REJUVINATING THE ALCHEMIC ROOTS IN TAIJI QUAN
By
Sat Hon
            Taiji quan is a living and evolving art, like an ancient 500 year-old sequoia with roots reaching deep into the netherworld of Taoist alchemical realm. However, its latest cycle now moving into mainstream 21st Century marketing with such bizarre things as "Taiji in a box."  That evolution has already resulted in various degrees of obfuscation and mystification of the art, loss of its essence and roots, dilution of its purposes even as it is embraced for those purposes by current and future generations of sincere practitioners.  By deconstructing Taiji quan to its origins, historical context and intents, we can uncover the hidden alchemical layer pasted over by the more recent façade of athleticism, martial justification and New-Age simplicity.
            The purpose of this essay is to refocus -- and thus, perhaps, reveal -- core essences of Taiji quan not only through a re-examination of its often hidden or lost history, but through the application of "forensic movement analysis."    
            While some may quarrel with my conclusions or even challenge the data and theses I present, my purpose is to engender a new level of understanding and fresh perspectives.  Taiji quan is a living art, and our study of it should be more dynamic than dogmatic   We can not trust the correctness of where we stand if we do not examine how we got here and test our assumptions against honest and sincere challenges.
How did we get here?
            One of the slipperiest concepts for a non-practitioner to grasp is Taiji quan 's history; indeed, those of us who practice the art can also be puzzled about "where we came from" -- and that puzzle, while understandable, has inevitable consequences on what we're doing and where we're going.
            Taiji quan is a living art, like "a great river" that travels not in a "linear" progression, but an evolution subject to not only its own internal growth but also pressures by its contemporary historical, cultural milieu and the Taiji master’s personal idiosyncratic egos -- these and other forces have shaped Taiji quan into not just one river, but a watercourse with many tributaries and side-channel streams.  Quite intriguing, in Japanese martial art schools—as in Goju Ryu, they are call Ryu, 流 which means tributaries. The easiest evidence of this is the various "ryu or families" and systems of Taiji quan-- Wu, Chen, Sun, Yang, Yang-"short" popularized by Cheng Man-ching, the Chinese Communist government's "official" system, my own system Wudang Neigong Taiji quan and other "styles" of various degrees of "legitimacy" and "correctness" (judgments that can be based on prejudice more than perceptive analysis).
            Understanding where we and our art of Taiji quan came from is further complicated by the fact that many of its founders and earliest adepts were illiterate, perhaps not overly articulate, and often secretive.  Also, as individuals they were compelled and shaped by their geographical, socio-political and physical environment in which they lived.  Thus to understand the origin of Taiji quan one must also dive into the parallel history of China of the Taiji masters’ era.
            One of the earliest and most valuable Western analyses of Taiji quan 's origins and roots was published by JAMA contributor and Taiji quan legend Robert Smith (with Donn F. Draeger) in 1980 in their seminal work COMPREHENSIVE ASIAN FIGHTING ARTS.  Smith's data and analysis and my research flow in concert more than conflict and his work provides a trustable framework for conventional, linear historical analysis.
           
One of the most popular theories on the origin of Taiji quan states that Chang San-feng (張三峰), a Taoist priest of the Yuan dynasty (A.D, 1279-1368), learned it in a dream.
A more reasonable thesis simply avers that the founder is unknown, but that its development dates from one Wang Tsung-yueh (王宗岳) of Shansi Province who introduced it in Honan during the Ch’ien-lung period (1736—95) of the Ch’ing dynasty. 
This theory holds that, while passing through Ch’en Chia kou in Wen-hsien of Honan, Wang Tsung-yueh saw the villagers practicing the town’s distinct type of boxing.  Later at his inn he made an offhand remark on the method.  This brought several challenges from the villagers.  He disposed of the challengers so easily that the elders asked him to remain and to teach them his soft boxing.  He did, and this marked the genesis of Ch’en-chia Kou as the hub of t’ai-chi in China.”

The late Ching dynasty of the 1880’s when China was besieged by foreign powers resulted in a spread of Taiji amongst the Chinese elite literati class.  For them Taiji was a perfect antidote to the massive invasion of western science and military might.  Taiji allowed them to fantasize being a scholarly warrior.  It empowered them to feel vital and fit to fight the foreign invasion. “Rejecting Westernization and withdrawing into nativist roots might appear to be merely a reactionary reflex, but the reconstruction of fractured cultural psyche may be the healing that prepares the way for modern nation building in the twentieth century.”

