T'ai Chi Classics

by Waysun Liao

An essential guide for T'ai Chi practitioners of all levels--with an overview of basic principles and commentary on three classic internal martial arts texts

According to Master Liao, the great power of T'ai Chi cannot be realized without knowing its inner meaning. T'ai Chi Classics presents the inner meaning and techniques of T'ai Chi movements through translations of three core classics of T'ai Chi, often considered the T'ai Chi Bible. The texts are introduced by three chapters explaining how to increase inner energy (ch'i), transform it into inner power (jing), and project this inner power outward to repel an opponent without physical contact. Master Liao also provides a description of the entire sequence of T'ai Chi movements, illustrated by his own line drawings.

Genres: Martial Arts, Nonfiction, Health, Philosophy, Reference, Spirituality, Taoism

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Bernie Gourley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book conveys the teachings of three tai chi masters of old: Chang San-feng, Wong Chung-yua, and Wu Yu-hsiang. However, those masters’ treatises take up only a small portion of the book. That’s not a criticism. No doubt the treatises were cryptic and sparse, and so they are presented with commentary embedded rather than as literal translations. The treatises discuss the concepts that each of the masters thought was essential to the art, and the author conveys these complex and ethereal ideas in a way that is as understandable as possible.

Before presenting the three treatises in chapters four through six, the author offers a three chapter background on essential concepts for the tai chi student to understand. Chapter 1 presents historical background on tai chi and differentiates temple style from the family styles of tai chi, as well as giving insight into the philosophical underpinnings of the art. The second chapter offers a primer on chi, the life-force energy that is at the conceptual heart of tai chi. Chapter 3 describes jing and the means by which chi is expanded and transferred.

After the three treatise chapters, there is a final chapter that is intended to take the book from theory to practice. Most of the final chapter is a step-by-step description of a tai chi form, and consists of line drawings of the positions with bullet point descriptions of the movements. However, the chapter begins with some lists of key philosophical concepts as well as clarifying ideas about movement fundamentals.

There are line drawings throughout the book, not only to show physical positions in the practice but also diagrams to help convey the difficult concepts discussed throughout the book as well as Chinese calligraphy characters. Besides the calligraphy, these graphics are crude, looking as one might expect in a notebook. I don’t think the crude form of the graphics is a problem, and the notebook effect it creates may be an intentional aesthetic. As I don’t believe one can learn a martial art or other system of movement from a book, the fact that the graphics don’t offer much detail isn’t a problem.

I found the book to be thought-provoking and would recommend it for students of tai chi and qi gong.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's not really possible to teach yourself Tai Chi without a teacher. So everyone says, and such has been my experience. Even videos haven't been that helpful. But this book is as good as it gets -- it has both theory and detailed diagrams and instructions on the form. I would highly recommend it as a supplement to actually finding a teacher.

[Jenifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's pretty common I think, (If you practice Tai Chi) to wonder about its roots and where exactly it came from. The original texts are few and vague. This book is the authors attempt to parse out 3 of the ancient texts and bring some clarity to them. I think you have to have a pretty strong tolerance for reading about Tai Chi to get through it, even though it's not difficult or very long.

It's going on the shelf that I don't plan to access all that often.

Physical copy from my library

[John Sharp]

This is a very good book. I have been practicing Tai Chi for about a year and a half and this really helped me to understand the breathing better and the philosophy of Tai Chi itself.

[Łukasz Langa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this. But the useful information within is drowned in new-age woo-woo.

Book structure
The book was first released all the way back in 1977. Before widespread Internet connectivity and the ability for anybody to record high-definition video at any time. The edition I have is from 2000, and there’s apparently a yet newer one released in 2023.

The first third of the book are Waysun Liao’s own musings about “chi” (the internal energy) and “jing” (the internal power). I powered through those in the interest of writing down this review to have my thoughts in written form once and for all. But the further I read, the more spooky and unbelievable it got. We’ll discuss this in detail in the next section.

The actual “classics” are three very short treatises, also available online:

- T’ai Chi Ch’uan Ching by Zhang Sanfeng,
- The Treatise of T’ai Chi Ch’uan by Wang Zongyue, and
- Expositions of insights into the practice of the thirteen postures by Wu Yuxiang.

The first two authors are legendary figures. Zhang Sanfeng is said to be the founder of a Taoist temple in the Wudang Mountains, where he apparently invented tai chi. Wang Zongyue was supposedly his student, which is doubtful given that Zongyue’s treatise is dated in Liao’s book at “circa 1600 C.E.”. The third person is a relatively contemporary person having lived in the 19th century.

Liao provides copious commentary to the classics, otherwise the three documents would only span a few pages combined. To an extent this makes the title of the book misleading as an overwhelming majority of the content is original work and not the “classics” from the title. While it’s understandable that the brief nature of the included treatises invites interpretation and expanding upon the ideas within, Wikipedia lists nine writings considered classics, so Liao’s book only covered a third of those.

