Zheng Man Qing (simplified Chinese: 郑曼青; traditional Chinese: 鄭曼青; pinyin: Zhèng Mànqīng) (July 29, 1902 – March 26, 1975) was born in Yongjia , Zhejiang Province . He died March 26, 1975; his grave is near the city of Taipei. Zheng was trained in Chinese medicine, tai chi chuan, calligraphy, painting and poetry.
Because of his skills in these five areas he was often referred to as the “Master of Five Excellences.” Because he had been a college professor, his students called him “Professor Zheng.”
Early Years
Zheng’s father died when Zheng was very young. Around the age of nine, Zheng was struck on the head by a falling brick or roof tile, and was in a coma for a short while. He recuperated slowly, and was apprenticed to a well-known artist, Wang Xiangchan, in hopes that simple jobs like grinding ink would help his health. Within a few years, his teacher sent him out to earn his living at painting. Zheng’s aunt Chang Kuang, also known by her artist’s name of Hongwei Laoren, was a well-known painter.
During Zheng’s childhood, his mother took him out to find medicinal plants and taught him the fundamentals of traditional Chinese herbal medicine. Zheng taught poetry and art in several leading colleges in Beijing and Shanghai and was a successful artist. At the age of nineteen, he was a professor of poetry at an esteemed art school in Beijing. Later in Shanghai, he became acquainted with influential figures including Wu Chang Shi, Cai Yuan Pei, Zheng Xiao Xu, Xu Bei Hong, and Zhang Da Qian.
In his twenties, he developed lung disease . Ill to the point of coughing up blood, he began to practice tai chi chuan more diligently to aid his recovery. Zheng retired from teaching and devoted himself for several years to the study of tai chi chuan, traditional Chinese medicine, and literature. In addition to his childhood instruction, Zheng Man Qing received formal Chinese medical training. While he was teaching painting in a Shanghai art school, one of his friends grew ill and was unable to find relief.
Zheng Man Qing wrote a complex prescription for his friend, who took the medicine and recovered fully. One story from his memorial book is that a retired traditional doctor named Song You-an came across the prescription. He demanded to be put in contact with the person who wrote it, as the sophistication and erudition of the prescription showed exceptional talent and competence. As war was raging across China at that time, it took several years before Zheng Man Qing was able to present himself for study.
With Song, Zheng received instruction and became conversant with the Chinese pharmacopoeia. Another version of this story, attested to by Professor Zheng’s students, is that the physician who encountered Zheng’s prescription was then head of a medical school far west of the seacoast; this physician was the son of a traditional doctor, whose own father had been a doctor, and so on back twelve generations. Thus, Zheng Man Qing for a year or two became the premier student of the director of a medical school who was twelfth in an unbroken lineage of physicians.
In 1928 he met the well-known master Yang Cheng Fu, with whom he began to study Yang style Tai Ji Quan, which he did until 1935. Questions have been raised regarding the lineage claims of Zheng Man Qing and his relationship, if any, to Yang Cheng Fu. Zheng Man Qing’s name is not included in the list of Yang Cheng Fu’s students and scholarly research regarding Zheng’s life has failed to substantiate claims that he was a student of Yang Cheng Fu for a time period of seven to ten years.
Rene Navarro in the article “In Search of Yang Cheng Fu” states, “I observed the famous Zheng Man Qing, who had a school at the foot of Manhattan Bridge on the Bowery in New York City. Zheng had a reputation as a formidable fighter. His short form of 37 movements was derived from the Yang Family classical fist form of 108 movements. It was said that he studied with Yang Cheng Fu, but I did not know what forms or for how long. At the time, there were articles that said he studied for a decade.
Later, a researcher estimated 3 years. More recently, Master Dong of Hawaii quoted his grandfather as saying that Zheng studied only for 6 months. Zheng, according to Yang’s son Zhen Ji, ghostwrote Yang’s second book ”Essence and Applications of Taijiquan” or ”The Substance and Application of Tai Ji Quan” , for which Zheng also wrote a preface and most likely arranged for the calligraphic dedications.
Zheng taught Tai Ji Quan, practiced medicine, and continued his art practice in Sichuan Province during the Sino-Japanese war years. By 1946, he had developed a significantly abbreviated 37-move version of Yang’s traditional form. He wrote the manuscript for his ”Thirteen Chapters” during this period, and showed them to his elder classmate Chen Wei Ming, who gave it his imprimatur.
Taiwan
Cheng moved to Taiwan in 1949 and continued his career as a physician and as a teacher of his new Tai Ji Quan form, as well as actively practicing painting, poetry, and calligraphy. He published ”Zheng’s 13 Chapters of Tai Ji Boxing” in 1950 which has been translated into twice. He started the Shih Chung Tai Ji Association in Taipei, where many now well-known students trained with him.
