Chen Wei-Ming
Chen Wei-Ming founded the Tai Chi Chuan school called Zhi-Rou Quan She (The
Soft and Gentle Boxing Club) in 1925. Chen Wei-Ming was himself a senior
student of Yang Cheng-Fu, the founder of the Yang school of Tai Chi Chuan .
Chen Wei-Ming also taught Tai Chi in Shanghai in the 1930's and 40's before
the revolution.
In 1925, Yang Cheng-Fu asked Chen Wei-Ming, to write a book entitled "Tai
Chi Chuan", with detailed captions to Yang Cheng-Fu's pictures as
illustrations. In 1931, Yang had all the pictures retaken and compiled into
"The Methods of Taijiquan", which was revised two years later into "A
Complete Book of Tai Chi Chuan".
Chen Wei-Ming was also allowed to author the book "Tai Chi Chuan Ta Wen",
considered by most to be a modern classic in Tai Chi Chuan literature. This
favorite pupil of Yang Cheng-Fu wrote three books on behalf of his teacher,
whose desire it was to make Tai Chi Chuan more well-known to the public at
large at the beginning of the last century. The third book written by Chen
was "The Form of Tai Chi Chuan" (Taijiquan Shu, 1925).
"Tai Chi Sword and Other Writings" (1927) dedicates itself with texts and
photos of the Tai Chi Sword form, as he learned from teacher Yang Cheng-Fu.
The text is almost entirely a pure description of the individual movements
of the sword form and probably originally served as a reminder to the
pupils. We know, all too well, that even the most extensive texts and
detailed designs and photos cannot replace a teacher, and thus the
information in the available text is purely technical and contains nothing
new about the form.
Chen went to Canton to represented his teacher to teach the southerners the
Yang style of Tai Chi. Grandmaster Doc-Fai Wong's teacher, Hu Yuen-Chou
studied with him for three years before Chen Wei-Ming returned to Shanghai
and sent his teacher Yang Cheng-Fu to Canton to teach Hu Yuen-Chou and the
other students the advanced level Tai Chi Chuan forms and Push Hands
principles.