Tai Chi Chuan Styles and History

Tai Chi Practitioner There are five major styles of T’ai Chi Ch’üan, each named after the Chinese family that teaches (or taught) it:

Chen style (陳氏) and its close cousin Zhao Bao Style (趙堡忽靈架)

Yang style (楊氏)
Wu or Wu/Hao style of Wu Yu-hsiang (武氏)
Wu style of Wu Ch’uan-yü and Wu Chien-ch’uan (吳氏)
Sun style (孫氏)

The order of seniority is as listed above. The order of popularity is Yang, Wu, Chen, Sun, and Wu/Hao. The first five major family styles share much underlying theory, but differ in their approaches to training.
In the modern world there are now dozens of new styles, hybrid styles and offshoots of the main styles, but the five family schools are the groups recognised by the international community as being orthodox. For example, there are several groups teaching what they call Wu Tang style T’ai Chi Ch’üan (武當式太極拳). The best known modern style going by the name Wu Tang has gained some publicity internationally, especially in the UK and Europe, but was originally taught by a senior student of the Wu (吳) style.
The designation Wu Tang Ch’üan is also used to broadly distinguish internal or nei chia martial arts (said to be a specialty of the monasteries at Wu Tang Shan) from what are known as the external or wei chia styles based on Shaolinquan kung fu, although that distinction is sometimes disputed by individual schools. In this broad sense, among many T’ai Chi schools all styles of T’ai Chi (as well as related arts such as Pa Kua Chang and Hsing-i Ch’üan) are therefore considered to be “Wu Tang style” martial arts.

The schools that designate themselves “Wu Tang style” relative to the family styles mentioned above mostly claim to teach an “original style” they say was formulated by a Taoist monk called Zhang Sanfeng and taught by him in the Taoist monasteries at Wu Tang Shan. Some consider that what is practised under that name today may be a modern back-formation based on stories and popular veneration of Zhang Sanfeng (see below) as well as the martial fame of the Wu Tang monastery (there are many other martial art styles historically associated with Wu Tang besides T’ai Chi).

When tracing T’ai Chi Ch’üan’s formative influences to Taoist and Buddhist monasteries, one has little more to go on than legendary tales from a modern historical perspective, but T’ai Chi Ch’üan’s practical connection to and dependence upon the theories of Sung dynasty Neo-Confucianism (a conscious synthesis of Taoist, Buddhist and Confucian traditions, esp. the teachings of Mencius) is readily apparent to its practitioners. The philosophical and political landscape of that time in Chinese history is fairly well documented, even if the origin of the art later to become known as T’ai Chi Ch’üan in it is not.

T’ai Chi Ch’üan’s theories and practice are therefore believed by some schools to have been formulated by the Taoist monk Zhang Sanfeng in the 12th century, a time frame fitting well with when the principles of the Neo-Confucian school were making themselves felt in Chinese intellectual life. Therefore the didactic story is told that Zhang Sanfeng as a young man studied Tao Yin (導引, Pinyin dǎoyǐn) breathing exercises from his Taoist teachers and martial arts at the Buddhist Shaolin monastery, eventually combining the martial forms and breathing exercises to formulate the soft or internal principles we associate with T’ai Chi Ch’üan and related martial arts. Its subsequent fame attributed to his teaching, Wu Tang monastery was known thereafter as an important martial center for many centuries, its many styles of internal kung fu preserved and refined at various Taoist temples.

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