IN a white top and pants, Linda Fung stood barefoot in a room filled with tranquility and began her tai chi class. For Fung, a ballerina-turned-tai chi practitioner, tai chi, a popular sport around the world, is more than just an ancient Chinese martial art that was added to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s intangible cultural heritage list in 2020. “Tai chi is not only about skills and techniques, but also a whole set of thinking that connotes Chinese traditional culture,” Fung, a native of Hong Kong, said, telling her story of entering the world of tai chi. Fung only started to practice tai chi about 10 years ago. Thanks to her dance background, Fung picked up tai chi quickly and mastered it well. At the age of 12, Fung began her ballet training. She had always strived for excellence and kept dancing despite the aches and pains. Her efforts paid off and were twice funded to further her studies overseas. After returning to Hong Kong, she became a principal dancer of the Hong Kong Ballet. Although Fung was raised in a traditional Chinese family, she had been intrigued by Western art and lifestyle since childhood. “I thought it was trendy and cool,” she said. Later, she married a New Zealand husband, who worked as a lawyer in Hong Kong, and she basically led a Western lifestyle. A turning point came when Fung was planning her son’s future education. She realized the importance of mastering the Chinese language and tried to seek a learning place suitable for her child. At that time, Fung met Xing Qilin, who came to Hong Kong to promote tai chi culture. Xing is the fourth-generation descendant of renowned Lee-style tai chi, and founder of Tian Zhen Yuan, a school in Tianjin Municipality focusing on teaching tai chi culture and integrating it into Chinese traditional culture education. Fung accompanied her son to attend classes at Tian Zhen Yuan. Out of her expectation, Fung’s son liked it very much. Fung studied together with her son and her knowledge about tai chi accumulated. In the past, in Fung’s eyes, tai chi was a kind of sport played by elderly people in the park. But now, she sees the profound culture in it. Over the past decade, Fung has been diligent in practicing and promoting tai chi. Last summer, a stage show held at the Hong Kong Cultural Center deepened her understanding of tai chi. The show entitled “Ji” blended tai chi with different forms of performing arts including music, lighting, modern dance and children’s choral singing to showcase traditional Chinese cultural thinking. As one of the performers of the show, Fung performed tai chi dance with Xing, who has practiced tai chi for more than 60 years, and she found great differences between ballet and tai chi. Dancers in a ballet performance just followed the music, while in the show “Ji,” Xing’s strength and movements played the dominant role. “This is exactly what tai chi is,” Fung said, adding that by the end of the show, she could even feel the audience’s breathing rhythm synchronizing with the performers’ movements. Ballet dancers used their bodies to interpret stories and sometimes they had to challenge their physical limit, Fung said, while tai chi aimed at cultivating the body and conserving energy. Through practicing tai chi, Fung’s body, which suffered numerous injuries due to years of ballet training, has been repaired. Fung still loves ballet and she suggested that cross-genre cultural promotion was sorely meaningful. As a center of cultural and art exchange between China and foreign countries, Hong Kong is not only a window to absorb Western art, but also a platform to spread Chinese culture. “I’ve been exploring outward for half of my life and now I’m learning to know about myself again. I’m Chinese but it seems that I have never learned much about traditional Chinese culture,” Fung said, noting that she was on a path of finding her roots. In recent years, Fung was encouraged by her friends to start offering tai chi classes. So far, she has more than 100 students, many of them are foreigners living in Hong Kong and some are ballet dancers. Fung said that teaching students some tai chi theory helped her to have a better understanding of tai chi. “I hope to do my part to let more people experience the subtlety of tai chi culture,” she said. (Xinhua) | 