An in-depth review of

Lost T’ai-chi Classics from the Late Ch’ing Dynasty

by Dougas Wile

Published by SUNY

Professor Wile is well-known to the TCC community for his books such as “T’ai-chi Touchstones”. This new volume is much his most intriguing work; it’s about sex, drugs (internal alchemy) and Tai Chi Chuan - though not necessarily in that order; it is an important book. There are 5 major writings which all styles subscribe to which have come to be referred to as the Classics, then we have lesser writings by Wu Yu-xiang, Li Yi-yu and others which are sometimes included in collections of the Classics. The texts reproduced by Professor Wile fall into three categories; let us examine each in turn to see if the apothegm in the title is merited. Firstly we have writings ascribed to Wu Yu-xiang’s elder brothers both of whom were government officials and to his nephew, Li Yi-yu, all of which are supposed to have been held in the Li family until their recent publication in China. All discuss Tai Chi Chuan as a martial art. The Wu/Li texts are mainly commentaries on material familiar to us in the Classics, but there is some material which Wile considers not to be found elsewhere such as a reference to the “old three techniques”, where “I use Lu, the opponent uses Zhou, I use An he uses Lu, I use Zhou and he uses An”, and the idea to “take advantage of the moment when the old energy (i.e. Jin) has just passed and the new energy (sic) has not yet issued”. Wile seems to accept the ability of the Wu brothers to write advanced Tai Chi theory, when they only trained with Yang Lu-chan for two years and were then family men and officials around fifty yearsof age, but is this advanced theory or just a different way of stating obvious things that we do anyway when practicing pushing hands and applications? In 1981 I first saw “Wu Family Tai Chi Chuan” written by Wu Jian-quan’s son (different Wu family), Gong-zao. It was first published in the 1930’s and republished in 1980 with the addition of 40 texts which were supposed to be the teachings of Yang Ban-hou to Quan Yu, preserved in the Wu family and copied out in Wu Jian-quan’s hand. Twenty eight of these had been previously published by Yang Cheng-fu and others. Professor Wile’s translation is also a first. These texts are most curious. Although there are 40 and each has a title, Wu Jian-quan only lists the first 32 titles in his list of contents which also states that there are totally 32. Since they first appeared in 1980, the Yang family have since published all 40 texts and they also only list 32 titles in the list of contents. Did Wu Jian-quan write these or add them to what his father received from Ban-hou, did the Yangs copy the Wus or was there a common source for the texts? Examining the content, the first connects the Thirteen Tactics (8 Jin and 5 Steps) with the Eight Trigrams and Five Elements except that only 3 of the thirteen connections made correspond to those of the TCC Classics. So are the Classics wrong? They can’t both be right. Yet why would the Wu and Yang families publish these texts and thereby implicitly endorse them? Professor Wile doesn’t seem to have spotted this disparity.

The final three texts all deal extensively with the three treasures of internal alchemy and all are attributed to Chang San-feng. They are not amongst the 32 texts mentioned in the list of contents. Text 39 is written in the first person, purports to be an oral transmission from Chang and refers to “matching the fair maiden and baby boy” which seems to be endorsing intercourse with prepubescents; it continues, “... to sieze the female within our own bodies is not as good as the interaction of Yin and Yang between two males for this is a more rapid method of self cultivation”. The author goes on to say that he adapted these princeples to martial arts. As the Yang and Wu lineages have both published these texts are they then endorsing these sexual practices? It certainly seems to put female practitioners and those disinclined to homoerotic experiences in an invidious position ( in more ways than one) unless they happen to be prepubescent virgins.

On a martial level, some texts are interesting because of their discussion of applying force to vital points and their reference to techniques such as “under leaf punch”, “rolling break punch” and others which I haven’t seen in other writings. The vital point information is not new in so far as many practitioners are aware that well-known techniques such as “tiger paw”, “pioneer arms” etc. incorporate vital point attack. The other techniques named may have been lost or may be alternative names for what we already have.

The third group of writings is attributed to Chang Nai-chiou, a martial artist from Henan in the mid 18th century and contains many passages which are similar or the same as passages in the TCC Classics. One of my Chinese martial arts encyclopaedias lists Chang as an eclectic martial arts practitioner and teacher who went on to develop his own style - there is no reference to Tai Chi Chuan. There is as yet insufficient information to explore this connection, but it raises more questions about the authorship and origins of the Classics.

Some of Professor Wile’s theories and conclusions are questionable. In reference to the Wu brothers involvement in Tai ChHi Chuan and their texts he says, “Could t’ai-chi ch’uan represent, in part, an attempt by colonised males to regain a sense of power and charisma, to hold their heads up in a world where they could not compete on the terms dictated by the West...?” and “Perhaps the t’ai-chi ch’uan training hall, like the pub or playing field in the West was a place where male psyches, wounded in the real world, could indulge in collective fantasies of power.” Certain of histranslations are unhelpful for the non-Chinese reader, -Jin is “energy”, Nei Kung is “kinetic energy”.

The book does not deal with Bai Shi and the “inside the door” aspect of Tai Chi Chuan wherein after initiation the disciple was presented with a copy of the five core Classics which he memorised by chanting during the practice of Nei Kung - perhaps this is the reason for their mnemonic composition and textual variations. Neither does the book examine the remarkable coincidence that when Yang Lu-chuan was teaching in Beijing so were Dong Hai Chuan and Kuo Yun-shen of Pa Kua and Hsing I fame respectively, both of whom were from Yang’s home province of Hebei (to his credit Wile lists many of Yang’s successors who hailed from Hebei). Again in both these styles we have “Classics”, mnemonic in nature which contain similar terminology to that found in the TCC Classics.