Product Description

Master Cháng, known as the “scholar-boxer,” lived and practiced in Hénán province, at the center of Chinese culture and martial arts near the Shàolín Temple and legendary Luòyáng. His extensive writings reflect many of the ideas, even the phraseology, now familiar from classic Tai Chi Chuan texts. Chinese-language authority Marnix Wells traveled to Cháng’s village, where the master’s family carries on his tradition of Cháng boxing. This resulting study of Chang’s life and teachings reveals the true origins of today’s internal martial arts.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #545240 in Books
• Published on: 2005-03-10
• Released on: 2005-07-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 300 pages

Review
"Scholar Boxer is a must-read translation on the practical theories and interconnection between developing qi-energy and martial arts fighting technique. It explores many levels, including essence, body and spirit, yin-yang, and how the body works. This book also brings needed clarity and cultural context to the Tai Chi Classics."
- Bruce K. Frantzis, author of Opening the Energy Gates of Your Body and The Power of Internal Martial Arts

About the Author
Marnix Wells graduated in from Oxford's classical Chinese program under Professor David Hawkes in 1967. In 1968, at the height of the Vietnam war and China’s 'Great Cultural Revolution,' he arrived in Hong Kong and began to practice taijiquan, Chinese calligraphy, and musical instruments. Since Beijing was then in turmoil, Wells traveled to Taiwan, Japan, and Korea. He learned internal marital arts from Zhang Yizhong in Tokyo and later from the legendary Wang Shujin in Taiwan. He became general manager of a shipping office an helped plan the 'Way of the Warrior' feature on the Hong brothers for the BBC. In 2001 Wells earned a PhD in ancient Chinese philosophy from SOAS, London University. He teaches internal martial arts and lectures widely on Chinese art, music, and philosophy. He has one daughter and lives in London.

Customer Reviews

For those who study
This is a really good study material. If you like internal. And if you want to know more about the roots of tai ji etc. Especially i like the aphorisms, and the part where they talk about how it came about.

Academic translation for sophisticated readers
To give you some background, I have 22+ years of experience in martial arts, including 9+ years in internal martial arts training-- the latter with a classically-oriented teacher with a direct lineage back to Yang Cheng-fu. In addition, I have an MD, and my specialty focuses on kinesiological analysis. I'm pretty familiar with biomechanics/anatomy. So, despite all that, this was a very esoteric book, not easily grasped.

Professor Wells' translation is extremely literal, and his interpretation possibly over-technical as another reviewer has stated. The organizational form is basically this: in sentence-to-paragraph level amounts, Wells provides a fairly literal translation of Master Chang's text. Then, Wells sprinkles in his own interpretation as to what Master Chang was trying to say, and tries to supply analagous concepts from the Tai Chi Classics and other known historical texts. Professor Wells appears extremely well-read in the related literature, as well as well-versed in Tai Chi/internal martial arts concepts.

There is, however, plenty of room from the step of translation to interpretation. Wells' interpretation are very strongly rooted in physiology and anatomy. If Master Chang's intent was to convey artistry and symbolic imagery, then it has been lost, certainly. But somehow, I didn't get the impression that this was significantly the case. The translations, if accurate, were fairly spartan and had a literal feel to them. From reading the English versions, I didn't get the sense that poetry was being excluded. Therefore, Wells' interpretation were equally utilitarian. I interpreted this to mean that Master Chang was trying to convey a very real sense of his martial art with the available vocabulary of the time and location, without resorting to metaphor (perhaps with the understanding that metaphor can potentially create confusion!).

Despite this tendency towards simplicity, the literal translation was somewhat inaccessible. Even with Wells' helpful notes to the effect of "Sunny is referring to extensor muscles and shady is referring to flexors..." and others, I could not easily grasp or understand IN DETAIL what Master Chang was trying to instruct his reader to do more of or less of, or whatever.

It didn't help that-- and this is important for potential readers-- Master Chang's martial art style IS NOT TAI CHI (at least not a version that I know-- and I've seen enough Wu, Hoa Wu, Chen, Yang, and Sun to easily distinguish them). Wells spends a good deal of pages detailing the history of Chang's martial art (a compendium of a good number of styles as was not atypical for the era). Nor is it any Bagua style that I am familiar with, nor even a Hsing-I system that I know of. The importance of this is that there is very little frame of reference for a practitioner to draw on. One must discern the "energy" and intent of the postures from shady/sunny analogies and pencil-like drawings. Not an easy task-- and Chang's art is different enough from the more common internal styles popular today-- that getting anything out of this book for my training was extremely difficult.

In summary, a nice history of an (historically) important text from medieval China. Written with a significant academic bent, including signiicant references and annotations-- in a style befitting an academic paper. But not easily grasped, nor accessible. I did not spend the time poring over each line of text, trying to grasp what Master Chang was referring to, playing with each posture, experimenting with various energies, until I understood. I think that's the level of reading that would be required to get anything significant out of this book. Maybe when I'm better at this, when there's nothing else to read that might be of benefit. But for now, this one goes on the shelf, and maybe I may refer to it in bits and pieces as something strikes me. But if there's that much to be had from this translation, it will take a LONG time to discern it, IMO.

Part of the foundation
This is a book for serious internal neijia practitioners only and presents what I would call internal martial art code or the koans of internal neijia power. Like Tai Chi Classics by Waysun Liao, or the translation of Yang Ban-hou in Secrets of the Yang Style by Yang Jwing-Ming, this is written in code and is not a "how to" book. These books are good for reference and for confirming what you are learning, and for crystallizing your knowledge, but not for teaching or basic learning. Its the book that you go to when you have one of those "aha" moments and you see that the information was there in front of you all of the time. If you re-read the classics like this every few years, each time another piece falls into place and over the years your depth of knowledge grows as you walk the path.