Under the sepia light of retrospect, out-moded customs look ridiculous, old-fashioned ideas appear irrational, and the perils confronting legendary heroes hardly seem credible.  As a story of events long past, the secret-garden episode offers a happy-ending guarantee.  In the moment, defying the Emperor by teaching his soldiers and relatives a modified version of Tai Chi Ch’uan was a traitorous act that, if discovered, would not only cost the duplicitous master his head, but bring retribution on his entire clan, wiping it from the face of the earth.  The creation of Beijing Style not only drove the true teachings underground, it meant that the greatest Tai Chi Ch'uan masters of the day could no longer teach or perform their art publicly without revealing that the form they had taught their Imperial students was not the genuine article.

Knowing the dire consequences that would ensue, should word of their nightly activities reach the ears of the Emperor, the dangerous game of sneaking into a midnight garden in the heart of Manchu territory surely took its toll on Yang Family morale.  Given that not all Yang progeny would have been viable candidates to receive the true teachings (due to a lack of potential or discretion, unsuitable disposition, or gender (as girls married into other clans, they were considered untrustworthy repositories for family secrets)), the unexpected appearance of an exceptionally sincere and talented hometown boy may well have been viewed as fortuitous.  Nor is it beyond imagining that Yang Lu-Chan saw something of himself in the young stable-boy and, recalling his own history, approved his son’s decision to accept Wang Jiao-Yu as an “inner-door” disciple and heir to the true mysteries of Tai Chi Ch’uan.

In an escapade worthy of Hong Kong cinema, the tale picks up again as a sheriff and his nine deputies chase a notorious thief and certified kung fu genius – Robber Li aka Chi-Li – into a dead-end alley.  Though the solid-stone Lu-Tsu temple blocking the far end of the alley would stop any other thief in his tracks, the sherrif knew there was little chance it would daunt Robber Li.

Robber Li had powerful kung fu.  He could fly over twenty-foot canals and leap from the cobbled streets to the tiled rooftops laden with loot to make his get-away.  Never had anyone been able to catch him.  But when the sheriff and his men barreled down the alley after the elusive thief, they found him prostrate on the ground, knocked out cold.  Mystified, they looked to see who had done this wonderful deed.  The alley boasted only one other occupant, a wizened old tea seller, sitting on the ancient steps of the temple.

Naturally, the sheriff questioned him, but the old man denied any knowledge of what had happened to Robber Li.  Nevertheless and despite his protestations, the night’s events soon set tongues in town wagging about the aged tea seller and his remarkable kung fu skills.  Every day, throngs of people gathered at Lu-Tsu temple to ogle the old man; the curious, hoping to see the master in action, and the eager, begging him for instruction.  Insisting he was no more than he appeared to be – an old man selling tea to support himself – he refused all suppliants.

As the weeks went by, the curious lost interest, the eager lost patience and the crowds dispersed… except for one particularly persistent fellow, who took to sleeping during the day so he could spy on the tea seller at night.  After many fruitless watches, his patience was rewarded.  One morning, in the gray hour before the dawn, he succeeded in catching the old man at practice.  Though the tea seller’s movements were gentle as clouds drifting across the sky, the power projecting from him made trees bend and their leaves rustle as if buffeted by a mighty wind.

By mid-day, the whole town was buzzing with the news:  the old tea seller had indeed defeated Robber Li with his astonishing kung fu.  The crowds returned in full force.  No longer able to deny it, the old master acknowledged that he was Wang Jiao-Yu, Yang Pan-Hou’s erstwhile disciple, and eventually accepted four disciples of his own.

A nefarious bandit with super-human strength and agility, a kung fu master disguised by age and poverty, magical powers unveiled (yet  again) by a young insomniac with a predilection for spying… It’s too fantastic for history, too contemporary for myth, too archetypal for legend – surely this is the stuff of fairy tale!

At first glance, this Robber Li business does seem to be a narrative of adventures with fantasy elements and supernatural characters – a fairy story, by definition.  Suspending disbelief long enough to consult Webster’s, however, reveals that fairy stories/folktales are characteristically anonymous, timeless and placeless – un-authored tales that happened long ago and far away.  Those who tell the tale of ‘Robber Li and the Tea Seller’ are eager to cite its source; they either heard it from Kuo Lien-Ying, one of Wang Jiao-Yu’s four disciples, or from Master Kuo’s students.  Nor do the Robber-Li events happen once upon a time in the fairyland of Xuanpu.  The tale is set on a legendary time-scale (about 50 years after Yang Pan-Hou and Wang Jiao-Yu parted ways) and at a site anyone can visit (Lu-Tsu temple in the Ho Ping-Men sector of Beijing).

Moreover, though the story lacks the check-able source required of an historical tale (the police blotter confirming the existence of Robber Li and the circumstances of his arrest, for example), its direct, traceable line of oral transmission eliminates it from fairy-story contention.  If a tale begins with a time-marker (“When my mother was a little girl…”), or points an ephemeral finger over a nearby hill, (“There was an old man had a farm in western Telemark…”) or ends with a six-degrees-of-separation connection to the characters, (“I heard this tale from old Seamus, whose grand-dad it was saw the seal-woman on Falcarragh strand…”) – if it evokes a sense of memory and suggests an immediate connection between the storyteller and the people in the story – it is the stuff of legend.

