Jianquan Taijiquan Association
The Jianquan Taijiquan Association is a well known school teaching Wu style t'ai chi ch'uan.
It was founded in 1935 by Wu Chien-ch'üan in Shanghai, and in the beginning operated out of the Shanghai YMCA. In 1937 Wu Kung-tsao opened a school in the British colony of Hong Kong during the Second Sino-Japanese War in response to the ban on Chinese martial arts instituted by the Japanese. In 1942, when Wu Chien-ch'üan died, his oldest son Wu Kung-i became head of the Association, eventually moving its headquarters to the Hong Kong school where it has continued uninterrupted to this day. In English the Hong Kong branch and its subsidiaries call themselves "Wu's T'ai Chi Ch'uan Academies."
Wu Chien-ch'üan's daughter Wu Ying-hua and his eldest disciple Ma Yueh-liang led the branch in Shanghai after 1949. The Shanghai school fell under the ban on "feudalistic practices" with the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. Only in 1980 were they able to officially reopen.
