New Tai Chi Books

Taijiquan and the Search for the Little Old Chinese Man is a mixture of ethnography and memoir. The book examines how identity is constructed through the practice of an art---in this case, taijiquan. At times seeming like Mark Salzman's Iron and Silk meets Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa, the book covers author Adam Frank's study of taijiquan in the US and China with Pang Tianzhu, among others. The author is Professor of Asian Studies at Honors College at the University of Central Arkansas.



Cheng Man-ch'ing (Zheng Manqing), taiji master and artist, was a practicing doctor of traditional Chinese medicine from the 1930s on. Cheng's Insights on Women's Medicine (女科心法 Nu'ke xinfa) has been translated by Douglas Wile, (Sweet Ch'i Press; order through Redwing Books). Cheng wrote several books about Chinese medicine on topics related to women's health, cancer, and orthopedics, as well as newspaper columns on meditation and tai chi. His books on medicine discuss theory, application, and prescriptions, and have interesting anecdotes about cases.