Taijiquan was invented as a martial art, but it is both a good martial art and a good exercise for health, with the latter becoming even better known and perhaps even more important during the last 50 years, especially for senior citizens and for people in the West. Taijiquan is also a performing art, known for its soft, slow, meditative, and fluid movements.
Because of the different focuses and because of its several hundred years of history with millions of practitioners all over the world, there are variations in how the various Taijiquan forms are practiced. This is not even taking into account that there are at least five major Taijiquan styles: Chen, Yang, Wu, Sun, and Wu (a different Chinese word from the first Wu). So even if we restrict our discussion to one particular style for a form set that has been standardized, such as the Simplified Yang Style 24 Forms, there are still variations in how this form set is practiced or taught.
Tale of Two Cultures and Two Countries – Part I
During the winter of early 1956, a group of members from the El Dorado County Federal Church (a Methodist church) visited our house in Placerville, California to welcome our family as recent immigrants to the U.S. and new attendees of their church. The outside temperature was in the 20’s or 30’s. The inside temperature was in the low 50’s, because we did not have a furnace in our house at that time and the house was poorly insulated. Not being accustomed to such a cold house, our church visitors stayed for only a few minutes. This article recollects selected incidents from a life involving two cultures and two countries.
How did our family end up in Placerville, California, a small town between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe with a population of about 3,000? Placerville was formerly known as Hangtown because it was so lawless during the gold rush days of the 19th century that lawbreakers were first hanged singly and then in pairs. In the center of town today, there is still a replica of the hanging tree. If it weren’t for my father continuing to exchange Christmas cards with his former dormitory roommate at Brown University, we would have settled in Providence, Rhode Island when we immigrated from Hong Kong to the U.S. in October 1955.
Read More »