What is Tai Chi?
Actually: it’s T’ai-chi…
- The first Romanization of the famous concept,
- The Ultimate Principle of the Universe,
- Refers to the slow-movement system.
The English Spelling of Tai Chi
If T’ai-chi was an accurate translation of the Chinese word, it seems inevitable to me that Tai Chi evolved from it. In the English language, we use apostrophes to shorten words, not to indicate peculiar pronunciations.
It’s natural.
People unfamiliar with Wade–Giles often ignore the apostrophes, even so far as leaving them out when copying texts, unaware that they represent vital information. Hanyu Pinyin addresses this issue by employing the Latin letters customarily used for voiced stops, unneeded in Mandarin, to represent the unaspirated stops: b, p, d, t, g, k, j, q, zh, ch. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wade-Giles
Pinyin replaced the Wade-Giles system. The International Organization for Standardization adopted pinyin as the international standard in 1982.
The proper, official spelling is Taiji.
The Ultimate Principle
You know this. But I’ll say it again because it’s fun to say:
- Tai Chi is the Greatest Thing Ever.
It’s the Spectacular Event. Tai Chi means Great Ridgepole, conjuring an image of a super-sized tent with an enormously tall support-pole. The tent is the great emptiness of the world, and the support pole makes room for us to live inside.
When we give this image a push, we begin to see that Tai Chi is a way of exploring the edges of the World, touching Great Extremes, peeking over the edge, into the fabric of the Universe.
The practical version: Tai Chi often replaces the longer Tai Chi Chuan which means Great Extreme Form or Supreme Ultimate Fist. And it therefore refers to the movement system, derived from a bold, unerring martial art, practiced throughout the world today.
A Slow-Motion Heath System
Because of the grand success of modern marketing, many people today think of Tai Chi as “that yoga-like thing practiced in parks by old people.” And it’s true:
- Tai Chi owns breathing principles similar to Yoga.
- Tai Chi is practiced in parks (I do it there).
- All sorts of folks, young and old, practice Tai Chi.
When Yang Chen-fu took over his family’s art, he made some modifications, bit by bit through time, to emphasize the health benefits and diminish the martial aspects of Tai Chi. But we know that Tai Chi Chuan was the invention of Yang “the Invincible” Lu-chan, Yang Chen-fu’s Grandfather.
Some suspect that Tai Chi’s power will diminish. As the martial aspects are lost through misinterpretations and simplifications that continually emphasize health movement without martial intentions, we see Tai Chi degrade to an add-on at martial arts schools or as a nursing home exercise.
On the one hand, I’m glad that Tai Chi reaches this niche of clientele, and, at the same time, I strive to revive the potency inherent in the refined and exquisite versions of Tai Chi Chuan.
RealTaiji.com reaches back to the origins and to what we imagine are original intentions of the Supreme Ultimate Fist Form. See what I mean? Peek over the Taiji Fence or subscribe to train in the Taiji Courtyard to see more.