The 20th  Century slammed into Taiji quan with the great fist of Mao's overthrow of the feudalistic sick giant of China’s past that had been dominated by weak central Imperial governments and foreign hegemony.  It is crucial to note that Mao's post W.W. II communist victory also came after the Boxer Rebellions that had previously challenged both foreign and imperial control with rebellion intoxicated by "village arts" -- the kind of martial and boxing systems thought of in the West today as "kung (gung) fu" that sometimes were as entrancing as the "ghost dance" movements that fired messianic religious resistance to "Western" powers by certain North American Indian nations near the end of the 19th Century.  
Under the Chinese communist’s pogrom of political and cultural purges spurred an exodus of Chinese martial and other arts "masters" to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and elsewhere, and thus also allowed an "opening" of those arts to Western students that otherwise might not have happened:  for example, Robert Smith received his Taiji quan and other Chinese martial arts training while working as a CIA analyst in Taiwan.
Meanwhile, on the mainland "home" of Taiji quan, Mao undertook the task of recreating a modern but communist China with ruthless brilliance that required a ubiquity of control.  He and his ruling elite knew the history of the Boxer Rebellions and how "village arts" that included teaching ordinary individuals combat techniques that allowed them a level of personal independence and freedom from Party or governmental control empowered potential rebels.  Mao's response was in many ways rooted in his nativism:  using native elements as rebuilding block of a “Great Leap” forward of China.  So rather than totally suppress the traditional arts, he yielded to their historical force but "rolled it back" with propaganda that created Taiji quan as an useful extension of total communist party control.
Mao's massive propaganda strategy made Taiji a product of the people, i.e. a retired soldier and a farmer villager of the Chang’s village.
Hence, by cutting off its feudalistic and "decadent" root to what this essay will soon discuss as "Taoist alchemy," the government allowed the practice of taiji as the wholesome activity for physical health -- but only if done "correctly" and in full compliance with the Central Government's directives and under ever watchful eyes. 
The government had done similar editorial change to the other school of martial practice.  Rather than having a Shaolin martial set with its feudalistic name for the form, they organized a standard martial form with simple names like Palm thrusting upward, slicing to the left and kicking to the right.
In 1956, the National Physical Culture and Sports Commission of the People's Republic of China, held a massive meeting of more than two hundred taiji teachers under the watchful eyes of the NPCSC, these experts agreed on a short form version of 24 movements and changed all the movements in a straight forward and backward pattern.  This linear movement pattern is to facilitate large group practices in parks and other public places. Thus the NPCSC followed the directive of Chairman Mao’s dictum:  let all things from the people and by the people, serve the mass.
However, in serving the people (and the Party), that group of taiji teachers -- among other things -- stripped away the Taoist alchemical structure of the form, castrating its philosophical, medical and even martial roots.  They treated the taiji form merely as a loosely connected bag of physical movements.  Their simplistic "callisthenic" approach, for example, pared down the repetition from Jade Maiden Weaving the Shuttle in four directions to just two.  They reduced the Dan Bien/Single Whip to two, one to the left and one to the right. 
Even as the "official" version of Taiji quan was slicing away at the art on the Chinese mainland, the opening of the art to students outside of China had to contend with losses within the already scant historical records of Taiji quan, language translation difficulties and cultural myopias on everyone's part. 

What are we in danger of losing?
            “Taiji quan is a Taoist art -- no matter what its tangle of roots. Or rather:  Taiji quan must be a Taoist art to be fully Taiji. Less is not more, less is less.”---Master H.K. Koo

            Whether the Taoist empowerment of Taiji quan is lost in translation or by dictatorial control, parochial or cultural blindness, shallow "new philosophies," and commodification, the loss lessens what is called Taiji quan , often to the point where it should not claim that name, the supreme ultimate form.
            Beyond issues of intellectual and artistic integrity, such a loss is a grave indeed for humanity, for the wisdom and worth of Taiji quan is rooted to its Taoist elements.  The loss of Taji’s alchemical essence is as profound as an extinction of a rare medicinal herb in the Amazons.
            What is Taoism?  As one of my Taoist brother jokingly quibbled, “Anything you like to call it.”   Taoism is like water, its nature is utterly plain yet our life depends on it.  Hence, Tao is the path of ordinary extraordinariness, the sacred within the profane.  It is the spontaneous arising of our natural state of beingness.         Be natural is the mantra of Taoism.
A note of caution.  While we posit that Taiji quan is a philosophically shaped art, we are not insisting that a diligent, honest practicing of Taiji quan necessitates shoving out or displacing our "non-Taoist" philosophies or spiritual beliefs and practices.  Indeed, Taoism itself often overlays, works with, or infuses compatibly with other distinct and profound religious beliefs.  One example of a fine, on-point and specific discussion of such issues is JAMA staffer Russ Mason's Taiji quan Journal, Studying the Dao with Jesus essay           
            Taiji quan is a discipline, a natural art of spontaneity, a way of transcending the ordinary and contacting the sacred-- not a cult.
                        This perhaps obvious analysis is necessary to help clarify the thesis of this essay:  we are in danger of losing as Taiji quan evolves into the 21st Century is the art's inherent force of what can best be called alchemy.
            "Alchemy\金丹,(kimdan in Chinese)" is translated as Golden Elixir.  Alchemy in essence involves transmutation: turning lead into gold, transforming poison into medicine and finally the transcendence of mortality to immortality-- and by extension:  the multi-layered practices of physical/intellectual/emotional/spiritual matrix to create or encourage transformation.
            The development of the alchemy concept emerges as three historical epochs.
Alchemy as a concept first emerges in the prehistoric "shamanistic era" of the early cult of animal totems.  The shaman danced and sang to eviscerate evil and pathological spirit from the patients. In the Yellow emperor’s Treatise on medicine, he was told by his Taoist master that in the ancient time, people danced to heal themselves of sickness.  By 3,000 B.C, cultural complexity had evolved to include treatments of herbs and acupuncture.

