On occasion, Chen Zhenglei, one of China’s Top 10 Martial Artists, will visit a construction site 3 km from his home in Chenjiagou Village, Wenxian County, Jiaozuo City of Henan Province. The 34-hectare flatland, where big concrete buildings are springing up one after the other, is set to become the Henan Taijiquan College, China’s first special college for cultivating talents of Taijiquan, also known as tai chi or Chinese boxing.
“The college is my brainchild,” the 74-year-old told Beijing Review. He is an inheritor of Chen-style Taijiquan and an 11th-generation lineal descendant of the martial art’s creator.
A living legend
Chenjiagou Village in central China is the birthplace of . In the early 17th century, one of its villagers, Chen Wangting (1600-80), created a set of physical movements,
