Thinking about Taiji

Published as “Tai Chi Chuan in Great Britain” in Tai Chi Chuan and Internal Arts, no 12 (Winter 1999-2000) pp.12-15

What is taiji? When I mentioned to a fellow taiji player that I was thinking a bit about this question, he said that maybe I would be better off doing a bit more serious training instead of spending time thinking about taiji. He had a point. After all, I know the rudiments of enough forms to practice (mostly Cheng Man Ching style), and I certainly need to practice more. Another certainty is that my level of skill does not begin to reflect my long-term interest in taiji, or the quality of the teachers I have had. I began doing taiji back in 1975, but stopped and started so often that I am really not very good. Although I am a bit undisciplined, it was hard to find teachers then, especially living in the countryside outside Lancaster. But for a particular reason I have begun to think about what taiji actually is and how I might be able to tell one version of the story of The Taiji Movement in Britain.

The special reason is that I am trying to get a research grant to enable me to do some proper, serious work on the taiji movement in Britain. I should add that until nine years ago I made my living as a university lecturer. The project is to try and find out something slightly surprising or fascinating or non-commonsensical about the taiji as it is actually practised in Britain today. Perhaps if I am lucky, a few hitherto unknown facts. My hope is to be able to do the research (part-time) for a couple of years. So you can see why I am thinking in some detail about exactly what I want to research.

As far as I know, no one has actually done any serious research on the movement itself, although obviously there are loads of books about various forms, about actually doing taiji, as well as about the history of taiji in China. So far I have come across very few people who have done work on the taiji or any other martial arts movements in Britain (or even elsewhere), but I am hoping to meet and talk to anyone who has. Any suggestions? One of the reasons I am writing this article (the first one related to the research project) is that I need your help to do this research. It seemed most appropriate to write something for actual taiji practitioners, rather than to academics who know nothing about taiji, even if they are experts at thinking about things.

When I started to think about taiji I began from the most obvious fact that taiji is a martial art. It also became even more obvious that many people (perhaps by the end of the project I might be able to say most people) don’t get into taiji on account of this supposedly obvious fact. Nor does this supposedly obvious description have a lot to do with why they carry on, enjoy, or become passionately attached to taiji (at least in this part of the world). Just looking at the martial side of taiji, there are lots of debates and discussions about the amount and type of martial content in various styles of taiji, and whether the lack of martial emphasis or the addition of various non-taiji practices mean that the taiji is somehow less ‘authentic’, or even ‘crap taiji’. One of my first shattered preconceptions is what I assumed to be the pervasive intolerance of other styles that I thought existed within British taiji. Most high level teachers are well aware that what is ‘real taiji’ for one might not be for others, and furthermore, that this is not a problem for the movement or perhaps for taiji in a global sense. People will choose what suits them, as individuals, at a particular time in their life. I am not, however, intending to ignore the question as to what is ‘real taiji’.

But aside from questions related to the martial arts content of taiji, the entire question of authentic taiji and qualifications to be a proper taiji teacher are moving up the agenda in Britain. I would like to understand that discussion at various levels, both within the movement, and as the movement acts outside itself. What exactly are the emerging regulatory issues? What are the ‘teaching qualifications’ that are emerging and what do they mean to everyone? How are various people talking about this trend, what direction is that discussion taking, and what are the implications for the taiji teachers and students in the near future? Regulation by the state, in conjunction with various organisations, is becoming an increasingly familiar phenomenon in Britain, China, France, USA and elsewhere. I might also add that my research partners have some experience in this area with other cultural practices and think the phenomenon of ‘the audit culture’ or forms of social regulation are important and interesting at a more general societal level.

Complicating the regulation or standardisation efforts are the great variety of styles, schools, teachers and organisations within the taiji movement as a whole. Each style or school teaches or promotes what they are quite certain is ‘real taiji’. While some of the schools are not very connected to each other, others are quite involved in the larger movement. There are even some conflicts within the movement as a whole about the authenticity or effectiveness of styles or schools. All these concerns relate to an important political side to the movement, and I hope to be able to integrate this angle into my project.

