The ancient Chinese practice of taichi is said to keep the body supple and the internal organs healthy.

Many visitors to Taiwan are startled by the frenetic pace of Taipei and its crowded streets. Culture shock often gives way to stress as they mistakenly take the city's hyperactivity and its overflowing markets to be the predominant culture here. A little more digging is required, however, to see the quieter, more meditative side of traditional China beneath the surface.

A visit to Taipei's landmark Grand Hotel, on a hill overlooking the northern part of the city, is all it takes. The green hills surrounding the hotel are a fitting setting for the ancient Chinese art of relaxation known as taichi (¤Ó·¥). Unlike the art fixed in stone and wood that graces the hotel and its surrounding gardens, the ancient art of taichi is one of human movement. A type of martial art, taichi is much more than the kungfu one often sees in movies. It is a form of exercise for both the muscles and, surprisingly to beginners, the internal organs as well. As a result, long-term practitioners have found taichi to be extremely helpful for maintaining health.

The Chinese Secret of Health
Taichi is just one of many ways that Taiwan's people draw from the trove of ancient Chinese culture to find relaxation in their increasingly fast-paced lives. Aside from the treasure of Chinese medicine and its meditative healing arts, the Taiwanese also turn to traditional Chinese arts such as calligraphy to maintain their mental and even physical health.

Practitioners of taichi at the Grand Hotel are a dedicated group. Classes, led by mainland Chinese-trained master Wang Yen-nien (¤ý©µ¦~), begin at 6:30 a.m. Members of all ages and nationalities file in from various paths to a small paved platform surrounded by trees. After sweeping the practicing area and stretching, the group begins an hour-long series of movements. Composed of over one hundred individual parts, the first form of the taichi practiced at the Grand Hotel--the Yang Family Hidden Tradition--requires three months to learn. "Learning" is simply a mastery of the basic moves. Most people practicing taichi with Master Wang have been coming for years and still call themselves students.

Wang himself, now 83, has been coming to the Grand Hotel to teach taichi since 1949. "When I first came here, very few people in Taiwan practiced taichi. We now have groups throughout the country," he comments. Many of these groups are led by former students. A book he wrote in 1971 was published in both English and French in 1988, reflecting the international interest that his teachings have generated.

Julia Fairchild translated the English edition and teaches taichi to foreigners in Taipei. "Taichi is designed above all to prolong life," she explains. "This is helpful given that the higher level Taoist practices take a very long time to learn!" Practicing four hours a day herself, Fairchild is an example of the dedication that taichi inspires in its adherents. Like most other students, she stresses the restorative effects of the exercises as a prime motivation.

Balancing the Inner Forces
The emphasis that taichi puts on prolonging life reflects a common theme in many traditional Chinese healing arts. In most cases, practices involve variou methods of cultivating the body's latent power or chi (®ð). Whether in Chinese medicine, taichi, calligraphy, or even cooking, the finest practitioners credit their success to an understanding of how to focus chi. Based on Taoist concepts of the pervasive negative/positive forces of yin/yang (³±¶§), cultivation of inner chi involves balancing those forces within the body. In taichi, for example, cultivating an inner balance of chi involves exercises designed to facilitate the flow of chi throughout all of the body's meridians (a kind of chi-based limbic system). The freeing-up of the body's chi in lower-level taichi exercises is followed by increasingly rigorous exercises designed to control the flow of chi through breathing and movement.

Chi-based kungfu is found in many guises throughout traditional and contemporary China. Often grouped under the loosely-defined heading of chikung (®ð¥\), meaning "chi skills," practices range from programs designed to heal cancer to those which are supposed to make the practitioner resistant to ax blows. In any case, the various schools take an approach to health and healing that is often in sharp contrast to traditional Western concepts of exercise. According to many Chinese schools, Western exercise programs release a great deal of chi without the necessary counterbalance of chi cultivation. Because chi can be cultivated in a variety of ways, Chinese often believe that activities not normally considered "exercise" in the West can be helpful in maintaining health.

Writing Your Way to Good Health
Calligraphy is just such an activity. Notes Gary K. C. Ho (¦ó°ê¼y), chairman of Ho's Calligraphy Foundation, which houses one of Taiwan's finest collections of Ming dynasty (A.D. 1386-1644) calligraphy, "As in taichi, fine calligraphers must focus chi. Without absolute focus on the task at hand, calligraphy becomes lifeless." Much as in the dance-like taichi exercises, calligraphy focuses on fluidity of movement. A calligrapher cannot stop half-way through a scroll, but must instead produce the entire work in a single sitting. Calligraphy experts often cite a sense of fluidity from character to character as an important feature of a high-quality work. Producing fine calligraphy therefore requires a great deal of attention to posture, wrist angle, and the cultivation of endurance.

