tai chi courses

[fibeli]

hi!

i am right now traveling in china with my goal being to find a good place to study tai chi or qi gong. unfortunately it seems to be rather difficult to find some good information on where there are monasteries offering good tuition. i am mainly interested in the spiritual or meditative sides of the discipline. I would be immensely grateful for some good tips! thanks

fibeli

[onebir]

Have a look at this thread in martialartsplanet - the people on the forum there may have other suggestions; some of them are in China at the moment.

And see also a school in Yantai, where they major in shaolin, but do teach internal styles, and this school in Beijing, for yiquan - which can be entirely meditative if you want it to be...

Might also be worth posting on ChinaFromInside and/or tomabey (less active).

There's also quite a lot of teaching in parks in the morning. And I found the monks at the baiyun guan in beijing - which is a genuine taoist temples, & bit off the tourist track - extremely approachable (in chinese). The monks spend a few years in different temples, including the ones on mt wudang, so many know some wudang kungfu...

Interested to hear how you fare - as you might have guessed i have similar interests ;-)

[David Wei]

hello fibeli,

I think you must have known that Tai chi can be separated into several styles, such as Chen Style, Yang Style, Sun Style, etc.

Of them, I know Chen Style more and love it the most, for it's the oldest one and the original one. You can find a lot of people practising Chen Style Taichi anywhere in China, but as you mentioned, It's hard to find a good tutor.

Maybe you can go to Chenjiagou Village, in Wenxian country, Henan Province, where the Chen style Tai ji originated. I can also introduce my master to you. He is a college teacher and now living in Jiaozuo City, Henan Province. He has been practising Taiji for near 20 years.

I can give you some more information about Chen style Taiji if you like. You can contact me by e-mail: Weibing82@yahoo.com

Wish you will learn what you want and have a good time in China.

[fibeli]

hey guys!

thanks for your replies and im sorry that it took me such a long time to answer, we have spent the last weeks in western sichuan a bit away from frequent internet access. unfortunatly im still not quite sure how to persue those studies. i have no previous martial arts experience and also dont know a great deal about tai chi. i have practiced some yoga before and have since been attracted to the more flowing movements of tai chi. i do not know if it is even appropriet for me to approach a great experienced teacher with my non existing experience and limited time. does anybody have a answer to this doubt? would it be better to go to one of the big tourist hang-outs like dali and just take a course there and only then try to find a real teacher? this might be one of my only options anyway as i dont speak any chinese at all...

thanks!

[onebir]

I'd say approaching a 'master', for extensive one-to-one tuition, could be a bit of a waste of money more than anything else - i believe chen xiaowang (chen taiji lineage holder) charges $1000/ month for around 2 hours per day.

I can see this would be worth it if you had an extensive background, but I imagine that would take several years of practice...

If you're in SW china, this place might be worth a look:

http://www.budizhen.com/

They seem geared up to accept non-chinese speaking foreigners with no experience...