Master Chen Gui zhen was born in 1960, in Chen Jia Gou, He Nan Province, China. She is the 21st Generation Lineage Holder of Chen Family Taijiquan and currently holds a six Duan Wei (Dan, with 9 being the highest) conferredbythe Chinese Wushu Association. Ms Chen started learning with her father since the age of eight. Her father, Master Chen qiwang, was a famous teacher and kind man among the Chen Jia Gou, but he was also very strict with her. Gui zhen had been training vigorously and intensively in the chen taichi theories, forms, weapons, push hands, and free sparring ever after. In the 1970s, in order to further promote this martial art, Grand Master Chen Zhao Pi returned to his home Chen Jia Gou to teach the local kids about Tai chi. Every day after school, Gui zhen would go to Master Chen’s place to learn with the others. Although she was a bit skinny by then, she put in the most efforts. And soon enough, she became the best among them.
When Chen Gui zhen was attending primary shool, she was sometimes asked to join in some competitions of martial arts to compete with other styles of kung fu. As we know that tai chi is more of an internal form, so it would not be as fancy as those styles that emphasize on performance. As a result, the practitioners of performance forms would usually win over the crowds for their fast and fancy movements. This had deeply influenced the young Gui zhen. She made up her mind that she would one day, no matter what it takes, show people what tai chi really is through her endeavours. She is more of a doer than a thinker. For the whole year, she got up every day at
All the efforts paid off in the end. When she joined the He Nan Second Workers Sports Competition as one of the only two representatives in tai chi for the whole province, she had the chance of being guided by Grandmaster Chen Xiao Wang himself. During the six-month training with Grand Master Chen, gui zhen would train herself and repeat each movement until it was absolutely correct. Eventually, she won the second place in the competition. But she was not satisfied. In 1978, right after she finished high school, she was invited to teach at the Xin Xiang sports school, and later in 1981, she was employed as the head coach of Meng County Sports School. People were amazed that the school hired a woman to teach them kung fu, so many young men went to challenge Master Chen Gui Zhen upon her arrival. She did an expressive demonstration by throwing out a man 1.85 high and weight
Overseas experiences:
In 1985, being invited by the wu shu colleagues in Japan, she became the first group of female martial artists to visit abroad. During her visit in Japan with Master Chen Xiao Wang, she faced with high levels of pressures from the local martial arts group as they had always wanted to compete with taichiquan in real combat. One day when Master Chen Xiao Wang was walking after dinner outside the hotel, a Japanese practitioner walked up to him and suddenly threw a punch to his face, but Master Chen quickly threw him to the ground, as if he had know n of it already. After this, Gui zhen realized how important it is to keep improving herself and gradually imply tai chi techniques to real time situations. When she returned home from Japan, she would practice even harder than before and sticked with Master Chen Xiang Wang all the time to better her techniques. Not long afterwards she became known for the tai chi swords and double swords. Her movements highly depict the spirit of “move as water, punch as thunder” and gained a deeper understanding of the balances inside human bodies. At the end, Master Chen gave her a calligraphy of “books and swords” as a present. Several movie companies insisted that she play the hero in the movies after having seen her performance.
In 1998, she was invited to go to Germany to teach her tai chi techniques, especially swords. She was well accepted by the local communities and opened up her taichi training sessions. Local newspaper gave her the name of “Double swords Queen”. The German local newspaper and British magazine Qi Gong launched a full scale report on her. She later went on to teaching and promoting tai chi around the world. She had been to South Korea, Japan, USA, Australia and Taiwan. Someone even offered a three year contract for her to stay in United States. The passions of the local communities deeply touched her, and she finally made up her mind to stay in the States for the whole year to keep teaching and doing tours of demonstrations. Many female practitioners would follow her wherever she went, and help her publicize herself. The local press had made several exclusive interviews for her to introduce tai chi and its effects on health keeping.
Despite the homesickness and the barriers of communications, Master Chen Gui zhen continues her journeys around the world to promote and teach tai chi, for she knows that she represents not just herself, but the whole of Chen Jia Gou and Chen style tai chi. She finds it really joyful and happy to be able to spread her family style tai chi and the Chinese culture beneath it.
Chen style Tai Chi becomes a widespread sport around China.
In 1988, Chen Gui Zhen was transferred from her hometown sports bureau to be professional athlete. She also worked as judges for various kinds of wu shu competitions. From that time, Gui Zhen had been leading tai chi teams to all kinds of contests and demonstrations and won countless prizes. She also taught at many places and had many students.
With her popularity growing with the age, Gui Zhen had been invited to nearly hundreds of seminars, tournaments to cities within China. She visited Fujian, Guangdong, Jiangxi, Shandong, Hunan, Jiangxu, Hei Longjiang. She has students from around the world, mostly from UK, Germany, South Korea, Japan, Russia, Belgium and etc. Among those, her best student Shi Yang from Germany has now opened up more than 10 tai chi centres so far.
Gui Zhen knows that tai chi is more than a pattern of form for performance, but an integrated system of knowledge that uncovers many secrets of human bodies both physically and mentally. It requires a whole lifetime’s learning. Therefore, even she has to attend all kinds of meetings and live on a very tight schedule everyday, Gui zhen knows that she has to keep the land of taichi in her heart from any distractions. She still manages to live a life of hard trainings. In the meantime, as an extinguished model and representative for women, she has attended countless shows and performances for people and has made many valuable suggestions during her terms as committee members of the local Political Consultative Congress.
When talked about the prosperous tai chi industry today and its future, Master Gui zhen couldn’t help thinking of the old days of her life. In the 1980s, as she remembers, even the local people from the birthplace of tai chi don’t really know about tai chi. They don’t care about it because there are other focuses and it is believed that tai chi can’t bring money. She had many hard times back then, with friends’ doubts for her and the lack of support, but she went through it. It wasn’t until the 1990s when local governments started to pay attention to potential prosperity tai chi might bring to its birthplace. Gui Zhen’s proposal “ To establish higher education institutions for Tai Chi” has been given much attention and emphasizes, the local government now launches similar programmes as suggested in that paper. Some even consider starting a Tai Chi College.
“The spring for Tai Chi has now come!” said Master Chen happily as she devotes even more to the promotion of this martial art. During her visits to Fo Shan, Guang dong, the students there would call her at midnight to make appointments for learning. She had to split up the classes to teach them separately for there were too many students. Many times she had to attend meetings with the local officials and give lectures. So in the end, she had to work more than 10 hours every day. Her legs soon got swollen for lack of rest. The local media gave her high regards and credits for her spirits and they were even more impressed by her fast and smooth movements while recording the video for tai chi learning.
Now with Master Chen retired from the first line of business, she plans on opening up classes and educating the next generation so that the true kung fu may live on. She also writes conclusions of her experiences to serve as textbooks.
Master Chen has had her 50th birthday in 2010. Looking back at her life, all those hardships and uneasy times, she said there is nothing to regret. As a daughter of Chen Jia Gou, Chen Gui Zhen shows the true virtue of a Tai Chi Master.