Interestingly, Ho is fond of likening calligraphy more to expressive singing than to other forms of visual art. "Mankind has been blessed with the gift of song as a means of freely expressing emotion," he says. "We Chinese have been doubly blessed by the additional gift of an expressive, visual form of writing. As a result, any Chinese person who can write is also an artist of sorts!" To further demonstrate the therapeutic aspects of calligraphy, Ho points to studies done in Hong Kong. In experiments there, researchers found that average Chinese students engaged in calligraphy exercises were found to have brain wave patterns similar to those found during meditation.

Much like artists throughout the world, Chinese calligraphers often use their art as a means of working through personal problems. Calligraphy has a unique appeal, however, in its ability to combine both written and visual expression. Ho remembers, "My mother died when I was still young and my father took it pretty badly. It was at that time that he turned to calligraphy. I remember that he often wrote scrolls of poetry by a famous poet who also mourned the passing of his wife. In this way, he was able to express his sadness and more easily heal the pain he felt while also creating art." In contemporary Taiwan, where writing is done more often with a computer keyboard than with a brush, a form of expression which was once available in everyday life has been restricted. Nevertheless, the very uniqueness of the activity gives today's calligraphers a special refuge and means of releasing tension.

Living Proof of Health Benefits
In whichever form they may take, Chinese meditative exercises produce concrete health benefits. Living proof of the effectiveness of taichi is 73-year-old retired consultant Charles Y. Shaw (¿½®aÄ£), who reports, "My company holds a competition every year; a sort of marathon which involves climbing 45 flights of stairs. I have competed for the last three years and plan to be on the steps again this year. Undoubtedly, taichi has been very important in keeping me fit!" Looking more like a sprightly 50-year-old, Shaw bounds about the taichi practicing ground at the Grand Hotel, sparring with Chinese fighting sticks. This is not an uncommon sight in Taiwan and mainland China. Older men and women can be seen in parks in every city and town doing early morning exercises. Often much less complex than Master Wang's taichi program, these exercises are still focused on maintaining flexibility and agility into old age. To this end, even a tool as unlikely as the calligrapher's brush can serve as highly effective sporting equipment.

The ancient Chinese practice of taichi is said to keep the body supple and the internal organs healthy.

Many visitors to Taiwan are startled by the frenetic pace of Taipei and its crowded streets. Culture shock often gives way to stress as they mistakenly take the city's hyperactivity and its overflowing markets to be the predominant culture here. A little more digging is required, however, to see the quieter, more meditative side of traditional China beneath the surface.

A visit to Taipei's landmark Grand Hotel, on a hill overlooking the northern part of the city, is all it takes. The green hills surrounding the hotel are a fitting setting for the ancient Chinese art of relaxation known as taichi (¤Ó·¥). Unlike the art fixed in stone and wood that graces the hotel and its surrounding gardens, the ancient art of taichi is one of human movement. A type of martial art, taichi is much more than the kungfu one often sees in movies. It is a form of exercise for both the muscles and, surprisingly to beginners, the internal organs as well. As a result, long-term practitioners have found taichi to be extremely helpful for maintaining health.

The Chinese Secret of Health
Taichi is just one of many ways that Taiwan's people draw from the trove of ancient Chinese culture to find relaxation in their increasingly fast-paced lives. Aside from the treasure of Chinese medicine and its meditative healing arts, the Taiwanese also turn to traditional Chinese arts such as calligraphy to maintain their mental and even physical health.

Practitioners of taichi at the Grand Hotel are a dedicated group. Classes, led by mainland Chinese-trained master Wang Yen-nien (¤ý©µ¦~), begin at 6:30 a.m. Members of all ages and nationalities file in from various paths to a small paved platform surrounded by trees. After sweeping the practicing area and stretching, the group begins an hour-long series of movements. Composed of over one hundred individual parts, the first form of the taichi practiced at the Grand Hotel--the Yang Family Hidden Tradition--requires three months to learn. "Learning" is simply a mastery of the basic moves. Most people practicing taichi with Master Wang have been coming for years and still call themselves students.

Wang himself, now 83, has been coming to the Grand Hotel to teach taichi since 1949. "When I first came here, very few people in Taiwan practiced taichi. We now have groups throughout the country," he comments. Many of these groups are led by former students. A book he wrote in 1971 was published in both English and French in 1988, reflecting the international interest that his teachings have generated.

