GrandMaster Chen Xiao Wang

Grandmaster Chen Xiao Wang was born in 1946 in Chen Jiagou Village, Henan province, where Tai Chi was created by his ancestor Chen Wang Ting 10 generations ago. Grandmaster Chen Xiao Wang is the 19th generation Standard Bearer of the Chen family’s Tai Chi Chuan heritage.  He is a direct descendant of the legendary creator of Tai Chi, General Chen Wang Ting. and the grandson of Chen Fa-Ke, renowned to be the greatest Tai Chi master at the beginning of this century.

Chen Xiao Wang is the leading authority, in China and the world, on Chen style Tai Chi Chuan. He has been trained and inspired since before schooling age to master and carry on the family art. To prove himself worthy of his famous ancestors and to be the standard bearer of the Original Tai Chi, he competed and won the title of All-China Grand Champion 3 times in 1980, 82 & 83, and was also crowned Grand Champion at the first Open International Tournament in Xian in 1985. He was the National Coach of China, and Martial Arts Director of Henan Province, which includes the famous Shaolin Temple.

He has practiced Tai Chi for more than fifty years, and is considered a ‘Living Treasure’ by the Chinese government.  His character and gentle approach to teaching Tai Chi has won him literally tens of thousands of faithful Tai Chi students all over the world. He is one of the current top masters in the world today.

Chen Xiao Wang is not just a great champion and practitioner of Tai Chi, his teaching skills are as excellent as his performance. He embodies the qualities of a true Tai Chi Master and has inspired and motivated students of all levels. Chen Xiao Wang gives seminars around the world, giving people the opportunity to benefit from his teaching and his wisdom.

Grand Master Chen is committed to spread the art of Tai Chi in its traditional and undiluted form, and he is now passing on this knowledge to those who have the dedication to learn this art.

Master Ren Guang Yi

Master Ren Guang Yi is one of the top disciples of GrandMaster Chen in the world. He travels throughout the world giving seminars, has a series of best-selling videos, performs at the top Master's Demos, and has a devoted following. He lives in upstate New York, when not traveling for seminars and presentations around the US and the world. His success came with many years of poverty, relentless practice, and fierce determination.

The story behind this modern Tai Chi master is a fascinating saga.

Master Ren Guang Yi was born in Tongbei province, in the town of Hei Long Jiang (Black Dragon). Ren Guang-Yi says he had a bad temper as a child, and fought with the other kids in the Chen Village.  Fortunately, he was guided toward a productive use of that energy.  Today he is famous as one of the top Chen tai chi masters in the world. At fourteen years old, he started learning Shaolin martial arts from a Shaolin disciple named Liu Yu Jun. His study over the next several years would instill a passion in Ren that would bring him to Henan at seventeen, looking to study at Shaolin Temple.

"I wasn't born into a martial arts family," recalls Ren, "But I read about a lot of martial heroes, in Outlaws of the Marsh, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and most of all in legends about Yue Fei. He was the most special to me, and I dreamed of someday finding that kind of master."

Still, at that young age, fantasies of Yue Fei seemed much like the fiction that inspired him, romantic, far away, and more like a dream. But at seventeen he set out to see some of the world. "My father supported me," he says, "but my mother was sorry to see me leave." Ren went to Henan with his teacher.

His teacher had recommended that Ren learn Tai Chi, and thought that too many people learned Shaolin. For a young man who dreamed of heroic deeds, Tai Chi seemed too slow. "My teacher knew a lot of different martial arts, and he knew Tai Chi people," says Ren. "He knew there was a deep knowledge there. When we got to Henan he said to me, 'If we can find Chen Xiao Wang, then you will learn from him. If not, it will be your fate, and we'll continue on.'"

"I thought Tai Chi was for old, sick people," recalls Ren. "I didn't want to learn it. However, I had to listen to my teacher. He himself had a lot of deep knowledge about Tai Chi, but didn't have time to teach me. Chen Xiao Wang was very famous, and my teacher knew him."

Ren admits he wasn't happy on the way to meet Chen Xiao Wang. He was hoping the Tai Chi master just wouldn't be there, and that they could continue on to Shaolin Temple. But, as it turned out, Chen had just returned from Tianjin. And that was Ren's fate.

