Yang Chengfu
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Yang Chengfu (Hanyu Pinyin), or Yang Ch'eng-fu (Wade-Giles) ( 楊澄甫, 1883-1936) is historically considered the best known teacher of the soft style martial art of Tai Chi Chuan (Taijiquan).
His direct descendents, the many students he taught and their students have spread the art around the world. He was born into the famous Yang Taijiquan family, the son of Yang Chien-hou and grandson of Yang Lu-chan. With his older brother Yang Shao-hou (楊少侯) and colleagues Wu Jianquan (吳鑑泉) and Sun Lutang (孫錄堂), he was among the first teachers to offer Tai Chi Chuan instruction to the general public at the Beijing Physical Culture Research Institute from 1914 until 1928. He moved to Shanghai in 1928. He is known for having "smoothed" out the somewhat more vigorous training routine he learned from his family as well as emphasising a "large frame" or "Da Jia 大架" with expansive movements in stepping and using large circular motions with the arms. His smooth, evenly-paced large frame form and its hundreds of offshoots has been the standard for Yang style Tai Chi Chuan (and overwhelmingly in the public imagination for Tai Chi Chuan in general) ever since.
Ch'en Wei-ming (Chen Weiming), Tung Ying-chieh (Dong Yingjie), Fu Zhongwen (Fu Chung-wen) and Cheng Man-ch'ing were famous disciples of Yang Ch'eng-fu. Tung, Fu and Cheng each taught extensively, founding groups teaching T'ai Chi to this day. Cheng Man-ch'ing, perhaps the most famous of the three, significantly shortened and simplified the traditional forms Yang taught him after his teacher's passing, supposedly to make them more accessible to larger numbers of students. Although Cheng's modifications are considered controversial by most other schools and are not recognized by the Yang family, Cheng Man-ch'ing is known as the first to teach T'ai Chi Ch'üan in the West.
His sons have continued to teach their father's Taijiquan, including his first son, the late Yang Zhenming (1910-1985) (a.k.a. Yang Shaozhong, Yang Shoujong, Yeung Shaochung; 楊守中), who brought Yang style Tai Chi Chuan to Hong Kong, his second son Yang Zhenji (born 1921, current head of the family), and his third son, Yang Zhenduo (楊振鐸, born 1926), living in Shanxi Province, who is widely considered the most prominent of the Yang family Tai Chi Chuan instructors living today.