Julia Fairchild translated the English edition and teaches taichi to foreigners in Taipei. "Taichi is designed above all to prolong life," she explains. "This is helpful given that the higher level Taoist practices take a very long time to learn!" Practicing four hours a day herself, Fairchild is an example of the dedication that taichi inspires in its adherents. Like most other students, she stresses the restorative effects of the exercises as a prime motivation.

Balancing the Inner Forces
The emphasis that taichi puts on prolonging life reflects a common theme in many traditional Chinese healing arts. In most cases, practices involve variou methods of cultivating the body's latent power or chi (®ð). Whether in Chinese medicine, taichi, calligraphy, or even cooking, the finest practitioners credit their success to an understanding of how to focus chi. Based on Taoist concepts of the pervasive negative/positive forces of yin/yang (³±¶§), cultivation of inner chi involves balancing those forces within the body. In taichi, for example, cultivating an inner balance of chi involves exercises designed to facilitate the flow of chi throughout all of the body's meridians (a kind of chi-based limbic system). The freeing-up of the body's chi in lower-level taichi exercises is followed by increasingly rigorous exercises designed to control the flow of chi through breathing and movement.

Chi-based kungfu is found in many guises throughout traditional and contemporary China. Often grouped under the loosely-defined heading of chikung (®ð¥\), meaning "chi skills," practices range from programs designed to heal cancer to those which are supposed to make the practitioner resistant to ax blows. In any case, the various schools take an approach to health and healing that is often in sharp contrast to traditional Western concepts of exercise. According to many Chinese schools, Western exercise programs release a great deal of chi without the necessary counterbalance of chi cultivation. Because chi can be cultivated in a variety of ways, Chinese often believe that activities not normally considered "exercise" in the West can be helpful in maintaining health.

Writing Your Way to Good Health
Calligraphy is just such an activity. Notes Gary K. C. Ho (¦ó°ê¼y), chairman of Ho's Calligraphy Foundation, which houses one of Taiwan's finest collections of Ming dynasty (A.D. 1386-1644) calligraphy, "As in taichi, fine calligraphers must focus chi. Without absolute focus on the task at hand, calligraphy becomes lifeless." Much as in the dance-like taichi exercises, calligraphy focuses on fluidity of movement. A calligrapher cannot stop half-way through a scroll, but must instead produce the entire work in a single sitting. Calligraphy experts often cite a sense of fluidity from character to character as an important feature of a high-quality work. Producing fine calligraphy therefore requires a great deal of attention to posture, wrist angle, and the cultivation of endurance.

Interestingly, Ho is fond of likening calligraphy more to expressive singing than to other forms of visual art. "Mankind has been blessed with the gift of song as a means of freely expressing emotion," he says. "We Chinese have been doubly blessed by the additional gift of an expressive, visual form of writing. As a result, any Chinese person who can write is also an artist of sorts!" To further demonstrate the therapeutic aspects of calligraphy, Ho points to studies done in Hong Kong. In experiments there, researchers found that average Chinese students engaged in calligraphy exercises were found to have brain wave patterns similar to those found during meditation.

Much like artists throughout the world, Chinese calligraphers often use their art as a means of working through personal problems. Calligraphy has a unique appeal, however, in its ability to combine both written and visual expression. Ho remembers, "My mother died when I was still young and my father took it pretty badly. It was at that time that he turned to calligraphy. I remember that he often wrote scrolls of poetry by a famous poet who also mourned the passing of his wife. In this way, he was able to express his sadness and more easily heal the pain he felt while also creating art." In contemporary Taiwan, where writing is done more often with a computer keyboard than with a brush, a form of expression which was once available in everyday life has been restricted. Nevertheless, the very uniqueness of the activity gives today's calligraphers a special refuge and means of releasing tension.

Living Proof of Health Benefits
In whichever form they may take, Chinese meditative exercises produce concrete health benefits. Living proof of the effectiveness of taichi is 73-year-old retired consultant Charles Y. Shaw (¿½®aÄ£), who reports, "My company holds a competition every year; a sort of marathon which involves climbing 45 flights of stairs. I have competed for the last three years and plan to be on the steps again this year. Undoubtedly, taichi has been very important in keeping me fit!" Looking more like a sprightly 50-year-old, Shaw bounds about the taichi practicing ground at the Grand Hotel, sparring with Chinese fighting sticks. This is not an uncommon sight in Taiwan and mainland China. Older men and women can be seen in parks in every city and town doing early morning exercises. Often much less complex than Master Wang's taichi program, these exercises are still focused on maintaining flexibility and agility into old age. To this end, even a tool as unlikely as the calligrapher's brush can serve as highly effective sporting equipment.