The Lineage of Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan

Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan is handed down from master to disciple. The art was fixed by Grand Master Wu Chuan Yau, who combined the large frame of Yang Lu Chan with the small frame of Yang Ban Hou, and was refined into its present middle frame by his disciple Wang Mao Zhai and his son Wu Chien Chuan. For more than a century and a half it has passed along three branches: the direct heirs of Wu Chuan Yau, his disciples, and his students. Of these, two schools are the best known, celebrated together as Southern Wu, Northern Wang.

The Five Generations of the Wu Family

Our Academy carries the family's own line, in which the art belongs to the household and the head of the family is its Gate Keeper:

• First generation: Grand Master Wu Chuan Yau (1834-1902), bodyguard of the Imperial Court, student of Yang Lu Chan and Yang Ban Hou.
• Second generation: Grand Master Wu Chien Chuan (1870-1942), who brought the art to the public and moved it south to Shanghai in 1928.
• Third generation: Grand Masters Wu Kung Yi (1900-1970), Wu Kung Cho, and Wu Ying Hua (1907-1997).
• Fourth generation: Grand Masters Wu Ta K'uei (1923-1972), Wu Ta Chi, Wu Yen Hsia, and Wu Ta Hsin.
• Fifth generation: Gate Keeper Grand Master Eddie Wu Kwong Yu, eldest son of Wu Ta K'uei, who today leads the worldwide schools.

The present head of the family is introduced on the Head of the Family page, and the story of the Hong Kong Academy on our history page.

The Southern School: Wu Chien Chuan

Wu Chien Chuan taught Tai Chi Chuan at the Beijing Physical Education Research Society from 1912, where he trimmed the family form of repeated and jumping movements and made it softer and more compact. In 1927 he moved from Beijing to Shanghai, and in 1928 the Shanghai Chin Woo Athletic Association and the municipal martial arts institute engaged him as professor; for years he served as judge at the major competitions and national examinations. The Chien Chuan Tai Chi Chuan Association he founded grew into branches in Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, Canada, and the United States. He also refined push hands — upright and calm, delicate and continuous, quiet and never hasty, with strict methods and an unusually rich repertoire — and beyond the slow frame he kept the fast frame, hard and soft alternating, quick yet gentle.

His disciples included Hsu Chih Yi, Chin Shou Chang, and Chin Yun Feng, together with his own children Wu Kung Yi, Wu Kung Cho, and Wu Ying Hua, his son-in-law Ma Yueh Liang, and his nephew Wu Yao Tsung. Wu Kung Yi, engaged at the Whampoa Military Academy in 1924, founded our Academy in Hong Kong in 1937. Wu Kung Cho taught at the Shanghai Chin Woo association and the Hunan martial arts training institute, co-founded the Hong Kong and Macau associations with his brother in 1937, and wrote the classic book Wu Family Tai Chi Chuan. A separate square-frame line grew from Hsu Chih Yi's student Sun Nan Hsin (1925-1996), whose book Wu Style Square Frame Tai Chi Chuan carries that teaching in Wuhan and Shenzhen today.

The Northern School: Wang Mao Zhai

Wang Mao Zhai (1862-1940), given name Wang Yu Lin, came from Dawuguan Village, Laizhou, in Shandong's former Yexian county. Apprenticed young to a Beijing building-materials shop, he became the senior disciple of Wu Chuan Yau, famous for his solid, stable kung fu and his generous character. When Wu Chien Chuan and Yang Cheng Fu went south, Wang Mao Zhai remained in Beijing, founded the Beiping Tai Miao (Imperial Ancestral Temple) Tai Chi Chuan Research Association, and taught disciples across Beijing, Shandong, and the Northeast — the Northern Wang of the saying, with Beijing's Wu Style practitioners largely coming from his door.

His disciples included Wang Chieh (Tzu Ying), Wang T'i (Tzu Chao), Chao T'ieh An, Hsiu P'i Hsun, Peng Kuang I (Jen Hsuan), and Yang Yu Ting. Yang Yu Ting (1888-1982), who studied under Wang Mao Zhai from 1916 to 1941, taught at the Imperial Ancestral Temple for decades, compiled the manual later revised as Tai Chi Chuan Standards, and trained Chao An Hsiang, Li Ching Wu, Wang Pei Sheng, Hsiu Liang, Hsiu Chan, and Chan Po in turn.

The Laizhou line runs through Hsiu P'i Hsun (1892-1976), who followed Wang Mao Zhai to Beijing in 1913 and mastered the art in eight years. His sons Hsiu Liang (born 1944) and Hsiu Chan (born 1947) preserve the original Wang Mao Zhai frame in Dawuguan Village; Hsiu Liang is a bearer of the Shandong provincial intangible cultural heritage listing for Wu Style (2009), and Hsiu Chan, a national champion, performed at the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and passed the art to Hsiu Shu Yu, Chou Hsu Lin, and others.

In the Yang Yu Ting line, Chao An Hsiang's eighty-three form is known for guiding the mind along the meridians and acupoints through the thirteen postures on the eight-directions line, uniting routine, technique, and internal work, with sixty-four sword, thirteen saber, and thirteen spear sets. His successors Yen Shen Yu and the sixth generation's Chang Yen K'un and Wang Heng An continue to teach in the north.

The Wu Tu Nan Line

Wu Tu Nan (1884-1989) began studying at nine under Wu Chien Chuan and Yang Shao Hou, trained for twelve years, and became one of the century's great Tai Chi scholars, author of Tai Chi Chuan as Scientific Physical Education, Tai Chi Sword, and An Introduction to National Arts. In the 1930s his disciple Mo Fei took up the art, and Mo Fei's son Mo Yun Long carried it to Hainan in 1993, teaching it under the shortened name Nan Guo Tai Chi in Wu Tu Nan's honor — a light, soft, round, and flowing style now spread across southern China.

One Art, Two Schools

North and south count the generations alike: Wu Chuan Yau first; Wu Chien Chuan and Wang Mao Zhai second; Yang Yu Ting and Wu Kung Yi third; Chao An Hsiang and Wu Ta K'uei fourth; Yen Shen Yu and Eddie Wu Kwong Yu fifth. However the branches divide, the source is the same, and the frame they share — the Sichuan-character stance, the body upright within a slanting line, the compact middle form — remains unmistakable. The characteristics of the art are described on our Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan page, and study at our Academy is introduced on the Learning page.