This is our third installment in a series inspired by the 80th anniversary of the Hong Kong Wu's Tai Chi Chuan Academy, the 60th anniversary of the Singapore Wu's Tai Chi Chuan Academy, and the 30th anniversary of the Detroit Wu's Tai Chi Chuan Academy, all in 2017!
We want to publicize what our teachers have accomplished in bringing the benefits of authentic Tai Chi from the imperial palaces of Beijing to the rest of the world, so we are going to feature a short biography of a different Wu family grandmaster every week. As we move this week into the 3rd and subsequent generations of the family, we should mention that many senior disciples of the Wu lineage and their important contributions aren't forgotten (masters such as Ma Yueh-liang, Kwok Hsiao-jung, Ao Tuck-seng, and our own Stephen Britt), but this Facebook series is going to be restricted to short biographies of our late grandmasters who bore the surname Wu 吳.
This week, we are proud to feature the Wu family member whose refinements to Tai Chi Chuan define what has become known as the "Hong Kong Wu Style."
吳公儀宗師證明太極拳!
Grandmaster Wu Kung-i proves Tai Chi Chuan!
Grandmaster Wu Kung-i 吳公儀宗師 (Wú Gōngyí zōngshī, 1900-1970) was the oldest son of Wu Chien-ch'uan, and older brother of Wu Kung-tsao and Wu Ying-hua. He was the senior instructor of the third generation, and “gatekeeper” of the Wu family from 1942 until 1970. Wu Kung-i’s children were Wu Ta-k'uei, Wu Ta-ch'i, and Wu Yen-hsia.
After his father Wu Chien-ch’uan made public Tai Chi classes available for the first time at the Beijing Physical Culture Research Institute, class sizes became much larger than ever before. Wu Kung-i’s approach to teaching the much larger classes included modifying the forms he’d learned from his father to a smaller circle format to create the famous “close joint” or “knuckle form” 關節拳 (Guānjié quán). Grandmaster Wu also discovered new ways to apply the form in a practical manner, as well as devising new styles of Pushing Hands.
In 1949, Wu Kung-i moved the Wu family’s headquarters to the Hong Kong school opened by his younger brother in 1937. As a result, Wu Kung-i was instrumental in the spread of Tai Chi Chuan throughout southeast Asia.
Grandmaster Wu Kung-i responded in January 1954 to a controversy started by a newspaper in Hong Kong regarding the validity of Tai Chi Chuan as a martial art by agreeing to accept a challenge to fight another style of martial art. Wu Kung-i's only condition was that the proceeds from ticket sales be donated to charity. He was 53 at the time of the contest, some twenty years older than his challenger. In the opening seconds, Wu Kung-i struck his opponent on the nose, causing profuse bleeding. It became apparent to the committee overseeing the contest in Macau that the opponents were not mismatched, and that the contest was a serious one. At the completion of the second round, they ended the fight by declaring it to be a draw, thus invalidating the source of the controversy.
Grandmaster Wu Kung-i personally taught his "closing joint form" to his grandson, grandmaster Eddie Wu Kwong-yu, and that is the first form we teach our students to this day at the Wu’s Tai Chi Chuan Academy Detroit.
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