Whose tai chi gang are we in?

I'm physically out of action for a good few days, owing to a minor but painful operation hem hem...
So I can't train. Boo. I can philosophise, however...

We in the Monkey Army can't help but feel that, as far as the "tai chi community" goes, we are outsiders at best. Our opinion of what the art is about doesn't seem to be shared by many (any?), and we are caught between the two camps: the competitors and the healers. Really, we are a third camp all to ourselves. What is best? Try to convince the rest of the validity of ones's view? Or stay as the grey men, content to roam the outskirts and pass on what we know to the interested few? The latter way seems to be the one of integrity to me.



Another beast struggling to survive on its lonesome



I can see why people end up breaking away, and starting up their own thing. It's not that we wish to pioneer a "new style" or anything like that, but it's a question of expression: is there the room to express what interests us within the existing forms of tai chi?

This may all seem very navel-gazing, and it is. It's just a martial art; it's not something that the world would be bereft without...On the other hand, we wish to express our gratitude to those who passed it so carefully and expertly onto us. We want people further down the line to enjoy what we have enjoyed, discover what we have discovered. To us, it would be a great shame if the only tai chi chuan available in the years to come was to grow solely from the most popular forms available today. Tai chi chuan, like so many things, is swift becoming a mono-culture, or at best a bi-culture. We like to think that we represent biodiversity, facing the wave of McTaiChi TM Inc. that's heading our way. And with the construction of the "Tai chi city" in Huairou, Beijing, to look forward to, our work will be cut out for us.

Hopefully I'll be up and about soon and will stop bothering you nice people with this nonsense.