According to Ren, it got worse. "My first impression of him was that he looked like an office manager. I asked, is this Chen Xiao Wang? He doesn't look like he knows anything! He didn't look like what I dreamed a martial artist should be."

But Ren's teacher, who he refers to as uncle, was sly, and adamant. He arranged on the second day for Ren to have the disciple ceremony. There were four disciples altogether. They wrote out the red envelopes, and everything was very serious. Ren recalls, "My uncle could tell that I wasn't really 100% willing to learn Tai Chi, and so he asked Chen Xiao Wang to show us what Tai Chi truly was. He wanted him to open the vision, so we would see the real Tai Chi."

Chen Xiao Wang complied. He started to demonstrate Tai Chi, and suddenly showed the explosive fa-jing of Chen style. GrandMaster Chen demonstrated many of the awesome power and technique within the tai chi discipline. Ren Guang Yi was so impressed that he knew then that he wanted to learn that Tai Chi!

Chen Xiao Wang, Chen Jia Gou
Ren Guang-Yi says that even to this day, he still has a deep impression of what happened that afternoon. And it was the moment that changed the entire direction of his life. After the demonstrations, Ren and the other three young men had the traditional disciple ceremony, and he officially became Chen Xiao Wang's disciple. Ren was the only one who would stay the course.

"I paid $3.20 for a hotel every day. Chen Xiao Wang didn't take any tuition money. In the beginning he only made me practice the Tai Chi stance, zhan zhuang. He'd put a matchbox on my head, and say do it for fifteen minutes. I couldn't do it. It took a long time, but finally I made the fifteen minutes. I did that for about six months, only can zhuang. Finally, I could do it for 47 minutes, and I had very good posture."

Then, for another three months he learned silk reeling. One problem Chen Xiao Wang had was that he was very busy, traveling frequently to Beijing, and abroad, especially Japan. He felt he didn't have enough time to devote to his student, and so he sent Ren to his home village, Chen Jia Gou. It was in fact the birthplace of Tai Chi  Chuan.

"I thought that was great," says Ren, "because I figured, if Chen Xiao Wang is this good, his father must be even better, and able to fly on roofs! I didn't know he had already passed away. So I stayed with my teacher's mother, who fed me, and the other relations in the house."

The conditions in Chen Jia Gou were very poor, with no electricity, only oil lamps at night. "Here was a place worse than Zheng Zhou," Ren remembers thinking. "At first I was very uncomfortable, with the voices in the dark, the dim lights. It felt strange, not even real. I went outside crying, and couldn't stop."

Things gradually got better. His father and brother supported him, sending money. Ren began studying with Chen Xiao Wang's younger brother, Chen Xiao Xing, from who he learned the Xin Jin. "I stayed in Chen Jia Gou for 7-8 months. The way I studied Tai Chi in that place, I was probably the only one who got to learn there like that. Chen Xiao Wang thought I'd leave after two months, and he was even surprised I stayed so long."

Ren's dedication was only just beginning to show. For the next ten years he would practice Tai Chi full time, every day. He ate, slept and practiced martial arts. And that was all. Except during the harvest season, where he helped the Chen Jia Gou villagers harvest crops from the fields.

Still, he was dissatisfied in the tiny village of Chen Jia Gou. "The more I stayed," he says, "the more I want to go. I wanted to go back to Zheng Zhou. I had a bad temper, and fought with the other Chen village kids. In the village, everybody was complaining about me," he says, grinning. "Finally, "Chen Xiao Xing tells his brother that I'm a troublemaker, a fighter. And so Chen Xiao Wang takes me back to Zheng zhou. I appreciate him for his big heart. He didn't say anything, he just took me back."

Back in a town that at least had electricity, conditions were still not much better for a full-time Tai Chi man. Ren stayed with two of his martial brothers, three of them in one tiny room, with folding beds. And that was only in winter. In the summertime they slept outside, while mosquitoes covered their legs with bites. Chen Xiao Wang himself only had one room, and when he left town the three brothers would go stay there. Sometimes other people would take them in too, but Ren recalls that it was like a gypsy life.

He also had the reputation of his teacher to think about, and didn't want anyone to know that he slept outside. "We'd find a place by the Chinese Chess club," he remembers. "Sometimes they'd play chess until 11 p.m. After they left, the doorway was a private place, and we'd go sleep there. But we could only sleep until 4 a.m., because we'd have to get up early and leave so people wouldn't see us."

