Tai Chi Finder

In Tai Chi Chuan, and other Chinese arts, the idea of lineage is used as a guide to the authenticity, and hence by implication the quality, of a particular teacher’s teaching. This reflects the major importance of the family in Chinese culture. The Ancestors are always a presence in Chinese thinking.

A body of thought or a collection of practices and techniques are seen as being passed from one person to another. Being able to recite one’s lineage is seen as very important and a way of authenticating one’s legitimacy. One person’s teaching may be seen as more authentic than another’s on the grounds that the first has a more direct lineage than the second.

There is some merit in this approach but it is not without problems. The first problem is best illustrated by the children’s game that is called “Chinese Whispers”, or “Telephone”. In this game a message is passed by repeating it from person to person along a chain of people from the point of origin to the point of destination. Since people are prone to a degree of error in repetition, the amusement value of the game is in the difference between the original message and the message that arrives at the destination. A probably apocryphal example from World War One is the famous; “Send reinforcements we are going to advance” which supposedly arrived as; “Send three and four pence (Three shillings and four pence pre decimalisation about 17p in today’s usage) we are going to a dance”.

From this example alone we can surmise that in a long lineage contemporary practice is most likely to be different from the original practice.

In addition to the general problem of errors in repetition there is another facet to consider. I call this the “Quart into the Pint Pot” problem. Not all students are equally capable of absorbing their teacher’s teaching. A teacher may have to wait and search for the particular student who is capable of receiving the entirety of the teaching. In the meantime different students may absorb only some fraction, or percentage, of the teaching. One student might be very well suited and capable and so be able to carry say 75 – 80%. While another can only support say 10%. Yet both are of the same generation according to the lineage chart. The lineage that descends from the 80% student will be of better content that that from the 10% student but both will still suffer from the “Chinese Whispers” problem.

The Chinese are most likely to see the genetic lineage that parallels the teaching lineage as the best corrective to this problem. If the parent is also the teacher then the child/student is seen as having the best chance or receiving the full transmission. For cultural and sociological reasons the preferred form of transmission is Father to Son, though Father to Daughter or Mother to Son/Daughter is not unknown or unacceptable.

Such child/students certainly have a time advantage. Unfortunately while time is certainly a factor it is not necessarily the definitive factor. Children might not be sufficiently interested or motivated to follow their parents. Indeed it is not impossible that the children may lack some necessary talent or ability. A pair of musician parents might produce a tone-deaf child. In fact, in the Yang family transmission of Tai Chi Chuan there are documented examples of children who did not pursue the family art with much enthusiasm until after the death of the parent. For cultural reasons the Chinese place much emphasis on the direct Father to Son transmission and so the idle or errant children may sometimes have to learn from elder students of the Father so that the transmission may be seen to remain within the genetic family. In such cases the direct genetic lineage may become reduced due to the “Quart into the Pint Pot” problem.

Another source of change between the art as practiced originally and the art that may be currently practiced is that the general context of society changes with time. In order for a transmission to be considered “living” it must adapt to current circumstances, otherwise it will become an increasingly meaningless “fossil” or simply an empty ritual.

In Tai Chi Chuan, over the last one hundred years, there has been a shift from a functional self defence system which happened to be very beneficial to practitioners’ health and well being, to a greater emphasis on Tai Chi for Health with the self defence function now pushed into the background. So much so that in some lineages the self defence functionality has completely disappeared. Since originally the health benefits were a consequence of the functional practice, to completely abandon such practice runs the risk of also losing the health benefits.

Health benefits are typically long term and frequently “negative” in the sense that health problems such as heart disease or arthritis are reduced or eliminated. A positive health benefit may be in terms of some adverse event not happening. It is very health positive not to have a heart attack. However it is not a comfort to practice for some years, suffer a heart attack and then be able to say; “Well I must have been doing it wrong.”

Some shorter-term measure of successful practice is needed. The traditional functional practice can be used as a shorter-term measure of increasing competence and skill. This is not to say that all Tai Chi Chuan students need to practice as if they intend to become a caravan guard, or a personal protection agent; rather all students need some form of assessing their practice and development – short of having say, a heart attack. The traditional functional practice provides such a means of assessment.

Traditional functional practice may also function as an error correction method. A transmission that stresses functionality is more resistant to the “Chinese Whispers” problem than a transmission that disregards functionality. The former has a better chance of staying “alive” in both the sense of accurately reflecting the practice and teaching of the past and paradoxically also can better adapt to changing circumstances. New applications of old functions can emerge.

We have identified two problems of traditional lineage transmission:

a) The “Chinese Whispers” problem – increasing degradation of the original “signal” with repeated transmission.

b) The “Quart into a Pint Pot” problem – failure of full transmission in any individual case. Not forgetting the special case of Father – Son transmission when the Son fails to achieve the full receipt of the Father’s transmission.

We have suggested one potential error-trapping device:

a) Functional Practice – the testing of the transmission. Does it work?

Thus we need more than just a simple recitation of lineage alone to have confidence in a particular teacher. However this is not to say that lineage is not useful.

A short and direct lineage is better than a long or confused lineage. Multiple converging lineages arising from a single originator and converging on a single contemporary practitioner may help to reduce the “Quart into a Pint Pot” problem. This helps with the possibility that lineage A might be missing just what lineage B retains, though of course this cannot be guaranteed. A functionally oriented lineage is more likely to preserve the original content than a non-functionally oriented lineage.

On these grounds we can develop a guide to a likely candidate for a good transmission:

a) Short is better than long

b) Multiple is better than single

c) Functionally oriented is better than non-functionally oriented.

Unfortunately this still does not guarantee a good teacher or a teacher suitable to a particular student. Teaching is an additional skill to the skills of performance.

An individual may be the recipient and performer of a good, in the sense of relatively error free, transmission and still not be able to pass that on to students. This could be due to the particular individual who has received the transmission not being a very good teacher and/or due to an incompatibility between that person and a particular individual wishing to learn.

To conclude; a good teacher needs to satisfy the three criteria for a good transmission specified above and in addition also needs separate teaching skills. Some transmissions also contain teaching methods and specific additional training for potential teachers. Finally not all teachers are suitable to all students. Any students who can find a degree of compatibility with their teacher are advantaged over students who cannot.