Looking in places no one else had thought to look, the author discovered the authentic roots of Tai Chi and Baguazhang by asking the question, "What are the theatrical and religious roots of Chinese Martial Arts?"

The Immortal & the Angry Baby: General Qi Jiguang was coughing up blood, near death in a field hospital, when he received a visit from the Sage Lin Zhao’en. The Sage performed a martial exorcism with explosions and a talisman to capture pirate ghosts who blamed General Qi for their deaths. General Qi was completely healed. The Sage then taught General Qi the Golden Elixir, cementing a lifelong bond.

Sage Lin claimed that he learned the Golden Elixir in secret night-visits from the Immortal Zhang Sanfeng. The Immortal was a theatrical character, known for defeating 24 palace guards with 32 moves while snoring like an earthquake and smelling of booze and vomit—32 moves that General Qi wrote about, and later became known as Tai Chi!

The dragon-killer Nezha cut his flesh from his bones and returned it to his parents. He was done. Or so it seemed, until Nezha’s secret father Taiyi descended from the sky and gave him a new body made of lotus flowers and the Golden Elixir—making him invincible.

Nezha was China’s most important hero-god: so important, that caravan guards and rebels nicknamed Beijing “Nezha City.” In 1900, thousands of Boxers possessed by Nezha died fighting foreign guns. Blamed and ridiculed for this failure, martial artists who practiced the dance of Nezha hid their history and gave their art a new name—Baguazhang!

The reason you never heard these histories is so dark that few have dared to speak about it, until now. Completely new and meticulously researched, Tai Chi, Baguazhang and the Golden Elixir erases 120 years of confusion and error to reveal the specific theatrical and religious origins of Chinese internal martial arts.

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