For seven or eight months out of the year they slept outside. It got harder when the fall nights got colder. One day he forgot his blanket, and could only find a cardboard box to keep himself warm. "It was so cold," he says, "We had to hold onto each other to keep warm, just to make it through the night. We used public water to wash. In the coldest of wintertime we stayed with friends a few days at a time. It was like that for about nine years."

Every year in June Ren would go back to Chen Jia Gou to harvest crops of wheat, corn and sweet potatoes. "I learned all the farming skills," he says, "Planting, growing, harvesting - all about farming." After studying with Chen Xiao Wang for about five years, Ren went out to other areas to teach for him. He earned a little income then, and sometimes could get a place with his martial brothers in wintertime. But nothing got in the way of his learning Tai Chi. "The maximum I spent was 14 hours each day practicing Tai Chi," he recalls. "The least in one day would be six hours, but often double that. It was a very simple life. Eat, sleep, and practice Tai Chi."

Ren notes that he had to practice at least six times on every form, but usually at least fifteen times. "Fifteen times, then you go to twenty times," he says. "That's how you get better. Even though here in America people have other things in life, you at least need to do it six times."

Ren had other tricks to make himself practice. He and his martial brothers had a rule, whenever they met on the street, or at someone's house, they had to do push hands for at least 30 minutes. That was the deal. Ren also had a habit that any time during the night when he woke up, to get a drink of water or go to the bathroom, he had to go out and do 10 forms before he could go back to sleep. No matter if it was raining, or snowing, or whatever the weather; whenever he woke up.

One day his old uncle saw him doing this at 2 a.m. Then he saw him again the next night, and the next. "Are you crazy?” he asked me. I said no, I gave myself this kind of challenge. My uncle said, 'If you continue to do this, you will be successful."

After this midnight practice Ren would return to bed. "The others would train together, and get up around 4:30 or 5:00 a.m. They would see me sleeping, and think I was lazy. They say, 'How can you be good if you sleep?' I didn't say anything; I knew I had already practiced."

As time wore on, Ren looked at his opportunities. In competition he couldn't represent Chen Jia Gou, or Henan. He went back home to Tongbei, but they already had their own team. "I couldn't compete on any team," he remembers, "I had to practice alone." Most of his martial brothers went their separate ways, and he was left the only one still in the martial arts. But he refused to go back to his province, because he didn't feel he was successful. No money, no name.

With lack of opportunity and no welcome in the North, Ren decided to stay in the South. He met his wife in Zheng zhou, and they married. He planned to go to Hong Kong and Japan to give seminars, but his wife, a Ph.D. chemist, had already applied to New York for a scholarship, and got it. After a few months, she sent for him to apply to come to America.

America

When he got here, in 1991, he worked in a restaurant for one and a half months. He talked to Ma Long in New York, who encouraged him to compete here in the U.S. At Doc Fai Wong's tournament in San Francisco Ren won the Grand Championship for Tai Chi and weapons, but got disqualified for push hands on a technical fault, because he couldn't understand English. The same thing happened again when he went to Virginia. "Every time I pushed someone to the ground I lost points," he says. "I couldn't understand why." Finally, he learned the difference between "ready" and "go." "They were the first two English words I learned!" he says, smiling. He also started to win the push hands competitions.

Soon Ren started to feel at home in the kungfu community of America, and quickly made friends with other masters and students. He was featured on the cover of this magazine with his teacher (Dec/Jan '97), and also on Qi and the Asian Journal of Martial Arts. Chinese newspapers started reporting on him. Finally, he was getting the recognition that had so long eluded him in China.

Yet, Ren Guang-Yi still had one wish, and that was to win a Chinese championship. Since 1991 he had not been back to China, so in 1998 he decided to make the trip home. There, he would compete in the 5th Haigong Cup China Wenxian International Tai Chi chuan event, against the best Tai Chi players in China. This was really the test he had been waiting for. "People said to me, you already have your reputation here, why go back? I told them, because it's my dream." He knew, going back, he was really representing Chen Jia Gou, not the U.S. There was not a small amount of pressure involved, but in the end his will prevailed. And he won.