The Annual Yang Family Retreat in Mexico was just completed.

Once again, Grandmaster Yang Jun visited the Mexico City Yang Chengfu Tai Chi Chuan Center to give a seminar on the authentic Yang Style Tai Chi Chuan.

Master Yang Jun is a direct descendant of Yang Luchan, the creator of both the Yang Style of Tai Chi Chuan, and the term “Tai Chi Chuan”. It is for this reason that Yang Luchan is considered to be the creator of Tai Chi, as before his appearance, this martial art was known by other names and practices involving other types of movements. Because of this, the concept of “Tai Chi Chuan” is credited to the Yang family.

The Yang Chengfu Tai Chi Chuan Center in Mexico City is located within the premises of the Mexico Shaolin Temple, and is the place Yang Jun has officially appointed to preserve and continue the practice of the Yang Style.

Once a year, Yang Jun visits the Yang Chengfu Center, where people from around the country and abroad come together to receive the teachings of the Yang Family firsthand. This time, Master Yang taught the 49 Movement Hand Form and the Saber Form. The way Master Yang explained the movements and how to perform them was very nice for the people, since it is always interesting to understand the exact origin of the movements you can find in 90% of the Tai Chi forms that exist today, and how they were originally used and applied in martial arts.

The event was attended by people from all across the country, from East to West and North to South. Some of the participants came from places as far away as Venezuela and Kentucky.

It is a truly unique opportunity to be able to train with people of the importance of Yang Jun and get to know a country as beautiful as Mexico, even if it is only once a year. To hear about a greatly popular Tai Chi style from its very creators is something that just ten years ago seemed like a dream in our country.

To close the event, during the diploma awarding ceremony, Master Daniel Corona gave Master Yang Jun a very special gift on behalf of the Yang Chengfu Tai Chi Chuan Center Mexico. It was a Yang style saber made by artisans from Oaxaca in forged steel, using the old method, engraved with the words: “For Master Yang Jun, a treasure of Tai Chi Chan”.

Master Yang’s next visit is already scheduled for March 2011, in which Master Yang will present the origins and foundations of the entire Yang Style through the original long form that gave birth to the Tai Chi we know today.

Yang Chengfu, 3rd generation descendant of the Yang Family, creator of the Tai Chi Chuan as we know it today, played a very important role in history by modifying the original style to further exploit the health-improving properties of this practice. It is for this reason that the Yang Family agreed to name all of their Tai Chi Chuan centers after Yang Chengfu. Mexico City’s Yang Chengfu Tai Chi Chuan Center has become one of the thirty-five centers around the world that represent the true Yang Family Tai Chi Chuan. And every year Master Yang Jun, 6th generation descendant of the Yang family comes to Mexico for a couple of days to share a nice time with the students.

This time, on the 18 of March, 2010, the students of the Yang Chengfu Tai Chi Chuan Center Mexico and the Mexico Shaolin Temple welcomed master Yang Jun with an exhibition where they demonstrated Shaolin Kung Fu exercises and Yang Family Tai Chi Chuan.

The exhibition lasted about 35 minutes, after which master Yang Jun surprised the audience with an exhibition of his own. “I liked the exhibition so much that now I want to show you something of my own,” he said, and then he demonstrated the 49 Movement hand form, in which he showed the burst of energy in Tai Chi Chuan.

“We have no knowledge, in the eight years we have known Master Yang Jun, of him giving any such exhibition for anyone before,” said master Daniel Corona, director of the Mexico Yang Chengfu Center, “and for this reason I feel very grateful with master Yang Jun for this fantastic opportunity.”

Finally, members of the Mexico Shaolin Temple invited Master Yang to the Temple’s restaurant to have a meal in his honor, where Yang Tai Chi students in Mexico shared a nice evening with him, asking him questions about Tai Chi and talking.