Tai Chi history

Empress Dowager Cixi: from concubine to ruler of China

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The Empress on the throne when Tai Chi arrived in the Royal Court

Empress Dowager Cixi (1904)

Many accounts of tai chi history focus narrowly on Yang Luchan, the Wu brothers, and Chen Village. But that lens is too tight. The wider political and cultural context matters, and a useful place to begin is with the Empress Dowager Cixi, who was on the throne when Yang LuChan first set foot in Beijing.

The ‘You’re Dead To Me’ podcast takes a comedic look at history. You might find it a bit frivolous, but the history is serious, and provided by Professor of Chinese History at the University of Manchester, Professor Yang Wen Jung. In this episode host Greg Jenner takes a look at the formidable Empress Dowager Cixi and her difficult rise to power.

Once a formidable, disciplined force, Manchu society had, over generations in power, become associated with decadence and decline, compounded by the intrigue and factionalism of court politics. This was the environment into which tai chi arrived in Beijing.

It’s worth asking why the Wu brothers chose this moment to introduce Yang Luchan to the imperial court. By then, the battle-hardened Manchu warriors who had conquered the Ming dynasty were long gone. The Qing elite faced a different challenge: their distinct Manchu identity was weakening, and there was growing pressure to appear more culturally ‘Chinese’ in order to maintain legitimacy with the broader population.

Perhaps what was needed was a way to reinvent a shared sense of “Chineseness”. Something cultural, visible, and unifying. Tai chi fits that role rather neatly.

Mark Chen on Chen Taijiquan’s history

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This podcast interview of Mark Chen by Ken Gullette is a real gem. If you haven’t listened to it before I’d really recommend it. It starts with a basic run-through of who taught who and in what order, and who all these people are, but then gets really interesting about halfway through when it talks of some of the more heretical things, like what happened during the utter insanity and madness of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. A period which is ignored by almost all Chinese martial artists. It’s just something that is not talked about these days – almost a non-subject, and those non-subjects always fascinate me.

There is also a section on the famous “Peng Lu Ji An” list used to describe the “powers” of Taijiquan, and the characters used. There are also some good thoughts about Taijiquan training and what Taijiquan is really all about. Overall this is an excellent podcast and shouldn’t be missed by anybody.

Mark’s book is a translation of most of the book by Chen Zhaopi’s book, published in 1935 and is available on Amazon in print and digital formats.

 

 

Is Taijiquan Taoist?

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I wrote a blog post the other day in which I mentioned that the Taoist origins of Tai Chi are historically unproven, yet the similarity in ideas is obviously there.

I got an interesting comment back on Facebook from somebody linking to a book I wasn’t aware of:

“Roel Jansen: Your information on the origins of Tai Chi is outdated. Please read ‘Tai Chi – the true history & principles’ by Lars Bo Christiansen to get up to date with the latest findings on the daoist origins of Tai Chi.”

So I looked the book up and it exists – it’s on Amazon.

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You can read a lot of the book on Amazon’s “look inside” feature. It’s about the newly found Li family manuscripts from which the author draws some pretty wild conclusions, one of which is that the Taoist link to Tai Chi has now been proved beyond doubt.

The book author has a website too, which contains his main arguments in the QnA:

I thought something seemed a bit ‘off’ with the whole thing, so I looked around and found the eminent Douglas Wile, who wrote two books on the Tai Chi Classics that are very good, and that classic essay on Chan Sang Feng, had written a massive article on these Li manuscripts, (and Lars’ book) which is here:

https://mas.cardiffuniversitypress.org/ … /download/

It’s a mammoth read, but looks at the whole thing from a more balanced perspective, including all the political leanings.

The TL;DR version is: It’s complicated. The verdict is still out :)

Here’s a pertinent quote:

The question of whether taijiquan is the product of Daoism creating a martial art or a martial art absorbing Daoism is a critical issue in Chinese martial arts historiography. If anything, Daoism is an even more slippery term than taijiquan itself, but the issue has become highly politicized, which is understandable in the context of Chinese history and culture. However, for a Western scholar to stumble into this minefield bespeaks a certain naiveté. The assertion of Daoist origins has become associated with cultural nationalism and the search for Chinese identity, often called ‘Chineseness’. Chinese scholars have built entire careers out of championing either Zhang Sanfeng or Chen Wangting, but it is very unseemly for Western scholars to insert themselves in this politicized process of roots-seeking and competing attempts to identify origin, creator, or birthplace as ‘transient points of stabilization’
[Laclau 2000: 53].

I think there are other questions that need to be asked about the whole question of “Is Tai Chi Taoist?”

For instance how many of the concepts we associate with Taoism, like the Tai Chi symbol, the I-Ching, Wu Xing and Bagua are actually Taoist in origin? Chinese Folk Religion, is actually the largest religion in China, and makes use of many things that we in the West think are “Taoist”.

As HotSoup on the RSF forum posted recently:

“There is an opinion that asking a CIMA practitioner from the beginning of the nineteenth century whether his art was “Buddhist” or “Taoist” would make as much sense, as asking a medieval fence teacher whether his fencing was “Catholic” or, say, “Juwish”.