Ma Hong：From Bookish Scholar to Tai Chi Master

Ma Hong, whose real name is Guo Yukun, was born in the small town of Shenzhou, Hebei Province, and was a standard nerd when he was young – graduating from the Chinese Department of the North China Union University in 1948, he spent all day in a pile of manuscripts and papers. In the 1950s, when the secretary of the organ, each year to write 300,000 words of material (the equivalent of three novels), hard to boil the body down: insomnia, stomach pain straight up, climbing three floors to lift the kettle have to rest three times.

A set of boxing to save half of his life

At the age of 37, Ma Hong was woken up by an old Chinese doctor’s words: ‘Try taijiquan!’ I didn’t expect these slow movements to be more effective than medicine, and a year later his waist didn’t hurt, his legs didn’t get weak, and he didn’t even have rhinitis. This miracle let him resign on the spot, determined to study taijiquan, from then on to open the life of both martial arts and literature.

Worshiping the Master at the Age of Forty-Five

In 1972, at the age of 45, Ma Hong went to Beijing to pay homage to Chen Zhaokui, the 10th generation of Chen-style Taijiquan master. In order to learn the real thing, he did a few hard things, the first thing is before and after a total of three times to the master to Shijiazhuang home to live and teach, the second thing is to follow the master to run all over Beijing, Henan to learn the art of the third thing is nine years to write down 300,000 words of study notes, these yellowed notebooks later turned into his martial arts secret.

The secret of martial arts written by a pencil

Other people rely on fists to practice martial arts, Ma Hong rely on pens to practice martial arts. He organised his notes into ‘Chen’s Taijiquan Body Use Book’, at that time there was no computer mapping, so he drew more than 600 diagrams by hand. The most impressive one was ‘Explaining the Fine Points of Boxing Theory’, which made Taijiquan clearer than physical formulas, and directly confirmed his name as the ‘11th generation of Chen-style master’.

From a sick man to an international master

In 1994, at the age of 67, Ma Hong was named one of the ‘Thirteen Great Taiji Masters of China’ (an Oscar-level honour in the martial arts world). When he was the chairman of the Shijiazhuang Wushu Association, he brought out disciples who could fight and speak. The teaching materials compiled by him are still the treasures of Taiji halls in various countries, and even the American Taijiquan Association has taken his books as the examination standard.