"The Beauty Of Divine Beings Dancing"

One of the main purposes of this site is to encourage a certain way of thinking - a way to use the human mind that will permit its practiced exponent the ability to sense things almost before they are materially here. But more importantly, to be able to distinguish authenticity from clever semiotics and propaganda employed by experts in mass public control.

It is no secret that my family had quite some history in China, and that among a few key people I am what is termed 'inside the family door.'

Zhang Zhiyi

At the same time though, I suppose much like the vast Chinese cultural panorama itself, my own immediate family had its own peculiar internal rivalries - my elder sister spoke only Hokkien when she was almost into her teens and for a very long time afterwards was quite reluctant to converse in English! Whereas I would consider myself more aligned to the Teochew cultural grouping and it was among these that I spent most time right the way through to my late twenties.

Many of those who taught me in the commonly known Chinese arts have now passed away - the revered Lacey Brothers, the most recent to return to the Grand Ultimate. However, there is more than the usual 'hard training and fighting' martial arts aspect that I can tell you about, and about which I was often ribbed on - and that is, that I had the reputation, bestowed literally by the very old leaders of our clan (one of whom was the very highest ranking Chinese Martial Arts teacher in the world at the time, namely, the then Chairman of the World Chinese Martial Arts Association) of being capable of learning some things from one or two of the oldest practitioners who had some insight into the legendary Zhang Sanfeng. It is not strictly speaking, true that the Wudang Tai Chi style is not within the usual Shaolin Kung Fu arts, because, in fact, it is readily acknowledged by all that Zhang Sanfeng formulated the snake and crane forms that all Shaolin practitioners are quite familiar with. 'Sanfeng' ('Sarm' = 'three') simply means 'three mountains' and this was a title he gave to himself, having scaled all three of the largest peaks.

Now... Here's the point you need to grasp hold of: Wudang is linked at its deepest expressions, to Chinese Taoist magical thinking, and Zhang Sanfeng is held to have achieved immortality. And so, for those 'hard style' fighters and thinkers of much of the modern schools, ancient traditional disciplines like calligraphy and dance and music, are looked down upon in comparison to breaking sticks and rocks and so on.

Chinese Communism too, for another example, despises anything to do with the magical thinking side of Taoism, and it has quite deliberately created a formulaic, state-authorized version of public Taoism with systems of monk training and a whole range of rituals and literary regimes designed to support fundamental Communist ideology, and not, Taoist philosophy at all.

Shen Yun

One of the sects within the ancient Taoist tradition is what today has a base in New York City, and that travels the world as the Shun Yen Dance Company. 'Shun Yen' means 'the beauty of divine beings dancing...' The Beijing government shadows this group around the globe, and has been alleged to have interfered with its members and its commercial affairs in various covert ways.

The Wudang Mountains are about 430 kilometers from Wuhan, where the current coronavirus outbreak is said to have originated. The road to the mountains runs through Hubei Province where Zhang Sanfeng lived and taught.