Yangjia Michuan Taijiquan
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Yangjia Michuan Taijiquan (YMT) is an early "temple" version of Yang style Tai Chi Chuan. There are many stories about the evolution of Yang family taiji, but they essentially agree that a public version of their taiji was created for teaching to the royal family, but many secrets were retained for private use only. Much of the public changes are attributed to Yang Chengfu, son of Yang Chien-hou, son of Yang Lu-chan.
Among YMT practitioners, the story is that Jian-hou chose to pass YMT to their mutual student, Zhang Qin Lin, who distinguished himself and the Yang family in a challenge match that even Chengfu was unwilling to accept. Chien-hou taught Zhang from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. each morning to make sure that no one else saw the YMT secrets -- with the requirement that Zhang teach to one special student and one special student only.
Zhang complied with the requirement, but his student was killed in an air raid during the Sino-Japanese war in the early 1940s. He realized how easily the secrets of YMT could be lost with posterity. So he taught to a second student, Wang Yen-nien, and on the last day of training together, told Wang to "teach it to the world".
Zhang was remarkably picky about who he accepted as students. Not counting his wife and daughter, who he taught privately, he took only eight students in his lifetime. Two of them he taught the entire YMT system, but at least one other he gave some YMT-flavored training in tuishou (pushing hands): Cheng Man-ch'ing. Zhang defeated Cheng easily but only taught him a little bit from YMT principles. Later in Taiwan Cheng actively endorsed Wang Yen-Nien's claims about YMT.
Wang has taught to students from around the world -- most notably, Taiwan, France, the United States, Japan, and Mexico. More information about YMT is available from the American Yangjia Michuan Taijiquan Association (AYMTA), at www.aymta.org.
