Tai Chi

Taijiquan is practised as a continuous, slow sequence of linked postures, performed solo, emphasizing relaxed, whole-body movement, an upright but not rigid posture, and coordination of movement with breath, in contrast to the fast, externally forceful style associated with many other Chinese martial arts. Traditional taijiquan theory frames this slowness and softness as strategic rather than merely gentle, teaching a practitioner to yield to and redirect an opponent's force rather than meet it directly, a principle codified in texts such as those collected in the so-called tai chi classics.

Beyond its martial application, taijiquan is also practised, and today far more commonly practised, as a health and meditative discipline, understood within its traditional framework as cultivating and smoothing the flow of qi through the body, and as training coordination, balance and calm attention. Partner practice, particularly the paired exercise called push hands, traditionally develops sensitivity to an opponent's force and balance, and remains part of fuller traditional instruction even where solo form practice for health is the more common entry point. Standardized short forms, developed in China from the 1950s for public health promotion, retain the movement vocabulary and much of the health framing of the traditional styles while generally omitting the martial application and lengthy traditional forms taught within family and lineage schools.

Taijiquan's documented history begins with Chen Wangting in Chenjiagou, Henan, in the seventeenth century, and for roughly two centuries afterward the art was largely confined to instruction within the Chen family. That changed when Yang Luchan, traditionally said to have gained access to Chen instruction through determination and eventual acceptance by the family, learned the art under Chen Changxing in the nineteenth century and began teaching it publicly in Beijing, where his softer, more accessible teaching to Manchu nobility and the Chinese elite laid the groundwork for the widely known Yang style his descendants later systematized.

A separate and much older legendary account credits the semi-mythical Daoist immortal Zhang Sanfeng, placed variously from the twelfth to the fifteenth century depending on the telling, with originating tai chi's soft, yielding principle after observing a fight between a snake and a crane. Chinese martial arts historians treat this account as a legend that became attached to taijiquan to root it in Daoist religious authority rather than as a documented historical transmission, distinguishing it clearly from the Chen village lineage that the surviving textual and genealogical record actually supports. Twentieth century political history further reshaped tai chi's transmission: the People's Republic promoted standardized, simplified forms for mass public health from the 1950s onward, a state-sponsored version now far more widely practised worldwide than the longer traditional family forms, which continue to be taught within Chen, Yang and other lineage schools alongside the standardized versions.