T
Taiji fan
Guest
I have recently conducted and interview with an Indoor student of Chen Zhen Lei who was visiting the UK last month. He was very interested to see what was happening on the British taiji scene but also did comment on the fairly poor understanding of taiji by Western teachers. It does seem that the way taiji is practised in China and the way it is practised in the West are somewhat different. For instance, he said that there were only 5 recognised styles in China....Chen, Yang, Wu, Woo, and Sun. He said that when China closed its doors, much of the genuine information regarding taiji had not made it out and many of the texts that were translated were written in 'old' Chinese that even scholars had difficulty understanding and as a result had been embellished or just plainly incorrectly tranlated which he thought was partly why Western taiji has so many variations from teacher to teacher. Essentially much of what we see practised in the West lacks authenticity and many western teachers have little understanding of the complexities of the styles and have gone on to 'make it up' albeit in a well meaning way. This has lead to the creation of 'new' styles and misinterpreation of exsisting ones. He was pleased to see the level of interest in the UK though and hopes that now more people are seeking out the origins and aiming to reach as high a level possible and study the art true to its founders.