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Sun Style Taijiquan: 98,97 and 73, huh? by Master Ivan Ang

Sun style Taijiquan is one of the main branches of taijiquan in existence today. While the form was created only at the turn of the last century, the fixation of the number of steps in the routines got people confused. Interestingly, this was believed to vary between 98, 97 and 73. I hope to shed some light on the origins of these numbers and hope future generations will be able to have a clear distinction between the forms. Sun style count her blessings through the founder Sun Lu Tang’s book on taijiquan among his other books in internal arts.  The Study of Taijiquan   (Tai Ji Quan Xue)  is a classic reference text that outlines the steps and movements in Sun style taijiquan. In this book, Sun Lu Tang explained the origins of Taiji through the use of I-ching. This explains why the first movement in Sun style taijiquan is  The study of Emptiness or Wu Ji Xue  followed by  The Study of Extremes or Tai Ji Xue.   In fact, this is the sa...
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In Memory of Wu (Yuxiang) Style Master Yao Jizu by yosaku a.k.a. Jon Nicklin

by   yosak The founders of Wu (Hao) style taijiquan are acknowledged to have authored some of the writings now considered as taiji classics. There are four main ‘branches’ of Wu (Hao) style in China, of which two are represented in the West. The four are (a) the taiji spread by the Hao family (as represented in the West by M Liu Jishun); (b) the taiji practiced by Hao Weizhen’s students from the Xingtai area in Hebei (as exemplified by Wu Wenhan and Chen Gu’an, whose student, Jimmy Wong, is spreading this version in the US); (c) the ‘old frame’ practiced by descendants of the Wu and Li families, and (d) the taiji spread to the Northeast of China (formerly called Manchuria) by Yan Zhigao, who I hope to profile in a later article. The founders of Wu (Hao) style taijiquan are acknowledged to have authored some of the writings now considered as taiji classics. There are four main ‘branches’ of Wu (Hao) style in China, of which two are represented in the West. The four are (a) the ...
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About Sun Style, from my teacher.

From my teacher, Master Ivan Ang, Singapore. Sun style internal arts is a collective term that refers to the system of Sun Style Xingyi, Bagua and Taiji (Tai Chi) created by the late Grandmaster Sun Lu Tang.  Sun style gained her roots in Singapore when Grandmaster Hu Yun Hua first taught traditional Taijiquan (Tai Chi) in the early 70s. GM Hu was a student of Sun Lu Tang when she studied at Zhejiang Guoshu Association back in 1912. With her passing, the number of practitioners has dropped drastically since the 90s. Furthermore, only Sun style Taiji (Tai Chi) has been taught. The arts of Sun style Bagua and Xingyi are relatively unknown in Singapore, hence resulting in more people exposing to the new Sun style 73 steps competition form rather than the traditional 98 steps routine. The requirements for the competition differs significantly from that of the traditional.  We aim to continue the Sun style legacy in Singapore by reintroducing traditional Sun style 98 st...
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