The second epoch is the "mineral alchemical period", when alchemists ingested minerals treated in alchemical cauldron to achieve immortality.  The most famous legendary example is the Yellow emperor who used nine cauldrons to achieve immortality.  By distilling the alchemical mineral agents in nine distillation cycles, he transformed the mineral into elixir.  He departed on the summit of Taisan by riding on the back of a dragon.
Outside of legends, practicing mineral alchemy caused more death than success. However, the basic development of the five elements/phases theory:  everything can be categorized to five basic archetypal elements/phases .  This theory was a direct result of this period of mineralistic alchemy.
The third epoch is our "current time" -- not just today, but yesterdays of several hundred years ago and hopefully infinity of tomorrows.
The third epoch is defined by the emergence of the inner alchemy, 内丹/Neidan which takes the mineral alchemist’s terminology and changed them into symbolism of the spiritual and biological processes.  For example, the fluid mercury stands for the seminal fluid and sexual essences.  The red cinnabar becomes the blood.  The fire in the alchemical cauldron is the heart in the body.  The cauldron is one’s body.  One’s breath is the bellow that blows air into the fire. In a poem attributed to the Taoist immortal Lu Dong Bing (1200 A.D.), he wrote,

“A single kernel of corn embodies the universe, 一粒粟中藏世界.
Within my body is a half cauldron which simmers the mountains and rivers.
半升鐺內煮山川”

In the verses, a single kernel allures to the immortal elixir or one’s self nature and the half cauldron is the alchemical crucible within oneself which can transform one’s experience and action into awakening to that which is "immortal" -- not channeling such a force into yourself for an infinite corporeal existence of flesh and bone, but rather connecting to concepts and principles that are "beyond life and death."  Such an articulation of "alchemy" fuses perfectly into the post-modern neo-Taoist philosophical approach of our 21st Century.  A transcendence of the physical limitation of a life does not require a literal abandoning of this earthly realm.  In a dialogue with a monk, the Chan Buddhist Master, Tung Shan 洞山禅师 illustrated this transcendence by answering the monk’s question:
“Master, during the season of deep freeze and burning heat, how can one escape this?”
“Why not find a place that has neither cold nor heat?” Replied Tung Shan.
“Do you know of such place?”Asked the monk.
“Yes, go find a place that when it is cold, it chills you to the bone.  Or when it is hot, it singes your hair.” Answered Tung Shan
            One can have transcendence of life and death right in the midst of life and death.
Many principles of Taiji are direct progeny of such neidan practices.  For example, the taiji practice of breathing into the dantien to create heat and warmth in the body is taken from the above inner alchemical symbolisms.

What can we find in Taiji quan?
“Do you know there are thirteen Single Whip (Dan Bien/單鞭) postures in the Taiji quan form?” my master, Koo Ham King asked me one morning back in 1970’s as we were having our favorite breakfast together—hot chocolate and flan.
However, when I tallied the repetition of Dan Bien postures in our form, I found only eleven -- the common count among practitioners of our style.
My late master’s question propelled me to an analysis of Taiji quan best categorized as forensic.  And while my forensic search -- to my surprise -- confirmed Master Koo's assertion, more importantly for this essay, the search his question inspired required me to create the "forensic movement" method of analysis and such analysis, applied to one particular, key Taiji quan posture -- Dan Bien -- allows us to see the posture's "alchemic" roots and glimpse what we can find in Taiji Quan that in our 21st Century is in danger of being lost.
"Forensic movement analysis" is simply looking at the taiji movements as living evidence of its long gone creators with each movement tracing back to its genetic ancestors.
Taiji scholars have relied on written and oral sources for their research into the origin of taiji.  However, if we can perform a forensic analysis of the pattern of the taiji form and its movements, then its may reveal its ‘genetic’ lineage.  Imagine an unknown classical music composition is discovered without written reference.  A musicologist would decipher its origin by analyzing its compositional structure and compare it with similar known classical period.  In parallel, by tracing the taiji postures and its form pattern, we can compare them to ancient inner alchemical cultivation, neidan/内丹.
One of the most basic decoding any structure is to discover the pattern of repetitions.  The Taiji quan form can be illustrated in the following graphic diagram.

Excerpt from Article of Qi Journal: rejuvinating the alchemical roots in Taiji Quan