Though he tended not to advertise it, he served as one of the painting teachers of Soong Mei Ling, Madame Chiang Kai Shek, whom he taught to paint lotuses; and as personal physician to Chiang Kai Shek in Taiwan and perhaps earlier.
United States
In 1964, Zheng moved with his family to the United States, where he taught at the New York Tai Ji Association at 211 Canal Street in Manhattan. He then founded and taught at the Shr Jung Tai Ji school at 87 Bowery in New York City’s Chinatown section, with the assistance of his six American senior students, known as the “Big Six”: Tam Gibbs, Lou Kleinsmith, Ed Young, Mort Raphael, Maggie Newman, and Stanley Israel.
Half a dozen later students/assistants are known as “the Little Six”: Victor Chin, Y Y Chin, Jon Gaines, Natasha Gorky, Wolfe Lowenthal, and Ken VanSickle. Other American students include Patt Benton, Robert Ante, Patrick Watson, Lawrence Galante and William C. Phillips. In Taiwan, Zheng’s students continued running the school in his absence. It operated initially under the direction of Liu His Heng. Hsu I Chung is the current director.
While living in New York City, Zheng often spent several hours in the early afternoons studying or teaching classes of three or four students in the C. V. Starr East Asian Library in Columbia University, usually in a small, mahogany-panelled loft above the main floor. For relaxation, he raised orchids.
Writings
In 1967 in collaboration with Robert W. Smith, and T. T. Liang, Zheng published “Tai Ji, the Supreme Ultimate Exercise for Health, Sport and Self-defense,” which was his second Tai Ji book in English. He wrote over a dozen other books on a variety of subjects, including the I Ching, the Tao Te Ching, the Analects of Confucius, books of poetry, essays, medicine, and art collections.
Translations of his works include: “Master Zheng’s New Method of Tai Ji Quan Self-Cultivation”; “Zheng Man Qing: Essays on Man and Culture”; “Zheng Man Qing: Master of Five Excellences,” and “Tai Ji Quan: A Simplified Method of Calisthenics for Health and Self-Defense.”
Zheng Man Qing’s Tai Ji Quan
Zheng Man Qing is best known in the West for his Tai Ji Quan. The following are some of the characteristics of his “Yang-style short form.”
1. It eliminates most of the repetitions of certain moves of the Yang long form.
2. It takes around ten minutes to practice instead of the twenty to thirty minutes
3. The hand and wrist are held open, yet relaxed, in what Zheng called the “Fair Lady’s Hand” formation
4. The form postures are not as expansive as Yang Cheng Fu’s form
5. Zheng postures are performed in “middle frame” style, which changes the movement of the feet from the Yang version.
6. Zheng’s concept of “swing and return” in which the momentum from one movement initiates the next.
These changes allowed Zheng to teach larger numbers of students in a shorter time. His shortened form became extremely popular in Taiwan and Malaysia, and he was among one of the earliest Chinese masters to teach Tai Ji Quan publicly in the United States. His students have continued to spread his form around the world.
It should be noted that Zheng rejected the appellation “Yang Style Short Form” to characterize his Tai Ji. When pressed on the issue, he called his form “Yang-Style Tai Ji in 37 Postures.” However, the postures in his form are counted differently from those in the Yang Cheng Fu form. In the older form each movement counts as a posture, whereas in the Zheng form postures are counted only the first time they are performed, and rarely or not at all when they are repeated.
Moreover, certain postures which appear in the Zheng form, such as “High Pat on Horse,” are not counted at all. These differences in how the postures are counted have led some Zheng practitioners, such as William C.C. Chen, to characterize their own forms as exceeding 70 “movements,” and indeed, upon close comparison with the Yang Cheng Fu form, Zheng’s postures, if counted the same way as Yang’s are, would number over 70. Zheng’s changes to the Yang style form have never been officially recognised by the Yang family and his style is still a source of controversy among some Tai Ji Quan practitioners.
From Zheng’s own point of view, the approval of his elder brother disciple Chen Wei Ming was all the recognition he needed, since by that time Yang Cheng Fu was deceased, and all of the current generation of Yang Cheng Fu leaders were junior to him.
In Taiwan, a number of his students still teach, and the Shih Chung school still operates. In New York City, among Cheng’s senior students, Maggie Newman and Ed Young are still teaching.
A student of Zheng in Taiwan, name Ke Qihua (柯啟華), has some students in Jakarta , Indonesia.
In Jakarta, some of Ke’s students like Ronny Gunawan (吳少輝) , Wilopo Djoyo (楊偉福), Li Xiehui (李燮輝) and Li Guotiān ( 李国添) have established the “Li Zhong Tai Ji Quan Association“.(立中杨氏太极拳組)
Three of them, Ronny, Wilopo and Xiehui with another Ke Qihua’s student named Phang Kim Hiung (馮錦雄) are still teaching today at Li Zhong.
Lizhong Taijiquan Club 