The official history of modern Tai Chi is straight forward (sarcasm): in an 18 years span in the early 1800s, Yang Luchan 楊露嬋 learned the martial arts taught in the Chen village 陳家溝, where the art was previously only taught to members of the village. 

Having achieved high level of skills, Yang Luchan taught students in his home town, Guangping 廣平, then went on to Beijing in the 1850s where he taught imperial bannermen and other people. Yang Luchan was known as “Yang the Invincible” 楊無敵 based on his skills. That’s a high honor as Beijing was the center of the world at the time and there were many martial artists teaching and working at the capital city.

Yang Luchan had two surviving sons, Yang Jianhou 楊健侯 and Yang Banhou 楊班侯, both were skilled in Tai Chi with Yang Banhou carried on the namesake of “Yang the Invincible”. Yang Jianhou had two sons, Yang Chengfu 楊澄甫 and Yang Shaohou 楊少侯.

Yang Chengfu created the large frame and taught Tai Chi to thousands of students. Yang Shaohou was known to be a fighter, famous for his Fast Form and Small Frame Application Form.

Yang Jianhou and especially Yang Chengfu had many excellent students, among the more famous ones are Cheng Manching 鄭曼青, Fu Zhongwen 傅鍾文 (YCF’s son-in-law), Chen Weiming 陳微明, Dong Yingjie 董英傑, Tian Zhaolin 田兆麟, Zhang Qinlin 張欽霖, Li Yaxuan 李雅軒, and numerous others. Some of them were originally YJH’s students but baishi 拜師 to YCF after YJH died.

Chen Yanlin 陳炎林, a student of Tian Zhaolin, being known more as a wealthy scholar than a martial artist, famously “leaked” the Yang secrets in his 1943 book, “Taiji Quan, Sword, Saber, Spear, and Sparring” (太極拳刀劍桿散手合編). The story of how that happened is worth a chapter by itself.

Yang Chengfu’s eldest son, Yeung Sauchung 楊守中 moved to Hong Kong in the 1950s and taught many students there. Among them Gin Soon Chu 朱振順 moved to Boston and started teaching there.

Yeung Sauchung had three daughters who learned from their father. This broke the tradition of teaching from father to sons, typically in the martial arts world. The second daughter, Mary Yeung 楊瑪利, is widely acknowledged as the representative of YSC’s family teaching.

Meanwhile, Yang Chengfu’s other son who stayed in China has his own lineage.

All these teachers and their students helped spread Yang Tai Chi from China to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and USA / Canada, Europe, and the rest of the world, making it the most popular Tai Chi style in the world.

Among the Yang styles, there are different variations, based on the Elders’ teaching, and each teacher’s own understanding of the art at that moment and the students. The forms can be generally categorized as Large Frame, Middle Frame, and Small Frame. The Fast Form and the Application Form are only passed down through lineages from Yang Banhou, Yang Shaohou, Yeung Sauchung’s students.

There are also secret Imperial Style and other secret styles. In the 1980s, China created the competition forms, and standardized 24 and 108 forms.

Yang Chengfu revolutionized the teaching by emphasizing softness and proper relaxation (Song 鬆). Cheng Manching was a scholar of “Five Excellence”, and his book describes yielding and uprooting in far greater details than other books.

This only scratches the surface of this subject. Even in these few paragraphs, many questions remain unanswered and many stories could be told.