Rennie Chong
Tai Chi
Training Centre
Rennie Chong's
Biography
Sifu Chong was one of the most experienced Taichi masters living in Singapore. He was born in 1939 and had been teaching since he was 19. He began by helping his father to teach and later took over the classes. He was very strict and traditional, passionate and exacting. He introduced students to Taichi gently at first, as one would expect from the stereotypical image of Taichi, and slowly he worked on building up their foundation so that they can perform vigorous martial arts drills and movements. The most serious and diligent of the students were then given advanced martial arts training so that they could level up and challenge themselves to perform difficult and agile poses, and explosive jumps and kicks.
Sifu Chong was more concerned with each individual personal development in Taichi rather than focusing on grading and certification, although the Singapore Sports Council does offer certification through his courses. Certification was given when Master Chong deemed a student as competent to a certain level. He taught in the traditional manner involving martial art drills specific to the Taichi form, the simplified and long form of Yang Taichi, Chen Taichi (the oldest form involving jumps, fast and slow movements), sparring unarmed and armed, acupressure and qigong. He trained students from the very young (seven years and upwards) to those over 70. Classes were usually divided by age groups and ability. His students had won martial arts competitions and had evetually became authors and well-known instructors. Sifu Chong was also a doctor of Traditional Chinese Medicine, an acupuncturist and accupressurist.
Master Chong was born in Indonesia and moved to Singapore after the war in 1946. He was a thin and sickly teenager suffering from tuberculosis, growing up at a time when food was scarce and Singapore was dirty and undeveloped. He lived in the rough gangster-filled neighbourhood of Geylang and this did not make him feel very confident.
His father was a Taichi master, but refused to teach the young Master Chong for fear that he would get into fights and join gangs, but Master Chong was very curious and interested to learn, so he would creep by when he knew his father was teaching, and spy on the class. Then he would go home and hid in the bathroom, read his father’s martial arts manuals on Taichi, and practiced by imitating the movements he had secretly observed and monitor his posture through his bathroom mirror. Slowly but surely, he managed to acquire the knowledge and, in the end, taught himself all 108 movements of Yang Tai Chi.
When he was ready, he showed his father what he had learnt, and when his father demanded to know where he had learnt it, he told his father that he had learnt it from stolen peeks of his father’s classes. From then on, his father took him on as a student and Master Chong gained health and confidence, as developing a strong body helps to fight off illnesses and disease.
Then in 1957 when Tai Chi Master Hwang Shien Xian and Grandmaster Cheng Man Ching came to Singapore to conduct classes at the YMCA, Master Chong’s father took him to join the classes. When he was in secondary school, he would go to Master Hwang’s home in Geylang after classes to be taught for two and a half hours with Master Hwang’s daughter.
In 1983, when the Master Chu Tian Chye (Zhu Tian Cai) from China came to Singapore, Master Chong went for lessons with him. Then in 1992, Master Chong went to Zhengzhou, China, with a group of Chen Tai Chi associates to participate in the Chinese Zhengzhou International Shaolin Wushu Festival, where he received a Certificate of Merit for Exhibition Excellence.
Master Chong and his friends used to travel to China together to look for the best Taichi masters for exchanges and to refine his art. As time brought about changes, Master Chong dedicated his time in looking for good students to train so as to develop the next generation of practitioners. He dedicated himself to teach every sincere practitioners to become Taichi masters, to learn Taichi beyond his own capacity to perform and understand Taichi form and its accompanying philosophy. He believes it was the only way to ensure that Taiji would not become a dying art form. With the wind of change, he observed and predicted that with dwindling interest in the original forms of Taichi form and philosophy in the Far East, future masters would come from the West where there was a growing interest, and willingness to learn and persevere as real martial Taichi is harder to master than the hard forms of martial arts like karate. Taichi is one of those rare art forms where age and experience can only bring improvement. The stereotypical Taichi is merely Taichi for health and is very unexacting in its movements.
Before his passing, Sifu Chong was still fully active and mobile and had a full schedule at the age over 80 (including teaching intensive three week workshops, and the occasional TV interview in Europe). In Singapore where he resided, he gave speeches and demonstrations about Taichi and its benefits, on radio and at the Sports for Life Centre for the Singapore Sports Council. He even corroborated with students on ideas for an instructional video, book, and web site.
By Kerry-Anne Chan, 2003