Taijiquan Journal Writers and Artists Featured

Afaa Weaver, a long-time taijiquan student, poet, playwright, and professor of English is featured as the cover story in the November-December issue of the prestigious Poets & Writers magazine. Weaver is a disciple of Huang Chien Liang, grandmaster of the Tien Shan P'ai system, and has studied in Taiwan. He wrote an article "Taijiquan and Healthy Living: Tien Shan P'ai's Grandmsater Huang Chien-Liang Shares His Views" in the Winter 2004 issue of Taijiquan Journal. Recipient of an NEA fellowship, an MFA from Brown University, a Fulbright Fellowship to teach at National Taiwan University, and a Pew fellowship in Poetry, Weaver is now professor of English at Simmons College in Boston.

Creator of "The Yang and the Rootless," Taijiquan Journal's original (and probably the first ever) taijiquan comic strip , cartoonist, author, illustrator Jackie Urbanovic's children's book Duck at the Door hit the New York Times Children's Books Bestseller List. A sequel Duck Soup will be out in January.

Science writer Sandra Blakeslee's book The Body has a Mind of its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Most) Everything Better. The book, written with her son Matthew, explores the interesting areas of brain science--how the brain forms "body maps" and how those shape our perceptions and can change our lives. Blakeslee interviewed Taijiquan Journal editor Barbara Davis for background on methods such as taijiquan for improving body sense. Blakeslee's article "When the Brain Says 'Don't Get Too Close'" appeared in the Fall 2004 issue of Taijiquan Journal. She is a science writer for the New York Times with a special focus on the brain and how it works.

Back issues of Taijiquan Journal are still available! See our website for further information.

Books and Media Received

Julie Black Belt: The Kung Fu Chronicles by Oliver Chin, Illustrated by Charlene Chua, Immedium Books
Taiji & Shaolin Staff DVD by Yang Jwing-Ming, YMAA Publishing
The Martial Arts of Ancient Greece: Modern Fighting Techniques form the Age of Alexander, by Kostas Dervenis and Nektarios Lykiardopoulos, Destiny Books.
The Body has a Mind of its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Most) Everything Better, by Sandra and Matthew Blakeslee, Random House.
The Taoist Soul Body: Harnessing the Power of Kan and Li, Mantak Chia, Destiny Books.

Taiji for the Heart Health and Stress Reduction

A recent article explaining the ins and outs of heart palpitations suggests lowering stress can help reduce them. "If you have unexplained palpitations, start with the simple things first: Try cutting back on caffeine, or giving it up altogether, to see if it is contributing to the problem. Stress and anxiety are two other key triggers of palpitations. A two-step approach can help here. Meditation, the relaxation response, exercise, yoga, tai chi, or other stress-busting activities may help keep palpitations away. If they do appear, breathing exercises or tensing and relaxing every muscle group in your body can ease the panic or anxiety spurred by palpitations that sometimes feeds into creating more of them." Read the whole article at the Buffalo News.

Martial Arts Master on Run from Crime

The murder of Anan Liu and the abandonment of her 3-year-old daughter at a Melbourne railway station led police to suspect husband and father Xue (Michael) Naiyin, a martial arts master. A history of family violence had already brought them in touch with police over the past year. This event has shocked the taijiquan world.

Xue, 54, who according to his website, had once been Chairman of the Liaoning Taijiquan Association and a coach at the Liaoning Taijiquan Training Center practiced xingyi, bagua, and Wu style taijiquan and had immigrated to New Zealand in 1996, where he had set up shop as a Chinese-language magazine publisher.
In 2000, Xue had spent a number of months in Los Angeles touting himself as a master, during which he misrepresented his skills and training, and alienated many people in the taijiquan and Chinese communities. Xue was so convincing, he was featured on the cover of T’ai Chi magazine that year.

Anan Liu’s remains were found in the family car’s trunk. Grandmother Liu is to take custody of the unfortunate child.
Xue, now wanted for murder and kidnapping, escaped to the United States, where he was last seen in Los Angeles Chinatown. An international force is in search of him with full support of the Asian media in California. Anyone with information is urged to contact the authorities immediately.(Compiled from the Sydney Morning Herald, USA Today, and other sources, October 2007)

Cloud Gate Dance Theatre to Tour

The acclaimed Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan will be touring North and South America this September and October, visiting Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa, Minneapolis, Chapel Hill, the University of Kansas, New York City, and Sao Paulo. See their website for dates and ticket information.

Cloud Gate's rich repertoire has its roots in Asian myths, folklore, and aesthetics, but it brings to these age-old beliefs and stories a contemporary and universal perspective. The company is made up of two-dozen dancers whose training includes Tai Chi Tao Yin (an ancient form of Chi Kung), meditation, martial arts, Chinese Opera movement, modern dance, ballet, and calligraphy.

Wild Cursive is the result of a long journey into the ancient practice of movement and spirituality. In 2001, Lin Hwai-min further explored the possibilities of Tai Chi Tao Yin and martial arts, and created Cursive, with its title derived from Chinese calligraphy. After studying Chinese calligraphy masterpieces, Lin found, despite the differences in styles, all the brush works shared one common element: the focused energy with which the calligraphers“danced”during writing. He asked Cloud Gate dancers to improvise by facing blown-up images of calligraphy. The dancers absorbed the energy, or Chi, of the writer, and imitated the linear“route”of ink, full of lyrical flows and strong punctuations, with rich variations in energy. The exercise produced unimaginable movements, with subtle slow motions and dynamic martial-arts-like attacks. These eventually became the movement material for Cursive, a work of stunning beauty that has received rave reviews in Europe and the U.S., where it opened the American Dance Festival in 2003.

Inspired by the spirit of “wild calligraphy,” Wild Cursive utilizes paper as its only set. On a stage covered by white marley, streams of white rice paper cascade to the floor with black ink pouring from hidden pipes above, and seeping on to the paper slowly and almost invisibly. The ink feathers and spreads in abstract patterns true to the spirit of chance as set forth in I-Ching -- The Book of Changes. With these traces of time accumulating, an art installation of“set in progress”emerges. As the ink breaths through the performance, the lighting design illuminates the transparency of the rice paper and thereby enhancing the power of the flowing black images.

Hong Kong Gathers Taiji Crowd

What do you do with an old airport? You set up a taiji event—a really big one! More than 20,000 people did taiji together on September 30th in a celebration of the Hong Kong special administrative region's 10th anniversary. The Mega Tai Chi Show was sponsered by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department, the Wushu Union, the Chinese Martial Arts Dragon and Lion Dance Association, and the Tai Chi Association, and featured local and national masters. More at Hong Kong government news.

Elsewhere in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Tourist Board organizes classes for tourists. "Depending on the day of the week, the Meet the People program highlights feng shui, tai chi, traditional medicine, Cantonese opera, cake-making and Chinese tea. There are also guided walks, a kung fu demonstration and a ride on a Chinese junk." More from Dallas News.

Chinese Medicine Conference in Virginia

"Transformation: Individuals in Balance, Families in Harmony" is the title of an upcoming conference in Chantilly Virginia, Ocotber 18-21. If you're interested in learning more about Chinese medicine from a number of different perspectives, this conference has a wide variety of offerings such as "Standing Form Qigong and the Immune System," "Arts in Medicine: Expressing Healing the the Brush of Calligraphy," "The Five Phases of Attention Deficit Disorder," and "The Chinese Medicine View of Health and Illness in Early Childhood." There are also qigong, taiji, and mediation times. For information see Building Bridges of Integration for Traditional Chinese Medicine.