would have been incredibly skilled in their own right, now had a stark choice between them - to accept or not to accept Cheng-fu as the head of the Yang system? According to Harvey Kurland, who traces his lineage to Yang Shao-hou through his disciple Hsiung Yang-ho: “The senior students of Yang Shao-hou, who did not become disciples of Cheng-fu were written out of the Yang family lineage after the death of Shao-hou and for that reason are not as well known. Hsiung was one of those who did not affiliate himself with Yang Cheng-fu so is not well know for that reason… There are some historians and writers claim that Yang Cheng-fu did not have the martial skill of some of his father's and older brother's students. And some experts believe that what is called the Orthodox Yang Form is a watered down form. There is no way to know and as much of the history of t'ai chi ch'uan is just speculation, fairy tales, and the alleged "Official" history is revised liberally depending on who is telling the stories.”44
So, should we be surprised by the above statement? Again, the logical answer is no! Yang Shou-hou’s students would most certainly have been Yang Cheng-fu’s seniors - at least those who had been with Shao-hou as his disciples as opposed to his public students. And without a doubt they would have been skilled fighters with experience far greater then Cheng-fu! Their loyalty to their teacher and his ‘way’ would lead them to not “affiliate” with Yang Cheng-fu. But is this all conjecture or is there any evidence to show that students of one brother were not acknowledged formally by the other? Xu Long-hou, Chen Wei-ming and Dong Yingjie, three of Yang Cheng-fu’s top students are known to have trained with Yang Shao-hou, yet are not formally acknowledged as his students! Why? The answer is most clearly given to us by Bradford Tyrey in his Translator’s Preface to Xu’s book: He was also granted instruction under Cheng- Fu’s elder brother, Yang Shao-Hou, who furthered Xu’s knowledge but did not claim him as an official disciple because he was a formal student under Cheng-Fu.45
So, it appears that although Yang Shao-hou was willing to teach his brother’s students, yet he would not accept them formally! Now there is nothing sinister in that, it could simply be etiquette or perhaps he didn’t deem them to be skilled enough for his type of training to be counted as his students? Another question that comes to mind is why would they wish to train with Shao-hou? The obvious answer is for martial training as Shao-hou certainly wasn’t peddling health! Chen Wei-ming confirms just as much: Yang Shao-hou once taught me a method in which two men, their right hands touching, from low to high drawing a circle, simultaneously circled to the right with their right legs inside. Their left feet stepped forward lightly - “walking like cats.”46
It is obvious a martial drill is being emphasised here and let us not forget Chen’s quote we mentioned earlier in which he clearly describes what we know of Shao-hou’s fighting methodology - yet, he admits “for which I do not know the use.” So, what are we to make of one of Cheng-fu’s top students training with Shao-hou and hearing of certain fighting methods, yet not know or be taught them? Is Shao-hou withholding information? It would appear so! We can only speculate as to why, but the obvious thing that comes to mind would be the high standards that Shao-hou demanded from his own students and the fact that he pulled no punches! He was not going to fully divulge to those who had not done the training to his level of expectations! Perhaps this was also the reason why Dong also wished to train with him and maybe, it was this, what lay behind the inspiration for his creating his own ‘fast form’? We’ll never truly know! Yang Shao-hou had been the last ‘Titan’ of the Yang family. With him came the end of an era of the Yangs who had trained with and seen the legendary founder Yang Lu-ch’an at work, and practiced their Taijiquan purely as a martial art!
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