There are lots of questions that arise when dealing with even a narrow conception of taiji as an embodied practice of movement, training and fighting. By ‘embodied’ I simply mean that it has a physical side (not merely a mental or philosophical or spiritual or social side). Some might say that the most important aspect of taiji actually has to do with the body and how it works (although I want to find out if there are those who disagree with this view). I might add that there is a growing academic literature on ‘the body’, and ways of seeing and experiencing the body (I think that sociologists only recently discovered it as an important topic). It might well be the case that the academics are not comfortable with the ‘mind-body’ nature of taiji and want to simplify it too much. As anyone who has tried to do taiji knows, it is both simple and complicated to actually learn or ‘embody’ the martial art. It is not just a question of learning bodily movements like a dancer, but to utilise ‘the mind’ in close relation to ‘the body’. Otherwise the bodily movements are not right. Although I am still investigating this angle (the academic literature is very hard to understand), focusing on what your body does in relation to other bodies as well as how the mind and body are related in an ‘embodied practice’ will no doubt be one of the ways we look at taiji in the research. It may be that the academics can add very little at all to the understanding of the body that has evolved within the taiji world.

Some people with pretty impressive credentials and a long and serious encounter with taiji emphasise that taiji is not merely a martial art, but is also related to a spiritual path. They may have come to taiji for some other reason, but sooner or later many of these very skilful and experienced players take something of a ‘spiritual turn’ (please take that term ‘spiritual’ loosely as I won’t discuss it here). Do people actually carry on with their practice as part of a genuine response to some sort of spiritual urge? How do they understand that? Is taiji alone enough to satisfy that urge, or must one go to teachers of other arts or practices to find genuine and satisfying spiritual sustenance? I might even get very interested in why people in Britain need some strange Eastern practices. What is it that is inadequate about the existing ‘spiritual’ choices? While it might not be something that is talked about in classes very much, it is clear from my initial interviews that this aspect of taiji is important to many serious practitioners.

Others talk about taiji as a health practice. Is this just a marketing ploy to bring in the punters to what is essentially a fighting art? Is this talk merely a way of making taiji acceptable to the older, the gentler, the less able and unfit? What do people mean by their ‘health talk’, beyond the most obvious ways that taiji strengthens the legs, helps the balance, helps general body toning and helps people ‘feel good’ or ‘less stressed’? Do people who do it for their health use Traditional Chinese Medicine and claim that the embodied practice of taiji is strongly and directly related to TCM? Some players treat it as merely a biomechanical body practice with side effects, without knowing or caring much about the TCM connections. And what about the role of qi gong? So even looking at this health angle in my thinking about taiji brings up all sorts of fascinating tensions. I shall have to make hard decisions as to what is important or interesting.

For nearly everyone, taiji is a leisure pursuit or a hobby. People do it for fun. Very few people are paid to do it, and fewer still are able to actually earn a living from it. So another obvious possibility is to compare it, just to get a perspective, with other leisure pursuits or ‘organised enthusiasms’ (cricket, local history, cycling, line-dancing, etc.). Is it more than a hobby or a leisure pursuit, and does it demean or illuminate taiji to compare it with mere hobbies? In addition, for those people who actually do it for money (including nearly all teachers), it is wage labour, a job or career. So a researcher could easily treat some schools and teachers as a business, with employees, turnover, marketing, clients or customers, profit and so forth. How does this ‘taiji as business’ framing help illuminate how taiji has developed in Britain, and how it might be similar to or different than ‘traditional taiji’? To miss out on this leisure/work/business angle would miss something that might well be quite revealing.

