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Translated by Wu Ta-yeh and Wu Teng Shu-hsien from the "Chen Family T’ai Chi Ch’uan," prepared by a team of five persons headed by Shen Chia-jen and Ku Liu-shing, 1963.

At the end of the annual meeting of the former Peking Physical Education Research Association around 1914, the Wushu experts of the whole city, including Jih Tzy-shui, Chang Tzeh, Shang Yun-shiang, Wang Mou-jai, and Shu Yu-sung, participated in demonstrations.

In the field T’ai Chi Ch’uan, Yang Cheng-fu and Wu Chian-chuan demonstrated simultaneously. Both used the extended form. During their demonstration the audience felt that these experts, while giving full consideration to their left and right, were moving forward and backward ceaselessly like waves, as if they were standing on a small rowing boat crossing the Great River.

Their movements looks soft, yet implicitly expressed strongness and hardness. When the movements reached the point of changing into squares, they speeded up. When the movements reached the point of changing into circles, they slowed down.

These changes were matched naturally with their extension and contraction without revealing the points of connection. their advance and retreat did not look like advance and retreat, but there were noticeable change in their forms step by step. Each person finished a little more than eight minutes. The whole audience was amazed.

It is, of course, mainly because of their diligent study and practice, with plenty of kung-fu, that they reached such high level, precision performance in their one-person exercise.

But if they did not connect up with the folds in their moving to and fro and with the turns and changes in their advance and retreat, it would be difficult for them to achieve such ceaseless wave like movements as if they were doing the whole exercise in one breath.

Translator’s note: In T’ai Chi Chuan, movements in curves are called circles; movements in straight lines are called squares.

Among the two chief authors of the book from which the passages are translated, Shen is a student of Chen Fake of the Chen style. Ku learned from Yang Shao-hou, Yang Cheng-fu, Wu Hui-chuan, Chen Weiming, and Chen Fake, combining the knowledge of both the Yang and Chen styles. This information is relevant in judging the competency of the authors in describing the Yang and Wu styles.

It may be noted that the series performed by Yang Cheng-fu and Wu Chian-chuan around 1914 are the same sets practiced today by their disciples except when some of the series are intentionally abridged or lengthened with additional postures or movements.

This is so as can be judged from the photographs of these two experts and the descriptions of their postures and movements at that time. It is the reduced speed at present which lengthened the performance time to 20 minutes or so.

This translation is inserted here because its substance is closely related to our translation of Tung Ying-chieh in the June 1984 issue of T’AI CHI.

The text emphasized the need of the "folds" in T’ai Chi Ch’uan for high level performance. A fold is the twisting in a very small arc to smoothly connect up the changes in the direction of strength and movement, often in opposite directions.

Although the twist and fold are employed in all styles, these terms are not generally talked of outside the Chen style. Many authors even claim that they are special characteristics of the Chen style and not applicable to other styles.