The final third of the book is a summary of Liao’s form, based on Chen Man-ch’ing’s 37-movement form but extended. In total there’s 68 movements. Text is sparse, lots of illustrations.

Red flags
There is a number of claims and phrasings throughout the book, which are clear red flags to me.

The one true form
Liao draws a straight line from the Shaolin Temple through Wudang Mountains to his own training in Taiwan by an unnamed “wandering Taoist monk”. He claims to have been exposed to the secret true version of tai chi that was hidden from the masses for centuries. He says the tai chi that gained popularity in China is a crippled form, intentionally modified by Yang Luchan, an influential tai chi practitioner from the 19th century, who was unwilling to teach Manchurian rulers the real form of the martial art. Form that he himself learned from Chen Changxing and subsequently taught to the father of Wu Yuxiang. Or maybe Wu Yuxiang himself. It’s not clear to me. Apparently, somehow the genuine lineage of tai chi traveled to Taiwan, probably after the Chinese Revolution of 1949?

In any case, the theme of secrecy and the one true form is the first major red flag. Waysun Liao dismisses any other form of tai chi as “devoid of meaning”. From my own research, it seems that the main character who brought tai chi to Taiwan is Wang Shujin, who originally learned and taught the clearly non-"family” fusion form of tai chi promoted by the Nationalist government of 1925-1948 China. This goes right against the claim that the genuine form of tai chi is Liao’s heritage.

More importantly, Liao doesn’t name his teacher, so there’s no way to verify his teacher’s lineage. That’s not something that I would focus on myself or be very inclined to pursue, if it weren’t for Liao’s own focus on how distinct the true “family-style” form of tai chi is from the “Chinese ballet” taught to the public. He keeps saying things like “understand the secrets of jing theory, which have been guarded by T’ai Chi masters for hundreds of years”.

So everybody else has it wrong, but it’s your lucky day. The teacher in front of you just happens to be the one with the strictly guarded truth. It’s what a cult leader would say. That’s a major red flag.

If all of that were true, a natural question to ask would be why Liao decided to break the secrecy and open a school in Illinois, as well as publish books and videos on the one true form of tai chi? He addresses this by saying:

I have chosen to reveal this so-called exclusive knowledge and to share it with others because I am assuming that those who care enough to read this book thoroughly and with understanding are sincere, decent people who are looking for the type of discipline that T’ai Chi can offer.

Yeah, right. Another red flag. This kind of compliment is psychological manipulation meant to encourage credulity. You believe the guy, because you’re sincere and decent.

Chi
The practical step-by-step explanation of “condensing breathing”, said to convert “chi” into “jing”, is interesting early in the book. But it’s there where the pseudoscience starts raising more red flags. There’s plenty of sentences like:

As you use your mind to squeeze the chi toward your bone marrow, a strong wave-like current of energy similar to electricity is produced.

“Similar to electricity” in what way exactly? Liao admits himself that it’s an energy impossible to detect scientifically. But he phrases it like it’s the scientists’ fault. He says “Western scientists are at a loss to come up with a testing device that would either verify or disprove the existence of chi”. My man, can you disprove that there is a teapot orbiting the Sun between the Earth and Mars?

He also contradicts himself elsewhere by saying:

A high degree of sensitivity will be developed which can, through physical contact, determine the magnitude, wavelength, and direction of another person’s chi.

Wavelength, huh? Such scientific. Much advanced. So physics. Many intelligence. There’s many examples of that throughout the book, like:

Sticking Power, for instance, is a magnetic type of power which is derived from the reversal of the chi flow.

Over the course of “T’ai Chi Classics” Liao gets less and less shy about such phrases.

Shoong
The book briefly discusses another unattainable goal, which is to be “shoong” (also spelled “song"). Liao says it means “to relax”, “to lose”, “to give up”. He quotes Chen Man Ch’ing (another martial artist who moved to Taiwan in 1949 and taught his own modified tai chi form, a much shortened version of the Yang form) to say that “if you are even just a little bit not shoong, you will be defeated”. This sounds like a trap set up to make practitioners feel like the failure to achieve results is their own. The best explanation Liao has to give in the subject is that to be shoong is like to lose both arms, to “yield to the infinite”.

Jing
This is where things properly get off the rails. The core idea is that with jing you can attack things without physical force. You don’t need to bring back the arm to punch, you don’t need pivot points for leverage, and so on. Just listen to this:

Legends of martial artists “flying” over several-story buildings, of applying a “touch” that can kill or paralyze, or of “bouncing” two-hundred-pound bruisers into walls thirty feet away without pushing them seem to be improbable claims. However, if one understands the unique theories of ancient T’ai Chi, one may come to believe in the possibility of such feats.

Yeah, right.

Suppose that one can hit a dart with a hammer using 1.44 pounds of force each time and with a speed that is faster than the speed of light. If this is assumed, all that is needed is to hit the dart one time: such a “vibrated” strike will include the seven physical blows within it. It may seem unfortunate that there is no apparent way of accomplishing such a “vibrated” strike, since we are limited by the bonds of time and space. The Chinese, however, discovered that there is something that is able to transcend these limits: the human mind.

