Above: At the Academy's 2018 Chinese New Year Celebration.
Master and Mrs. Zhang (center front, seated) joined us for a wonderful evening.
For more photos see Gallery I: Year of the Earth Dog.
★
When you join a school, you join a community.
When you join a Tai Chi school, you join a family that stretches back
over many generations, and over half the world back to China.
In the photo above, you see three generations of Hunyuan Tai Chi:
• First, Master and Mrs. Zhang (center front, seated), who
first brought Hunyuan Tai Chi from China to the US in the early 90's;
(now retired, Master Zhang no longer teaches publicly,
but has passed his school banner on to us at the Academy);
• Second, many of Master Zhang's formal lineage disciples (dizi 弟子),
including Malcolm Dean, founder and head instructor of the Academy (immediately to the right of Master Zhang); and
• Third, some of Malcolm's students from the Academy and UCSF.
What you don't see in the photo are:
• The many generations that preceded Master Zhang, from his teacher, Grandmaster Feng, the founder of Hunyuan Tai Chi, back through
18 previous generations of Chen Style Tai Chi masters; and
• Finally, the very newest generation of Hunyuan Tai Chi practitioners,
the students of our students (who are themselves beginning to teach).
★★
For us human beans to grow and thrive, we need our arts.
For our arts to grow and thrive, they must renew themselves constantly
through the lives of those who've grown to love and appreciate them.
Hunyuan Tai Chi is a great art, the music of the body.
As with music, it takes many years of study and practice to master the craft.
In that effort, your Tai Chi family is invaluable on so many levels.
If a serious approach to Tai Chi training
within a strong community context appeals to you,
