After twenty years of practice, Professor Cheng Man-ch'ing in 1950 published Cheng-tzu T'ai-chi Ch'uan Shih-san P'ien (Cheng's Thirteen Chapters on T'ai-chi Boxing). A decade later the growing popularity of T'ai-chi Ch'uan in the world led Cheng to publish a text in English on the art. The text suffered, however, from severe inadequacies in scope and presentation. At Cheng's request, I took the text to the present publisher, but he was as disturbed about its imperfections as I. He suggested a fresh start on an entirely new book with my full collaboration. The present book is the result. It has been built from the published versions of Cheng's two books—the one in Chinese and the other in English—as well as from the oral instructions in T'ai-chi that I received from Cheng and my own research concerning the art.
Cheng Man-ch'ing is a remarkable man. He is a versatile and brilliant master of the "Five Excellences" (Painting, Poetry, Calligraphy, Medicine, and T'ai-chi), on the wrong side of sixty, but with the vitality of a man much younger. After I knocked on his door for a year—the usual
