Reference: June 2007 Archives

While there are many books out there about Taiji in general and the simplified forms in particular, one cannot easily find books on older and longer forms such as Chen style old form.  I ran across Old Frame Chen Family Taijiquan at a local bookstore, and found it pretty interesting.

The book has some good introductory material about the history and foundations, and then describes the form posture by posture.  Again, like DVDs, it's not supposed to be used as a self-teaching tool - one needs a a good teacher to work with.  But it's a good reference when you're trying to figure out the details of a certain move you saw in the class.

The typesetting of the book told me that it was done by a TEX-like software, which brings out some nostalgic feelings in me being a computer geek and all.  So that made me like the book even more :-)

The author, Mark Chen, seems to have a Taiji school in San Mateo area.  Hopefully one of these days I should pay him and his school a visit, both to see how the school looks like, and also thank him for the book.  Writing a book on a subject like this is not an easy task, and I'l sure it's taken him quite a lot of time and energy to get it done.