I study tai chi chuan in New York City. While anyone can take a beginner class with Grandmaster William C.C. Chen, and learn his 60 movement form, as I am, Grandmaster Chen is world renowned as a tai chi chuan champion and teacher. To enrich my learning, I research how other teachers working in the field developed their styles through their lineages. There is a thriving tai chi community in the United States today.
Dr. Peter Wayne, for example, is a Harvard researcher who had dedicated much of his career to study the health benefits of tai chi. He is a principal teacher at the Tree of Life Tai Chi studios in Somerville, MA. Perusing the Tree of Life’s website, I recently discovered a letter he wrote in opposition to a Massachusetts Bill H2710 that would make it a law that one style of tai chi, called the Five Elements, become the official tai chi style for the state.
The bill offers no description as to its purpose, no history. When I try to imagine how this bill came to be—Dr. Evil with his clone, Mini-Me, mapping out Dr. Evil’s diabolical plan to take over the world, in the Austin Powers comedies, comes to mind… “Grandmaster, first you will take over Massachusetts, then the country, and then next the world!”
The Austin Powers movies are funny to conjure up; for such a law to be enacted, however, is, in reality, depressing to consider. Tai chi is, as practitioner Dr. Yang Yang calls it, “a living and growing art.” I would suggest, as an alternative to a state sanctioned style, revolving annual awards to introduce to the public the rich offering of styles to choose from, as well as to provide funds to practitioners to maintain their operations.
HEATHER WATERS
Ridgewood, N.Y.