Where Tai Chi All Began

The history of ancient things always consists of a mix of fact and myth. The harder you try to pin down a starting point, an original spark, the more myth and the less fact you are likely to encounter. This is especially true of tai chi, because the art was for many centuries practiced in secret. But what we can say for sure is that it originated in China, that it is related to other healing and martial arts such as chi kung and kung fu, and that it draws on the philosophy of Taoism.

Some time around 2700 B.C., the semi-mythological Yellow Emperor appears in a text that expounded on the invisible workings of the body, and gave rise to acupuncture.The Emperor is said to have practiced health-giving exercises based on the movements of animals. This is the first reference to something resembling chi kung or tai chi.

The Taoist thread in tai chi is older still.The core text of Taoism is the I Ching, the Book of Changes, written in about 2850 B.C. This is the first text to talk about chi, yin and yang. Lao Tzu, the Taoist sage, strove to explain the Tao in laconic epigrams. One of these could almost be a definition of tai chi: “Yield and overcome/ Bend and be straight/ He who stands on tiptoe is not steady/He who strides cannot maintain the pace.”

A thousand years later, in the 6th century A.D., a Chinese physician named Hua-tuo taught exercises based on “the movement of the five creatures”—the bear, tiger, deer, ape, and bird. His system was called Wuchi chih hsi, and bears comparison with the Yellow Emperor’s regime: both were based on observations of nature, and both were intended primarily as a health-giving practice.

Around the same time, an Indian monk named Bodhidharma brought Zen Buddhism to China. He taught the monks at the Shaolin temple at Henan, and invented a series of exercises to help strengthen mind and body for meditation. These exercises—called Shaolin boxing, developed into the martial art we know as kung fu. One of those to learn martial arts at Shaolin was Chang San Feng, who was born in 1247. He is usually said to be the true founder of tai chi chuan, as it came to be known. The name is untranslatable but might be rendered as the “great strength of opposites.”

Chang San Feng’s eureka moment was the result of a chance encounter—and once again the inspiration came from the animal world. Chang is said to have seen a fight between a crane and a snake. Neither could overcome the other: the snake could twist out of reach of the bird’s beak; the bird could step aside from the snake’s lunges, or disperse their power with his wings. Chang developed a martial art that was based on giving way to force, bending with the blow.

Some time during the medieval Ming dynasty, tai chi became the secret monopoly of the Chen clan, and was taught only to members of the family. This exclusive arrangement was broken in the 19th century by a servant of the Chens. Yang Lu-chan learned the art and went on to teach an adapted form (Yang-style tai chi) to the courtiers of the Ching Emperor.

Tai chi was brought out of China in the 20th century. One of the teachers who did most to spread tai chi worldwide was Cheng Man-ching, who fled to Taiwan after the communist revolution in 1947. Cheng Man-ching was a kind of renaissance man of Chinese wisdom and an expert in herbal medicine. He used his tai chi to control his tuberculosis, and put emphasis on the therapeutic qualities of the practice. He also invented a “short form” which, by the time he died in 1975, had spread to the West.

Tai Chi History Time Line

The origins of tai chi could go back as far as 5,000 years, but the form as we know it today did not emerge until the 13th century.

• 2700 B.C – The Yellow Emperor, the father of Chinese medicine, practices exercises based on movements of animals.

• 6th Century A.D. – Bodhidharma, founder of Zen Buddhism, teaches mind-body exercises to monks at Shaolin temple in Henan.

• 13th Century – Chang San Feng devises early system of tai chi, after seeing a snake and crane fighting.

• 18th Century – Chen family of Henan practice tai chi in secret.

• 1800s – Yang Lu-chan learns Chen style. He goes on to develop and teach Yang style.

• 1880s – Chinese emigrants spread tai chi to Singapore.

• 1930s – Cheng Man-ching trains with Yang Chen-fu, grandson ofYang Lu-chan.

• 1940s – Cheng Man-ching simplifies Yang style into short form, now the most widely practiced style in the world.

• 1949 – Cheng Man-ching moves to Taiwan, where he opens a school in Taipei.

• 1960s – Tai chi starts to become popular in the West. Cheng Man-ching opens a school in New York.