New Cheng Man-ch'ing Biography Website

Thank you for visiting the
Cheng Man-ch'ing Biography Project site!

PLEASE NOTE: Our main website is now http://chengmanching.wordpress.com.   

 

To reach project director Barbara Davis, please go to the new website. 

 

Any updates will be posted there, including news, reviews, and more. Archival materials will still be viewable in this present site. (Note that email addresses in our sidebar on this present site are no longer active, and the sidebar is no longer editable.)

"The Professor" Screening

Join us for a screening and discussion of The Professor - Tai Chi's Journey West, a film by Barry Strugatz. The film is the first major feature documentary about Tai Chi and one of its greatest masters, Cheng Man-Ching, a man who brought Tai Chi and Chinese culture to the West during the swinging, turbulent 60’s. Though Cheng is an important transformational figure, his teachings have been overlooked. This documentary film tells the story of his remarkable life and features Tai Chi as a martial art and a spiritual practice. There will be a Q and A following the film with director Barry Strugatz, cinematographer Ken Van Sickle, and Cheng Man-Ching pupil Victor Chin.

Museum of Chinese in America
215 Centre Street New York, NY 10013
855-955-MOCA

The Professor: T'ai Chi's Journey to the West

Cheng Man-ch'ing teaching in New York City (photo by Ken Van Sickle).

"The Professor:  T'ai Chi's Journey to the West" chronicles Professor Cheng Man-ch'ing's decade in the United States. Told in the words of Cheng's direct students and family, this feature documentary film casts a spell that brings the 1960s to life again. At a time of great upheaval in American society, Cheng brought his eclectic arts to a diverse group of people: Chinatown businessmen, top-ranked martial artists, hippies, government workers, and dancers, among others. Archival videos and still pictures are used to great effect.

What comes across clearly from the movie is not just the tremendous impact that Cheng had on this set of people, or his prowess in so many fields, but how deeply interconnected every aspect of Cheng's work was. The film is organized around topics such as push hands, painting, and medicine. But the true secret of Cheng's work is in the commonality of all disciplines, not their separateness. They are united by ch'i, by breathing, by the focus of the mind, and by upright character.

Cheng seemed to revel in the newness of New York City, and the cultural exchange that could take place. The "Americans" (actually a disparate bunch), soaked up his teachings of t'ai chi, Chinese calligraphy, Confucius, Lao-tzu, and benefited from his practice of medicine. He took on the mantle of master in a manner that was grounded in Chinese tradition.

Cheng was one of the first people to teach t'ai chi openly in the United States, which at the time was also a political and cultural statement in terms of teaching to non-Chinese. The movie doesn't omit controversies that evolved between Cheng's original Chinatown sponsors and the Americans, or views about Cheng's martial teachings. We hear enough points of view (including Maggie Newman, Ed Young, Bill Phillips, Carol Yamasaki, Peter Kwok Ming, Cheng's children, and others) to allow us to understand how dynamic the context was and to draw our own conclusions.

"The Professor" is highly recommended for anyone interested in t'ai chi, Asian martial arts and spiritual disciplines, Chinese-American history, later twentieth-century America, and in understanding the nuances of global cultural exchange on a very personal level. Beyond this, "The Professor" is an intimate look at how big an impact one person can have on so many lives.

Cheng Man-ch'ing and the Shanghai Art College

The Modernization of Chinese Art: The Shanghai Art College, 1913-1937 by Jane Zheng

Leuven University Press, 2016

Hardcover, 416 pages

€69.50

ISBN: 9789462700567

Cheng Man-ch'ing (Zheng Manqing) was a well-known artist in his twenties when he became a professor at the Shanghai Art College in the 1920s. He taught in its Traditional Painting Department (his aunt, Zhang Hongwei, a highly respected painter, also taught at the school).

A new book, The Modernization of Chinese Art: The Shanghai Art College, 1913-1937, by art historian Jane Zheng, covers the period of Cheng's tenure at the school before the outbreak of war.
The world of art was changing as rapidly as everything else was in China: the traditional master-disciple training was supplanted by school instruction; art was exhibited and sold in galleries rather than through patronage and connections; and artists were training for new occupations such as art education and commercial art (advertising, illustration, scenery). One particularly controversial arena was the adoption of Western styles of art and modes of instruction such as life drawing (the school gained noteriety for its "Nude Model incident"), and use of oil paints and other non-traditional media.

While Cheng Man-ch'ing is not a main subject of this fascinating book, through it one can get a better picture of the huge societal changes that gripped China and the nuances, politics, and personalities of the art world that dramatically affected Cheng's life.

Last Chance to Donate to Professor Cheng Film

A New York-based film project about Cheng Man-ch'ing titled "The Professor" is raising funds for editing and completion. You can view the trailer at that site. The film is being made by Barry Strugatz and Ken Van Sickle, both experienced filmmakers and taiji practitioners. Van Sickle was the official photographer for Cheng Man-ch'ing's New York school.