Editing Cheng Man-ch'ing (section)

==Tai chi==

Cheng Man-ch'ing is best known in the West for his tai chi. The following are some of the characteristics of his "Yang-style short form."

* It eliminates most of the repetitions of certain moves of the Yang long form.
* It takes around ten minutes to practice instead of the twenty to thirty minutes of the [[103-form Yang family tai chi|Yang long form]]
* The hand and wrist are held open, yet relaxed, in what Cheng called the "Fair Lady's Hand" formation (as opposed to the straighter "Chinese tile" formation of the Yang style)
* The form postures are not as expansive as Yang Chengfu's form
* Cheng postures are performed in "middle frame" style, which changes the movement of the feet from the Yang version.
* Cheng's concept of "swing and return" in which the [[momentum]] from one movement initiates the next.

These changes allowed Cheng to teach larger numbers of students in a shorter time. His shortened form became extremely popular in Taiwan and Malaysia, and he was one of the earliest Chinese masters to teach tai chi publicly in the United States. His students have continued to spread his form around the world.

Cheng rejected the appellation "Yang-style Short Form" to characterize his tai chi. When pressed on the issue, he called his form "Yang-style tai chi in 37 Postures." However, the postures in his form are counted differently from those in the Yang Chengfu form. In the older form each movement counts as a posture, whereas in the Cheng form postures are counted only the first time they are performed, and rarely or not at all when they are repeated. These differences in how the postures are counted have led some Cheng practitioners, such as [[William C. C. Chen]], to characterize their own forms as exceeding 70 "movements," and indeed, upon close comparison with the Yang Chengfu form, Cheng's postures, if counted the same way as Yang's are, would number over 70. Moreover, there is nothing in Cheng's teaching to prohibit a practitioner of his style from repeating any number of movements just as many or more times than they are repeated in the Yang Chengfu form.

Cheng's changes to the Yang-style form were not  officially recognised by the Yang family and (perhaps partly because of the continued popularity of Cheng's shortened form) his style is still a source of controversy among some tai chi practitioners. From Cheng's own point of view, the approval of his elder brother disciple Chen Weiming was all the recognition he needed, since by that time Yang Chengfu was deceased, and all of the current generation of Yang Chengfu leaders were junior to him.