Go to amazon.com, type in “tai chi,” and the pickings are kind of depressing: Tai Chi for Dummies, this form and that form etc. Lets be honest, no one has ever become good at Tai Chi by just reading books or even DVDs. I have a few of those kinds of books for reference, but really, the bookshelf should be filled with books on the internal aspects, meaning the internal alchemy and the philosophy side of things. Type in “Internal Martial Arts” and the result is a bit more encouraging: at least you have 4 books on the first page that were written since 2000 on the topics. And due to the hard works of some translators, we now have some classics such as Yang Cheng Fu’s book, and even Chen Xin’s tome, long thought to be one of holy grail of books to be translated (*).
The English contents pale in comparison to the Chinese literature though. You can glimpse a little bit of Wei ShuRen’s classics work at sites like chinafrominside.com, but that’s less than a page out of four of his books. The story has it that Wei got the book from his teacher, and his skills greatly improved afterward. {EDIT 09/02/08: I was told that this particular story may not have been true and that Master Wei simply learned (very well) from Master Wang. END EDIT} Look at this video of Wei ShuRen when he was 80 years old:
I don’t know about you, but when someone can do that when they are 80, I sure will try to read everything they write down. Fortunately, I have located one of the books. I am hoping to get a copy of his “Secret teachings of Yang Jian Hou,” hopefully one of my contacts will come through.
I also have gotten a copy of Li Ya Hsuan’s book on Yang Tai Chi. Both this and Wei’s books contain much information that were secret and certainly not very well known in the West even today. I hope to share some translations in the days to come.
(*) Oddly enough, for a bookworm like me, I have not ordered this book yet, perhaps I still cannot believe that anyone can translate this book adequately….
Nice short jin ;-} I wish I was there.
Nice and interesting blog!
Could you provide the reference for Li Ya Hsuan’s book?
I guess it is in Chinese, but anyway…
Thanks!
Hello! Nice site. Great writing. Too bad its spoilt by this untrue sentence “The story has it that Wei got the book from his teacher, and his skills greatly improved afterward.” – it would be nice if you could mention that the practitioners from Master Wei’s lineage say that this rumor is just that a rumor
And practitioners in the lineage of Wei Shuren’s elder gongfu brother, Zhu Huaiyuan, confirm that Wang Yongquan possessed a manuscript of Yang Jianhou and that Wei Shuren “borrowed” it from Wang’s library late in his teacher’s life. Zhu said that Wei came to him for help in understanding the text and applying it to Wei’s practice. Zhu further said that Wei’s level of skill dramatically improved after studying Yang Jianhou’s manuscript.
These are all oral tales and we are all two, three or four times removed from the source(s). There is no reason to believe or disbelieve either Zhu or Wei. What matters is our own practices in the way pointed to by our teachers.