Chen-Style and Chen-Clan Taijiquan Traditions

Guan Hongliang, a gongfu brother of mine and a fellow disciple of Chen Yu, released a video a while ago where a student asks him some questions and he gives his view on the history of some Chen Taijiquan traditions. We subtitled the video, though it is not 100% verbatim it is hopefully a good representation of his ideas: 

As there is often some confusion about the names I thought it is nice to share the video here. 

Chenjiagou village history

Originally there was only the distinction of "small frame" (xiaojia) and "large frame" (dajia) in Chenjiagou. The small frame was also called "new frame" by Chen Ziming in the 30's though that name is not used for this tradition anymore. In the 60's Chen Zhaopi was teaching the new generation in Chenjiagou as many teachers had left the village during the war and the cultural revolution. 

Old and new frames

After Chen Zhaopi's death Chen Zhaokui came three times from 1972 onwards. As his frame differed from Chen Zhaopi's the villagers started to call the frame of Chen Zhaopi "old frame" (laojia) and the one of Chen Zhaokui "new frame" (xinjia) (not to be confused with the same name which Chen Ziming used for the xiaojia tradition in the 30's).

Chen Zhaokui did not like that name as it implied that his frame was somehow newer than the other, though it was the family tradition handed down from Chen Changxing to Chen Fake, his father. Inside the close family it is thus not used but the disctinction came to be widely used by those outside the family line of Chen Fake, Chen Zhaokui and Chen Yu, so many people nowadays ask if our tradition, which comes from Chen Yu's father Chen Zhaokui, was the "new frame" (xinjia) tradition. 

However, the choreography is mostly the same as the "new frame" (xinjia), but the methodology and the concepts in our form are quite different from what is being taught in the village as xinjia, probably as Chen Zhaokui did not teach there for such a long time. Thus Chen Yu felt the need to distinguish his frame, as taught by his father, from the xinjia frame. The name he chose is "the gongfu frame as passed down in the family" (jiachuan gongfujia), which emphasizes the meticulous work to be put into this practice and that it was passed down inside the close family.    

Nowadays there are of course even more frames spawned by the Chen Taijiquan tradition over time, like Feng Zhiqiangs art of Hong Junshengs art. My shifu Chen Yu uses to say that he thinks it is the best to call the forms by the number of their movements as that is the least political way, so the laojia would be the 74 frame and the xinjia the 83 frame. But that wording has not become common so we have to live with the connotations of "old" and "new".