete practices. His fame was largely brought on by being amongst the first to publish books on this subject. Does that mean he can't fight, of course not. It's hard to imagine someone of his time to be respected within the martial art community the way he did without being a good fighter. Today we don't know where to place him amongst the masters because we just don't know about any fights he had with these other high level masters.
Another thing to consider, is for example some people are very respected within the true cognisenti of his time, but largely unknown to the outside world, or people of later generation because they did not produce students who are famous or promoted them. When Wang Pei Sheng was young one of the people he admired completely was this elder generation master known as Bao Zhang - his last name is Zhang, he sold bao zi (buns), a Li Style taiji master. Today we don't even remember what his real first name is because he had no students. On the flip side we all know examples of people who are really famous now who actually were not that famous or respected in their time, where they wouldn't even have a chance to fight with the real high level masters.
Lots of time you had masters who fought a lot, but the fights are not the kind that would make one famous. Master Wang Pei Sheng, who travelled widely, always run into challangers, the types of guys who doesn't even know Taiji, who doesn't believe Taiji can work. Of course these fights are not worth writing about, because a great fighter's reputation is built upon beating fellow great professional fighters.
Also amongst the real masters, even when they do test each other out, they do it in a discreet way that you can't tell even if you're present. For example, it's very common that when you first meet you shake hands, outside you kept smiling and padding each other on the back, inside you applying all kinds of jin to get the best of each other, and you stop with the substlest sign that one has gained an advantage. Master Wang, when he was a very young beginner, witnessed Wang Mao Zhai and Wu Jian Quan doing a few rounds of patterned push hands during a big group get together. He couldn't tell at the time who got the better of the other. Another typical thing is when you enter a door way, you pretend to pay respect by inviting and gently push the other person to go in first, this is basically like push hands.
A lot of times people names get lost in history because of other social changes like the Cultural Revolution. Even Master Wang Pei Sheng became largely unknown to the younger generation because traditional martial art practice was forbideen for a long time. And as you know history in martial art is mostly orally transmitted. He had to reestablish his repution by defeating Yamazaki of Nippon Shorinji Kempo.
So basically we don't hear about famous taiji fighters today because 1) there is no need for high level taiji fighting skills (no any traditional fighting skill) today, 2) the nature of fights changed - the few true masters exist today don't really go all out in fighting with each other, they keep their fights friendly (more of research and experimentation), 3) they keep it from public eye, 4) many of the fights they had are with really high level people who are unknown to but a few (how many here know what the martial art scene is really like in Beijing from the inside, for example), 5) today you can be a famous taiji master without a fight record...
You can safely summarize all these by saying there are many famous taiji fighters in recent years because they aren't that many to start with now, and it's not because Taiji is no good, but actually all traditional martial arts are in decline since WWI. Today the fundamental purpose these arts were invented for are better served by much more lethal and efficient weapons. The world in which these skills played a practical role no longer exists. Change is inevitable, and it is often sad. What you're witnessing is one of the consequences of this change. Today it's not as simple as finding out who beat who when you try to find out whose taiji is good."
