With the help of some devoted students Master Jou purchased an abandoned 100 acre farm outside of Warwick, New York. On December 7, 1984, The Tai-Chi Farm was born. Part of a non-profit organization, The Tai-Chi foundation created by Master Jou, the Farm functioned as a Taijiquan cultural center, integrating Western and Eastern skills as well as knowledge of all the Chinese internal arts.

Never content to rest on tradition for tradition’s sake, Master Jou began ceaselessly studying, researching, and questioning every aspect of his art. He traveled back to China numerous times. What he found made him, in his own words, “Very sad!”. The communists had changed the art, watering it down and removing much of what made Taijiquan the health and martial art he had known in his younger years. He once told a class, “The true Taijiquan, Baguazhang and Xingyiquan of old China is all lost! It has become a sport without the internal methods. We must rediscover this great gift from China and preserve it for all people.” This then became the goal of
the Tai Chi Farm.

He invited many teachers and masters to the farm to share their ideas and principles. Workshops by visiting masters and resident teachers offered year round training in Taijiquan, Baguazhang, Xingyiquan and Qigong arts. Others presented programs of Daoist (Taoist) meditation, classical scholarly studies, and healing arts throughout the year. Everyone participated in the spirit of friendship and good fellowship regardless of the system or style they personally preferred.

The annual Tai Chi Farm Festival drew hundreds of students and teachers each year. These festivals were like visiting the fabled Camelot from “La Morte d’Arthur”, a beautiful mix of Taijiquan and other internal arts. It was a true Chinese internal arts renaissance fair, the entire farm alive with every conceivable method and style of Taijiquan and internal arts practitioners. Anyone who visited this event found among students and teachers alike an openness and sharing of principles and brotherhood that is rare in our modern society and as scarce as hen’s teeth among today’s martial artists.

Presiding over it all was Master Jou and a group of his “barnyard masters” from whom he claimed to learn many secrets. There was Master cat, Master chicken, Master goose, the peacocks, and last but not least, the ever present Happy the goat with whom Mr. Jou regularly engaged in a spirited and somewhat serious game of push hands.

He claimed to have learned many things about martial arts and meditation from this august assemblage of farm animals as well as from trees, rocks, water and the natural elements in the raw that were so much in abundance on the farm. He said, “The principles of Tai Chi are all around you in nature. Not in a book. I don’t read books anymore. I practice and then I just watch nature and the animals. They are my teachers.”

*Tai Chi: Here the reference is to the concept of Yang and Yin or the Taiji Tu symbol that can be used to sum up all Daoist concepts used in the internal martial arts, Chinese medicine, man and nature.