Nobody knows who, when and how such a powerful skill was invented at the very beginning. But the most widely held belief is that legendary Taoist priest Zhang Sanfeng, aka Chang Sanfeng, devised tai chi in the 13th Century and initially gave it the name Mian Qian, meaning a soft, resilient and free-flowing boxing.
After a decades-long journey nationwide to visit numerable Taoist practitioners and kung fu masters, Zhang was thought to have spent part of his life in the Wudang Mountains in Central China’s Hubei province, where he finally developed his own kung fu art.
Mt. Wudang is a pilgrimage destination for today’s Taoists, Taoist kung fu (martial arts) practitioners and tourists and it still has statues of Zhang San-feng in temples and shrines on the mountains.
