This is a post by our guest blogger, Silkreeling who is also a keen player of Chen Style Taijiquan.
 

Introduction
 
The morning park scene here consists of Taiji players, joggers, badminton players, qigong enthusiast, dancing fans and general health maintainers. This reminds me of the bustle of Singapore’s morning rush hour, yet it is pleasantly unfamiliar. It was the last day of my 7-day trip, and as I was determined to have one last highlight, I decided to check out the Taiji scene on the island. I was up by half past …

Watch this clip to watch the Chen Style Competition shown on a certain China TV channel. The guy with the red belt is Wang Zhanjun (王战军), son of Wang Xian and he emerged as the final champion.  For those who think that taiji fighting involves light and non contact repelling force will be surprised. There is a lot of throws, kicking and shoulder strikes in the matches.
But if you ask me, some of the fight scenes look similar to WWF scenes.  
(Either JavaScript is not active or you are using an old version …

In 2001, I started learning Chen style taijiquan. Eager to soak up whatever knowledge I can get hold of, I started surfing the Internet for information. Then there are limited websites on Chen Style Taijiquan on the Internet. The most comprehensive then and remains is of the best Chen site is Chen Style Taijiquan Notepad by Christoph David Weinmann.
Another was Chenstyle.com by Herb Rich which unfortunately is no longer available. Apparently he decided not to continue with the web hosting of the site.
6 yrs ago, I also decided to put …

Little has been wrote about this weapon of Chen Taiji – the double mace 锏. It is considered to be a short weapon with a square cross section. Usually made from copper or iron, it it about 4 feet long. The diagram above is scanned from a 1992 special issue of the shaolin and taichi magazine.
Here is a clip showing the performance of the double mace form by Chen ZiQiang. In this vide, he seems to be using sticks to replace the mace.
(Either JavaScript is not active or you are …

Someone posted a link of the partial translation of the well known  Chen Shi TaijiQuan book in the ChenWired  forum.  This is my favorite Chen style book with very detailed analysis of the New Frame Routine 1 and 2. Interestingly the translated articles were found on the Yang Family taichi site.
The 2 articles links are

The Fourth Characteristic: An Exercise of Empty and Full in which the Body Stands Centered and Upper and Lower Body are Coordinated
The Second Characteristic: An Exercise of Springy Lengthening of the Body and Limbs

Enjoy reading!

Finally someone by the name of Alex Golstein translated the Chen Taiji classic 陈氏太极拳图说 by Chen Xin (陈鑫）.  This book is quoted in almost all Chen Style TaijiQuan books. It was a delight finding this book in the bookstore.However this book is written in classical Chinese with no punctuation marks. It is not easy to understand if even if you know Chinese. The topics that he covered are YingYang Theory, silk reeling theory, meridian theory and notes on the various postures. 
Now with the English translation, non Chinese readers may attempt …

I always like the way Zhu TianCai does his forms. Zhu Tiancai is one of the Big 4 of Chen Taijiquan from the Chen village. The other 3 are Chen XiaoWang, Chen Zhenglei and Wang Xian.
In this short clip filmed at an informal setting, we see how he can do the New Frame, XinJia in a smooth and yet aggressive way.
(Either JavaScript is not active or you are using an old version of Adobe Flash Player. Please install the newest Flash Player.)