So I confirmed two more Taipei locations with taijiquan and qigong practice.
First, there is a paved plaza outside of exit 3 of the MRT Minquan West Road station, at the intersection of Lane 70 Minquan West Road and Jinxi street.
I saw three taijiquan groups here, all apparently Yang style. I think one of the groups was wearing T shirts saying 中華太極館, but I also think I saw other organizational T shirts in the group too, so it may have been a mixed group instead of being organized exclusively by 中華太極館. I again sneaked into the corner of the group and, being positioned at the edge, was always turning my head around to watch and follow the movements of the group. It was immediately obvious to the members that I was an outsider, and one of the practitioners welcomed me, in English, to stand in the middle of the group to see better. The practitoners were men and women, probably in their 50s, and their movements seemed balanced and smooth. That group told me that they practice there every morning except Sunday from 6:30 to 7:30. In addition to slow Yang-style taijiquan, the group also did routines involving swords and fans. A second break-out group, that still seemed related to the first group, was doing staff-style routines but, instead of staves, they were using walking canes and umbrellas. There also seemed to be a separate third group with no relation to the first 2 groups, consisting only of middle-aged women without any uniformity in their attire, and whose movements seemed a little less fluid than the first 2 groups.
Second, I checked out Da’an park, and arrived there at 6:30 AM. Unfortunately, I didn’t see many taijiquan practitioners there, and that may have something to with the Dragon Boat Festival happening on the weekend, which may have caused fewer people to be in Taipei right now. I saw a lot of qigong groups, one in the “Sunken Garden” area near exit 4 (?) of the MRT station, and others scattered throughout the park. As for taijiquan, I saw two or three very small (3 or 4 person) groups doing Yang-style taijiquan and joined one of them. The movements of all the small groups I saw seemed somewhat lower-quality, being mostly stiff and unbalanced with little evidence of whole-body, connected movement. I did however see one solo practitioner, a woman in her 40s or 50s, whose movements seemed pretty smooth.
Also, in Da’an park I saw a Baguazhang group doing circle-walking in a roofed area slightly north of the Ecological Pond. They were wearing T-shirts saying “energy bagua” which seems to be some health-related practice group. Finally I also saw another practice group whose instructor seemed skilled, doing smooth and very low stances that, to my untrained eye, looked more like some kind of Shaolin art (not taijiquan), with extended punch-like movements. I also noticed that one participant, who joined late, approached to a safe distance from the teacher, closed his eyes, and raised his hands in a prayer gesture, holding it there for a few seconds, before ending the gesture and starting following the teacher. I don’t know if that prayer gesture is normal etiquette for joining a park-based practice group late, but it may be a useful polite mannerism to remember.
Prayer gestures notwithstanding, as I mentioned in an earlier post, it still seems that the easiest way to join a group is just to get there early, between 6:30 and 7:00, when they are still doing their warmups, and to slip in from the side. One challenge is to identify, from the warmups, if the group is doing taijiquan or not. One hint is the formation of the practioners. If they’re standing kind of in rows and columns, that may be a hint sign that the group may be doing taijiquan, due to the movements in space and the requirement to gauge your distance to the other people. On the other hand, if the participants are standing in a semi-circle around the instructor, that may be a hint that the participants aren’t expecting to move from their location, meaning that the group may be doing just qigong instead of taijiquan.
I did not observe any paired partner pracrice (no pushing hands exercises) in any of the groups in any of the locations.
I hope that if anyone else has recent experience with park taijiquan in Taipei (or elsewhere) that you’ll share your experiences, especially if you see push-hands practice in the park.
, likely indicating that this is a taijiquan group), one participant has a T-shirt with a different logo, and one participant has a T-shirt with no logo. So the organizational affiliation of the group is unclear.
