Yilu - first road of Chen Taijiquan

The first road of Chen Clan Taijiquan, 一路 yīlù, is probably the most traditional form of Taijiquan (Tai-Chi), from which the other family styles Yang, Wú / Hao, Wu and Sun developed. All the widely practised, modern short forms, such as the 9 movments form, the 18 movements form, the 19 movements form and so on all originate from this first road.

Though there is nothing wrong about short forms in general we don't teach any of these as we don't think they are of too much help to learn Taijiquan. That's more a matter of didactics than of anything else. The traditional first form creates the physical-mental basis for the correct practice and contains most of the relevant methods of Taijiquan so we rather teach the original road - segmented into different sections - than additional short forms for beginners. With our method of teaching one can practice certain sections basically like short forms, but the advantage is you can just move on from section to section if you want to continue and you don't have to learn a completely new choreography.

Outside of the close family of Chen Fake, Chen Zhaokui and Chen Yu and their students and disciples in Beijing the form is often referred to as New Frame 新架 xīnjià. I personally don't care too much, but in our family line this is a misnomer, and not used by any of the family members who preserved this method and their direct lineage. For us, it is basically only a name used by outsiders who do not practise it according to our methodology.

How many movements are in the first road?

We practice a form with 83 movement sequences that was only passed on within the close family until the 1970s. Chen Yu added six names (not movements!) to this choreography in order to more clearly distinguish certain movement transitions. The sequence of the form basically follows the sequence which was written down in the old manuals. At the time of Chen Changxing the first road probably had 63 movements. There is a note saying: "Taijiquan is also called the main boxing form or the 'thirteen dynamics', which is namely the 'thirteen bends' or the 'thirteen foldings'."

The movement names were originally recorded in a kind of verse form so that students could remember the movements. Oftentimes the movements consisted of four characters and thus four syllables. Most martial artists in the 18th and 19th centuries were illiterate and could not read or write well so this method enabled them to memorise the names, but also sometimes led to confusions about certain characters which could mean several different things or which were pronounced in a very similar way, as Chinese contains a lot of homonyms.

What contents and methods do you train in the first form?

In contrast to the Second Road 二路 èrlù of Chen-Style Taijiquan, the first road is usually trained in a rather calm way. This calmness sometimes hides the actual intensity of the training, the physical exertion plus the awareness needed to fill all the movements and the requirements all movements should display. Every movement also has the potential of a controlled explosive movement, 发劲 fājìn.

All the relevant methods are practically ground into the movement sequences and are taught by the teacher while the student learns the external form. That is, the teacher does so if he has been taught these methods himself.

Gongfu (Kungfu) and internal strength!

In Chinese martial arts circles it was quite common to not necessarily to convey the ideas, 意 yì, and concepts of internal force, 内劲 nèijìn, of the individual movements to all students. Sometimes only their external shape would be taught. Actually, however, every movement, no matter how small, contains an idea that fills the whole movement so that gongfu - a high level of skill after appropriate training - can be developed. If the form is taught in this way and every movement is "full". Then we can speak about the so-called Gongfu Frame 功夫架 gōngfūjià. That is the main idea of ​​our training. The focus is not on the choreography, but on the contents and ultimately the gongfu to be developed from the practice. Running a form slowly can take about 50-60 minutes. Of course you can also practise it faster, then it might be less strenuous, but it will also have certain effects.

The origin of the movement names

The choreographies and movement sequences are usually called 套路 tàolù, 路 lù or 架 jià; in English we can translate these as "forms", "roads" or "frames". These are further subdivided into individual positions, which are usually called 势 or 式 shì in Chinese. Each position owes its name to a certain "corner point" or "end point", or a special technique which is deemed as a dominant movement in the whole sequence. Normally, however, not only these characteristic corner points, but the entire respective sequence of movements, that is from the previous position to the following position, is being referred to as 势 or 式 shì.

One can assume that the corner points have changed a bit over the course of time. And the names also changed from time to time and from teacher to teacher. Please remember: very few martial artists were able to write and read back then. Rather, you had to remember all positions and names. Sound shifts and mix-ups (especially in the Chinese language, which uses so many identical syllables) were almost inevitable. In the translation we can only approximate the original meaning, since many terms are so old that even Chinese people without knowledge of "kung-fu" can hardly understand them today. We drafted this translation after many fruitful discussions, trying to consider cultural-historical perspectices and also movement-related issues, plus heeding some translations we have become used to in the Western world since our exposure to Chen Taijiquan.

Movement Names of the 83-Sequence / 89-Name First Road

© 2019 Daniel Barth, Peter Loughlin, Nabil Ranné and the Chen-Style Taijiquan Netzwork Germany (CTND)

Chen Taijiquan - Yilu (first road):