Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan

Wu-style Tai Chi Chuan was created by Quan You (1834-1902) who lived at Daxing in Hebei Pro-vince (now under Beijing Municipality). Quan You was of the Manchu nationality of China. He learned Tai Chi Quan from Yang Luchan and later followed Yang's second son Yang Banhou to study the short program. Quan You was known for his ability to soften his movements. Quan's son Jianquan changed his family name to Wu as he was brought up as a Han national. Wu Jianquan (1870-1942) inherited and disseminated a style of Tai Chi which is comfortable and upright. His style is continuous and ingenious and because his routine does not require jumps and leaps, it spread far and wide among common people. Since this style of Tai Chi Quan was disseminated by the Wu family, it became known as the Wu-style Tai Chi Chuan. The Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan was known by the name "Zhong Jia" ("medium frame").

 

The Wu family style, t'ai chi ch'uan (taijiquan) of Wu Ch'uan-y?? (Wu Quanyou) and Wu Chien-ch'??an (Wu Jianquan) is the second most popular form of t'ai chi ch'uan in the world today, after the Yang style, and fourth in terms of family seniority. This style is often confused in the West with the Wu style of t'ai chi ch'uan founded by Wu Yu-hsiang. While the names are distinct in pronunciation and the Chinese characters used to write them are different, they are often romanized the same way.

 

The Wu style's distinctive hand form, pushing hands and weapons trainings emphasise parallel footwork and horse stance training with the feet relatively closer together than the modern Yang or Chen styles, small circle hand techniques (although large circle techniques are trained as well) and differs from the other t'ai chi family styles martially with Wu style's initial focus on grappling, throws (shuai chiao), tumbling, jumping, footsweeps, pressure point leverage and joint locks and breaks, which are trained in addition to more conventional t'ai chi sparring and fencing at advanced levels. Although historically derived from the Yang style, the Wu style has a unique appearance to observers and shares some features with Sun style due to the long collaboration between Wu Chien-ch'??an and Sun Lu-t'ang. Another significant feature of Wu style training is its routinely placing the body's weight 100% on one leg; "yin and yang separation". The leg that supports 100% of the body weight is actually the yang leg, as this leg is "full". The yin leg is that which has no weight on it, it is "empty". It is also common in Wu style to maintain a straight line of the spine from the top of the head to the heel of the rear foot when it is at an angle to the ground; an inclined plane alignment intended to extend the practitioner's reach. Other styles of t'ai chi (with a few notable exceptions) train this leaning occasionally in their forms and pushing hands, but not as systematically as the Wu style does.