![]() ![]() The new texts are, by and large, important additions to the Classics, and the book is valuable for that reason alone. But then, this is a scholarly work as much as it is a presentation of new material. As such, they will appeal primarily to historians of tai chi rather than to the general reader seeking information. The first presents the texts in their original Chinese, and those that follow are primarily analyses of specific textual elements in an effort to determine the identity of the actual author and source material. The second half contains numerous appendices. Only about half the book is occupied by the texts and Wile’s commentaries. Just where did these texts come from? Was Chang San-feng really the author of three of them? And what about the historicity of Wang Tsung-yeuh, who is the attributed author of several of the texts and who purportedly taught tai chi to the Chen family? These are just a few of the issues Wile deals with as he presents these newly found texts for the first time in English. These are no small matters, and they have aroused the interest-and occasionally ire-of many tai chi factions. In this book, he presents a newly released group of old writings on tai chi with his usual excellence of translation, but he also includes accompanying commentary that delves extensively into the history and purported authorship of these texts. In the former volume ( reviewed elsewhere on this site), Wile, a professor of Chinese language and literature at Brooklyn College, limited his commentary on the texts of the Classics to an introductory note, leaving to the Classics the lion’s share of the book to speak for themselves. Douglas Wile follows his T'ai-chi Touchstones: Yang Family Secret Transmissions with yet another exegesis of the Tai Chi Classics titled Lost T’ai Chi Classics from the Late Ch’ing Dynasty. ![]()
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