As legends age, their dates blur, their place-names fade from the maps and the implied personal link to the story is lost.  Old legends teeter on the brink, awaiting redemption or refutation.  The former puts them in the history books; the latter relegates them to fairy tale anthologies.  Robin Hood epitomizes this legendary limbo.  With a good 900 years separating the storytellers who were chronologically and geographically close to the events from, say, Ridley Scott and his 2010 cinematic take on the tale, Robin Hood would have de-volved to a fairy tale character long ago, had scholars not established that he was an historical personage.  Likewise, he would long ago have secured a place in the academic texts had those scholars been able to definitively establish his identity.  His reality does not redeem him from the realm of folklore; the fanciful nature of his adventures does not refute his historical existence.  Robin Hood remains quintessentially legend:  a story coming down from the past… popularly regarded as historical although not verifiable.

Kuo Lien-Ying was a renowned fighter with superb kung fu.  His opponent was a spry 112 year-old, a remarkably preserved old man, but surely not the martial equal of 30-something year-old Kuo.  Yet it was the venerable master of Lu-Tsu temple won the match, and won it soundly.  Amazed at the ease with which he had been defeated, Kuo humbly bowed to the victor and begged the old man to accept him as a student.  The old man declined.  Kuo bowed again, but instead of departing, sat down on the temple’s ancient steps and waited out the day, hoping Master Wang Jiao-Yu would change his mind.

The next day, Kuo returned to the temple with the same request.  Again he was denied.  Again he retired to the temple steps, and again Wang Jiao-Yu ignored him. The next day was the same, and the next and the next.  For six long months, Kuo went every day to the temple to beg Master Wang to teach him Tai Chi Ch’uan.  Every day Wang refused to do so, and Kuo would retire to the temple steps to keep his quiet vigil.

At the end of the six months, Kuo’s demonstration of patience and perseverance finally gained the master’s attention.  Convinced of Kuo’s sincerity, devotion and respect, Wang issued him the “chin-to-toe” challenge.  Kuo attained the difficult skill well within the 100-day time limit.  After passing the master’s other tests of skill and character, Kuo Lien-Ying became one of Wang Jiao-Yu’s four disciples.

When their revered teacher died at age 121, those four students alone in the world knew the original Yang Family martial art that had earned Yang Lu-Chan the epithet "The Unsurpassed" and won his son Yang Pan-Hou such renown in the days before the Emperor demanded his service.  The venerable Wang always called this art “Guang Ping Yang Tai Chi Ch’uan” to honor its original masters – all men of Guang Ping – and to distinguish it from "Beijing Style Tai Chi Ch'uan," the bastardized form Yang Pan-Hou had taught the Manchurian troops and nobility.

Yang Pan-Hou kept Guang Ping Yang Tai Chi Ch’uan hidden from the Emperor.  Wang Jiao-Yu secretly preserved the form through the fall of Ch’ing dynasty and the rise of the Chinese National government.  Wang's four students discreetly maintained the Guang Ping Yang legacy until Mao Tse-Tung went to war against China’s traditional arts and enacted policies eliminating most kung fu schools, forms and styles and standardizing the rest.

Two of Wang Jiao-Yu’s disciples – Masters Kuo Lien-Ying and Wang Zhi-Qian – fled to Taiwan where they opened schools and taught the art as it been taught to them.  Master Wang’s other two disciples did not escape China, and on the mainland, Guang Ping Yang Tai Chi Ch’uan did not survive.

Except for the numbers, which are naturally suspect, this part of the legend is far less magical than the Robber Li section and far easier to authenticate.  Granted, Master Wang may have been as young as 94 years of age when he accepted Kuo Lien-Ying as a student.  He may not have lived 121 years, but “only” to 112.  Perhaps Kuo only waited outside the temple for three months, practicing chin-to-toe all the while, but as the six-month figure was the one Kuo himself quoted when telling the tale, it would be presumptuous to second-guess him.

The masters' respective number of disciples should not be doubted.  That Yang Pan-Hou had only three disciples and Wang Jiao-Yu only four partly was due to the rampant secrecy that so permeated the time and the culture.  Individual character may have had an influence, as well.  Yang Pan-Hou’s reputedly harsher teaching methods may well have deterred potential students from seeking him out as a teacher.

It is also entirely possible that the true teachings are so philosophically complex and physically demanding, the art itself limits the size of the “inner door” disciple population.

The modern health-and-exercise versions of Tai Chi are appropriate for all ages and fitness levels, but to excel at the true spiritual-martial art of Tai Chi Ch'uan requires exceptional physical fitness, intense mental focus, a shining spirit and a practical, working knowledge of Qi.  Masters who teach advanced practices, it has been suggested, do not care to waste time with pupils who simply cannot "get" it, and accept only those with sufficient skills to absorb the teachings.