It is also a social activity. At this moment, thousands of people (perhaps more than two hundred thousand), go to various classes the length and breadth of Britain. Any teacher knows that part of the motivation, one of the reasons that people keep training, is that they like the social contact. They meet people and make friends. Sometimes quite good friends over the years of training, in many forms, through many personal changes. There is a certain intimacy to learning taiji, with a lot of touching of the body and closeness that other social activities don’t have. So to forget or neglect that social side of taiji is a bit like forgetting that cars are bought, used and understood as many things, as well as simply for transport from one place to another.

In addition taiji is a cultural activity. People often do it because they are interested in exploring, in particular, Chinese culture or Taoism. Something about knowing or understanding that culture, including the martial arts bit, appeals to them. Some people have gone so far as to live in China (or Chinese communities elsewhere), learn the spoken or written language, live with or near a Chinese teacher, or marry a Chinese person. One of the other ‘cultural’ ways that people come to taiji in Britain, and elsewhere in the West, is through reading about it. Some would say this not true in the East, that people don’t begin by reading about it and then get interested in doing it (although later they might read about it). Does this constitute an important difference between how taiji has been ‘traditionally’ understood and how it is now understood in Britain? I am also very curious about how most ‘British’ people see the tension between this ‘obviously’ Chinese art and their own cultural background and experience. To neglect that cultural side would be to miss a good deal about why people are attracted to taiji and about the changing nature of taiji.

I am also quite keen to investigate directly how a European or British taiji might actually differ from what has been taught or practised in China, Taiwan, Malaysia, France, USA, Australia, Germany and elsewhere. Does the mutation that must be going on as various European individuals and regional cultures take taiji into their lives and hearts, affect the authenticity or quality of contemporary taiji? Is the only really good taiji still in China or practised and taught only by actual Chinese people? When some players have no Chinese language capability, can they really be as good or have as deep a knowledge of the art as someone who is brought up in the very culture that gave birth to the art? Or perhaps taiji is a practice that was born in China, but is now a ‘global art’ or global product (like yoga, pizza, cars, jazz, football and Microsoft)?

I have even been thinking of taiji as an example of a kind of rebellion, a part of a massive social shift. Taiji is a traditional practice in a world where traditional practices, some would say, are being destroyed or seriously warped by some combination of MacDonalds, TV, suits, glass and steel buildings, science, baseball caps turned backwards and money. This is sometimes called globalization and people have views about this process: awful, inevitable, wonderful, mixed and other. One might see taiji as a sort of reverse globalization or re-traditionalisation, an example of traditional or local practices which have migrated to Britain over the last 30 years or so. Maybe people who do taiji are consciously trying not to be part of that entire dominant cultural system, and really like the differences that they experience or understand when doing taiji. It might be that taiji is part of an emerging ‘new consciousness’. This would apply to other relatively ‘new’ practices, but taiji would be one example. Do enough players see taiji this way to make this angle useful, or does it have nothing to do with the actual experiences of serious players?

But this does not come close to exhausting the ways that one can look at taiji, since it is also a movement. Whether one calls it social, cultural or whatever, it is a movement. Like any other movement (environmental, feminist, scientific, anti-roads), the boundaries are hard to define, the number of people in it is never going to be known, although I hope make some informed guesses as to how its grown over the years. Many of the organisations are informal, regional and definitely are not registered, controlled or approved by any State agency. One could even contest whether there is ‘one’ movement, or whether the use of the term ‘movement’ actually illuminates anything important. There are also official movement organisations, not attached to particular schools or styles, like the BCCMA or the TCUGB. The process by which a diffuse and growing social or cultural movement starts to transform itself into a more orthodox kind of pressure group or interest group is one that we are all going to be noticing in the next few years. There is an impressive body of academic literature that deals with movements and movement organisations. Some of it focuses on seeing each social or cultural movement as a rational one, with clear purposes and goals. Other angles emphasise the way people are part of movements because it helps them construct an identity in a world where personal identities can be chosen, as never before, by huge numbers of ordinary people. I will try to use this literature to illuminate something about the practice of taiji in Britain over the last few decades.

