Modernizing tai chi

As Chinese society became more settled and the state took on a greater responsibility for personal security and military power, the need for martial arts among the population gradually diminished.

Meanwhile, the sports administrative bodies have made great efforts to modernize and standardize hundreds of traditional martial arts genres, including tai chi.

The altered versions of Chinese martial arts fall into three categories:

Tao Lu -- sets of martial art forms，taught mainly in sports colleges and high schools, for the purpose of performance and competition;

San Da, a combative sport which borrows techniques from various Chinese martial art genres and has yet gained a huge and steady following as its overseas equivalents such as karate, Muay Thai, MMA (mixed martial arts), and taekwondo;

and Jian Shen Qigong-- health-enhancing qigong exercises for the general public. The first two categories are officially addressed as Wushu, meaning modernized Chinese martial skills.

Against this background, tai chi has evolved to the new situation with the emphasis moving to the physical, mental and health benefits of practicing the forms.

But the classical Chinese martial arts, aka Wu Yi, Wu Xue, Quan Shu, Quan Xue or Kung Fu (originally a Buddhist term, adapted by Bruce Lee to address Chinese martial arts) as lethal skills has never died out，at the grass-roots level of Chinese society in particular.

And realistic sparring skills from fierce Chinese martial arts such as Tai Chi, Ba Ji, Ba Gua, and Xing Yi, and Wing Chun have increasingly attracted attention from martial artists worldwide in recent years.

And filmmakers have woven these “hard-core kung fu” into the plots of popular action movies such as the Tai Chi Master, starring Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh, and the Ip Man series, starring Donnie Yen.