History & styles

Tchoung Ta-tchen: a teacher of the Old Form in the Pacific Northwest

Some teachers are known through books and films; many more are known almost entirely through the students who carried on their work. Tchoung Ta-tchen sits somewhere between the two, and the published record of his life is short enough that it pays to read it carefully.

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What the record says

The fullest public summary is Wikipedia's article on Tchoung Ta-tchen, also romanised Zhong Dazhen. It describes a martial arts teacher from China who developed his own version of Yang-style tai chi, and it records that he died on 22 February 2000. It gives no birth date. The article itself carries warnings that it relies too heavily on primary sources and lacks inline citations, and many of its individual statements are marked "citation needed". The account below follows it closely and flags which parts rest on that thinner footing.

Early training

According to the article, Tchoung studied his family's style of tai chi as a young man, together with tui na, a form of massage. Accounts say he was also a track athlete and later a professional soldier and army officer, though the article marks those details as needing a citation.

The article states that in 1943 he studied qigong and tai chi with an abbot at the Omei Monastery in Sichuan province. It then describes a series of further teachers and training partners. Some of those links are marked as needing citations; among them, the article says that he studied with Hsiung Yang-ho, described as one of the few disciples of Yang Shaohou, which would connect his practice to one of the Yang family's own lines. It also names Kuo Lien-ying among his practice partners, a connection that Wikipedia's article on Kuo Lien-ying repeats when it describes Tchoung as Kuo's pushing-hands partner in Taiwan.

The Chinese Tai Chi Ch'uan Association and travels abroad

The article describes Tchoung as a member of the Taiwan-based Chinese Tai Chi Ch'uan Association, which it characterises as a multi-style group of tai chi masters. It says the association made him a delegate, and that he travelled to Africa to teach tai chi to the President of Gabon, then taught for some time in South Africa before eventually moving to Vancouver, British Columbia. These are among the passages that the article flags as lacking citations.

Teaching in Vancouver and Seattle

The article places his teaching in Vancouver and in Seattle, Washington, with his primary school in Vancouver's Chinatown, and describes him, in its account, as a popular tai chi teacher in the Pacific Northwest in the 1970s. It speaks of him teaching an evolving version of tai chi there, and of authorising a small number of advanced students to teach his system.

The book and the form

Among its references, the article lists a book by Tchoung, The Annotated and Theoretical T'ai Chi Ch'uan, published in Vancouver, and notes in that list that it features his 120-movement short form, pushing hands and san shou. The same list includes videos issued under the name Symmetrical Yang Style T'ai-Chi Ch'uan. The article's own section on his work is headed as a "dual method" of the Old Form of Yang-style tai chi, and the page on the symmetrical Yang form in this guide looks at what that idea means in practice.

Placing him in the Yang tradition

Wikipedia's article on Yang-style tai chi traces the family art from Yang Luchan through his sons Yang Banhou and Yang Jianhou to his grandsons Yang Shaohou and Yang Chengfu, and notes that earlier versions of the Yang form retained more vigorous, martial content than the large-frame form that later became widespread. A teacher who studied with a disciple of Yang Shaohou and described his own method as the "Old Form" was, in effect, placing himself within that older strand of the family tradition while openly adapting it.

Reading a thin record well

It is tempting to fill the gaps in a life like this with stories heard in class. Resist that, at least in writing. What can be said with reasonable confidence is short:

• He developed his own version of Yang-style tai chi, described as a dual method of the Old Form.
• He was a member of the Chinese Tai Chi Ch'uan Association.
• He taught in Vancouver and Seattle and was well known in the Pacific Northwest.
• He wrote a book covering a short form, pushing hands and san shou.
• Wikipedia records his death on 22 February 2000.

Everything else is best treated as "accounts say", and students who want more are better served by the teachers of his line than by any summary. His system continues to be taught by students in Canada and the United States, and anyone interested in it should look for a teacher directly; the page on choosing a teacher explains what lineage and authorisation usually mean.

For the related partner practices, see san shou and pushing hands.