1988 first time I came to China/Beijing, I was on my way to Japan to train Karate. I was going to stay 1week in Beijing doin the usual tourist stuff. On my Beijing map I saw a park was nearby my hotel so in the morning I jogged to that park(it was Tiantan park) to practice my karate katas, I drew some stares to me doing so but mostly everyone seem to not put any notice, after a while a teenage guy came up an talked to me in Chinese but I didn’t knew Chinese back then so I just smiled and nodded politely, then he began waving and windmilling in a flurry at me with his arms and smiled, he wanted me to try the same, I tried and he laughed, I asked about taijiquan cause that what I had heard and read about was a thing in Chinese parks, so far I’d only seen guys walking strangely around trees(quite many of those walkers back then) and some guys doing shaolin’ish stuff.
Eventually I found a taiji group in that park and followed them as good as I could and got some pointers and corrections by the teacher.
I came to extend my one week in Beijing to almost a month before I left for Tokyo, and the taiji moves I had picked up I forgot.
But what I remember is that despite the many players of all kinds in the park it was much quieter than nowadays