I think you meant human imagination.

There is an almost instantaneous transfer of energy. Imagination, or imaging power, is the only limit to the speed.

Ah, very well, we’re in agreement then.

Interesting bits, regardless
The breath control exercises [p. 32-39] that are part of qigong are well explained. There’s some commentary on concentration development that warns against repeating movements mechanically without paying attention. That’s good advice. There’s a very concrete benchmark of physical discomfort: it should only be there, if at all, for the first few weeks of the practice.

There’s a five-step sitting meditation procedure [p. 44] that’s meant to “increase the awareness of chi”. There’s six “T’ai Chi principles” of stance listed [p. 82] that are consistent with physical practice between various forms of tai chi.

The text of the classics in the middle part of the book is an interesting and quick read.

The step-by-step form in the final third of the book isn’t enough to learn the form without an instructor, and you’re likely to find an instructor teaching a different variant of the form. That said, the list of motions is tidy and easy to follow, so might be a good reminder for you.

What if he’s right about the life energy?
There is a non-zero chance that “chi” and “jing” are actual phenomena and are part of the natural world. We’re constantly learning new things about how the universe works. In this case, let’s consider both sides of the coin then. There is a non-zero chance that neither “chi” nor “jing” are real. I’m willing to bet the likelihood of the latter is much higher than the former. To the extent that I’m now actively pursuing qigong and tai chi lessons that are devoid of this mystical pretense.

The practice itself, treating the Chinese word “chi” literally ("air”, “breath”, “vapor"), is empirically useful. Who knows, it’s likely the techniques themselves that talk about stuff like “power transfer” or “increasing the frequency of internal vibrations”, are actually useful for visualizing and applying complex concepts to allow better balance, conscious heart rate control, and other physical effects useful in both fitness and martial arts scenarios. I’m not denying that. But I am calling bullshit on accelerating beyond the speed of light with your mind. It would have been much more sincere to talk about those things as figures of speech, vehicles to drive meaning and help with physical practice. As it stands though, I cannot recommend the book even if I’m not binning mine.

[Dustin Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very advanced tai chi book, good for beginners and more advanced students. I am proud to have it in my personal library. I gleaned much from it. The end of it had a series of tai chi exercises. You can't get everything from one book, but I got what I needed to. My other tai chi books will fill in the gaps. When the time comes I will find the proper teacher for me. This book helped me in my journey of tai chi.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

its really special to have a translation of these short texts. the translation is good. the introductory chapters and the commentary are useful and interesting, but need to be filtered for irrelevant information and personal biases of the author. while accurate, the commentary is only a single interpretation. the content of the original text is very powerful and multi-dimensional.

[Dolores · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slowly poking through this book for my Tai Chi class. Very esoteric!

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

An introduction to the principles and forms of t’ai chi. The experience of the author gives this text credibility. I would have a harder time understanding the book without also practicing t’ai chi (as limited as my practice is).

[Joanne McKinnon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much needed

The movements described in the last chapter can calm the chaos. Knowing the movements but not how the whole body, including the mind, are involved, is not true to the practice. So the preceding chapters clarify the true beauty of T’ai Chi.

[Ray Gates · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great resource for the beginner and experienced Tai Chi practitioner alike. Takes some contemplation and reflection. My only wish is that some of the illustrations were easier to understand, however I recommend this to all my students.

[Lisa Stacholy · Rating 4 out of 5]

enjoy it again and again

[Malini Chaudhri · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. It is a treasury of knowledge. To be read time and again.

[Sn8wflake · Rating 4 out of 5]

spirit

Full of history and philosophy . The diagrams need a lot of work. There should be practice exercises for the meditation

[Ryu Nishikawa · Rating 5 out of 5]

great book to read for people who wants to learn Tai chi.

[Joseph Wickland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really solid book explaining the core theory of Tai Chi

[Anita Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is both how-to and philosophy. As such, it is a reference more than a 'read'. I have read it, mostly, except for every exercise, which are mostly familiar, but will go back and re-read the essays from far back in time. What it gave me is a sense that T'ai Chi has not changed, and each movement is important; especially the 'how' of it.

[William Light]

This book is so far very enlightening. I started studying T'ai Chi several years ago and have recently returned to practicing. This is a very good read to help one understand the more internal aspects of the grand ultimate.

[WIZE FOoL · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is more than just a manual on tai chi. It's about the philosophy and energy practice of the art.
It's one you will continue to return to.
I'd say it is applicable to all internal arts found the world over.
Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

[Colleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great companion text to study and practice of Tai Chi. The historical and philosophical chapter is very good/connective for a western audience. Reading it again for homeschool in 2008.

[Jim Bouchard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every serious student of martial arts must read this book. This is not a manual in "tai chi chuan." This is the theory and philosophy upon which tai chi chuan and other Chinese arts is based.

[Greg Knollmeyer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Poorly interpreted.

[Mills College Library]

613.7148 L69397 2000

[Mary Follis]

Nook edition