Note. 1. The significance of tai chi artists' lineage is mostly historical: Traditionally tai chi has been taught through private tutoring within small circles of family members or select disciples. It is also due to its nature of requiring long-term, monitored tutoring in order to achieve mastery.
2. This lineage tree is drawn by wuhaotaichi.com's webmaster based on materials from various books (in particular, The Art of tai chi by Gu Liuxin and Contemporary tai chi Artists by Yan Hanxiu) and magazine articles (esp. T'ai Chi magazine). It's far from complete and the webmaster of wuhaotaichi.com is solely responsible for any errors therein and would appreciate any comments.
3. It's not uncommon for some martial artists to learn from more than one teacher throughout their career, for one reason or another. Here we only list the major lineages that we know about for a given artist. (For the record, Master Liu Jishun stayed within the Wu/Hao style throughout his career, learning from Grand Master Hao Shaoru for 23 years).
4. Based on this lineage tree (which is largely based on the work of tai chi historians such as Gu Liuxin and Tang Hao), the credible origin of tai chi dates back to around 1600s, which makes the history of tai chi of more than 300 years old, but certainly not the 2000 years that some people claim by mistake.
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