In some ways taiji is also a sport, with competitions, medals and so forth. Although it is pretty clear that taiji is partly a sport, I am not convinced this will be a very fruitful angle for a deeper understanding of the taiji movement. From this point of view, taiji must be a bit like football, cricket, weightlifting, synchronised swimming, and other ‘sports’. The research project will try to discover what role that medal-winning, competition side of taiji plays in the lives of a variety of taiji people. It gives me an excuse to go to lots of martial arts competitions as well. And one day, I am determined to win a medal. Any colour will do.

So when you start to think about it for very long, taiji can be viewed from all those angles, and some I have not mentioned or thought of. For example, I have not said much about how taiji is also, to some extent, a performance. And in understanding it one might find some insight from other studies of ‘performance’. To the extent that I miss out on any of these aspects, I could possibly miss out on understanding the whole movement and the various people and practices in it. If I fool myself into thinking it is an individual practice, I might tend to ignore an understanding of the social or cultural side of the movement. To the extent that I overemphasise the spiritual side then I miss out on the fact that it is also a martial art, useful, at the highest levels, for knocking people over. If I pretend that it is only about non-competitive behaviour and gentle insight, how will I explain the many competitions throughout the world? To the extent that I forget where it came from, and pretend that it just appeared in the UK some decades ago, I lose track of the cultural and historical aspect. I might ignore the changes that have transformed the art when it moves from one cultural context to another (although I am not going to be terribly historical in my work). Deciding what is important or intriguing is part of the reason I am writing this article. It is obvious to me that in the end, my work will not cover all of these aspects in equal depth. I need to find others within the taiji movement to chat with about just such matters. Incidentally, in case you haven’t guessed, I don’t have answers to all these questions. I am certain that at the end of the research there will still be a lot of puzzles. Perhaps, if the work is done well, I might end up with some different puzzles to the ones I began with.

This (first) short article is a way of introducing what I am going to do to you, the taiji community, ‘the movement’. My hope is that I will be able to have some long and exciting chats with those of you who are interested in talking about this sort of thing. Perhaps you might recommend some books or articles I haven’t seen. Perhaps through you I might find out about other people doing work on other martial arts who might have some methods, thoughts or whatever that would help me avoid making too many mistakes or wasting too much time. It is, after all, only by talking with and learning about the people in the movement that I am going to find out anything at all. If no-one knows about this work, or enough crucial people don’t wish to co-operate, then the research will be worse than useless.

Although I don’t have any answers yet, I have some ideas about how I am going to set about the work in the research project (if I get the funding). By the time you read this I will have spent all the initial seed corn money. The present plan for the larger project has six bits, but I won’t bore you with too much detail, as they sometimes get a bit academic.

· Longish interviews with some of the important teachers in Britain.

· Focus groups, probably with contrasting schools, of ‘advanced students’.

· Focus groups composed of students who have been doing taiji for two or three years.

· Three meetings/conferences with teachers and academics, discussing taiji.

· A detailed case study of Manchester over the years.

· A serious look at taiji on the Net, ‘cyber’ taiji.

At the end of the study I am not sure what I will come up with. At this stage I am not even certain what angle of the many above will be the one we will emphasise. Certainly want part of the story be a historical narrative: ‘Once upon a time there was no taiji in Britain ... and that brings us up to the present’. I would also love to have some numbers concerning taiji players, but I doubt that I will get any very good ones. And, of course, I shall use the data I collect to reflect on various academic bodies of literature on traditionalisation, globalization, social movements, transcultural movements, social change and so forth. One thing is certain, I have already met and chatted with some incredibly intriguing people, and perhaps even learned a bit more taiji from differing styles and schools. But I suppose that regardless of what I come up with in terms of a ‘product’, I am mostly looking forward to actually doing the work, seeing people, and asking them about how they understand taiji. Nice work if you can get it!

You can contact me at tom@shiftingground.org.