robert wrote:everything wrote:wouldn't it have just been Chen Jia Quan or similar?
I’ve heard that, Chen family boxing, and also that it was called hard soft boxing in Chen village. Gang rou, hard soft is from the Yijing and has connotations of yin yang.
Maybe one of these?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_(Hao)-style_tai_chi
Wu Yuxiang began training with Yang Luchan, the founder of Yang-style tai chi, in the early 1840s after Yang returned to Yongnian from his years in the Chen village. Among their many properties the Wu family were the landlords of Chen Dehu's pharmacy and clinic, where Yang offered instruction in what he then called "soft boxing" (軟拳), "cotton boxing" (棉拳), or "neutralizing boxing" (化拳). But in the early 1850s, Wu and his family introduced Yang as martial arts instructor to a prominent family in distant Beijing, where Yang was invited to take up a teaching position at the palace of Prince Duan.[8][9][10]
The name of tai chi
The name "taijiquan" (the Chinese name of tai chi) may have first appeared in the Wu/Li family's mid-nineteenth century writings, perhaps drawn from the Wang Zongyue text which begins with the words "Taiji is born from Wuji; it is the mother of Yin and Yang".[note 2] As the Wu family had no need to promote their art, it was left to the Yangs to bring this to the public first. But with different priorities, especially as the two families drifted apart (or worse) by the second generation, they often felt no need to mention each other at all which is why few knew of this.[18][19][20]
Yang family tradition tells us only that imperial court scholar Weng Tonghe used the term "taiji" (tai chi) in a poem to describe a performance by Yang Luchan.[21] It is not clear if that was an additional influence on the name, or if the new name was already in use there, along with the earlier names "Thirteen Postures" (十三式), "Long Boxing"(長拳),[note 3] and "Soft/Cotton/Neutralizing Boxing" (軟/棉/化拳). Written evidence that the Yang family had started using the name taiji for their martial art first appears in a later text, possibly completed in 1875 by Yang Luchan's son Yang Banhou (who had been tutored by Wu Yuxiang), or no later than the first decade of the twentieth century by one or more of Yang Banhou's disciples.[18][22][23][20]
Weng Tonghe
In 1865, Weng was appointed as a tutor to the Tongzhi Emperor,[2]: 51 joining another tutor by the name of Wo Ren,[3] as well as a lecturer to the two empress dowagers.[2]: 51 The Tongzhi Emperor formally took over the reins of power from his regents in 1873 but died two years later.
Weng had apparently been exonerated from the disastrous failure of the education of the Tongzhi Emperor, as he was appointed as a tutor to the Tongzhi Emperor's successor, the Guangxu Emperor.[2]: 45 As a tutor to the Guangxu Emperor, Weng emphasized the boy-emperor's filial duties to Empress Dowager Cixi, making her an object of fear and reverence for him.[2]: 50
Minister of Revenue (戶部尚書)
In office
3 January 1886 - 15 June 1898
I'd think the days of him hanging out and writing poems would be 1865-1886.
Documents containing the name were attributed to the following:
Li Yiyu (李亦畬; 1832–1892)
Wu Qiuying, 武秋瀛; 1800-1884
Wu Yu-hsiang, 1812?–1880?
Wang Zongyue 13th century
The Wu's say they found Wang's work around 1858, Yang historians place Banhou using it around 1875 after being tutored by Wu Yu Hsiang, and we have a reference in 1881
For Wu Yuxiang and the seventeenth century authors he likely drew from, that story may have been primarily an anti-Manchu political allegory. There is no mention of Zhang in original Chen village documents, and although Wu's nephew and disciple Li Yiyu did write about Zhang, in a later piece written in 1881 Li stated "The creator of tai chi is unknown".[note 4][26][27][28]
If even part of that is true, I would guess that Taijiquan as a term within the Wu and Yang families was established no later than 1869.
That's without giving any consideration as to the existence of Wang Zongyue.
So they're all hanging out tutoring the imperials, Weng fires off his poem, Wu decides he likes the sound of it and loves sitting around expounding on theory when he should be practicing, so he starts incorporating it into his work, it catches on with his literati family who influence the previously illiterate Yangs.
Once it becomes more widely known the Chens retrobrand their art to get the association.
