Taijiquan and the Search for the Little Old Chinese Man

This book is an ethnographic study of the martial art of taijiquan (or 'tai chi') as it is practiced in China and the United States. Drawing on recent literature on ethnicity, critical race theory, the phenomenology of race, and globalization, the author discusses identity in terms of sensual experience and the transmission or receipt of knowledge. The book concludes with a discussion of how processes of individual experience, urban life, nationalism, and globalization inhabit the body, contribute to the sensual experience of identify, and, ultimately, raise fundamental questions about the relationship between 'doing' and 'being' .