Chenjiagou Orientation

Over the Easter holiday I achieved my dream of training at a taiji school in Chenjiagou, the birth-place of Taiji.  It was a short trip of 10 nights, with 8 full days training and one day of tourism.  

Chenjiagou is such a small place that it was even hard to find on Google Maps, so here is a geographical orientation.   First orientation point is Zhengzhou in Henan province, which is about 1,400km almost due north from Hong Kong (in blue at the top of this map).   Zhenhzhou is a city of about 9 million inhabitants and an ancient capital of China (wiki link for Zhengzhou).

I flew there on Easter Friday by direct Dragonair flight to 'Zhengzhou Xinzheng International Airport'.  This is south of Zhengzhou near Xinzheng and close to the G4 motorway (see map below).   I was picked up by my teacher June in a taxi.

We didn't go into Zhengzhou city, and instead circled around it, going north on the G4 motorway then west on the G30 parallel-to and south-of the yellow river, heading towards Gongyi (wiki link), then turning north, crossing the Yellow River towards Wenxian and finally heading east to Chenjiagou.  About 2 hours driving through a very historic area.

In the above map,  Chengiagou is marked by a white circle in the upper middle-left, Zhengzhou airport is near green 'G4' label in lower middle-right.    Note that Chenjiagou is close to the Yellow River and four historic cities:  Luoyang (west, wiki link), Gonyi (west), Zhengzhou (middle) and Kaifeng (right, wiki link).

We crossed the Yellow River just above where the Yilou river joins the Yellow River.   This is apparently an important area in the development of Taoism, and the sight of the different colored waters mixing is reputed to be the origin of the Ying-Yang sign.

Chenjiagou is a small farming village.   It was named after Chen Family ('Chen jia') who established it around 1375 and the drainage ditch (gou) they dig.  The ditch  can be seen in the right of the photo below as a green line of trees running north-south.  The village is bounded on the west side by a modern canal, which is part of a system moving water from the wet south of China to the dry north.

More recently the government is trying to develop Chenjiagou as a tourist destination to capitalize on the growing worldwide interest in Taiji.   They have recently built a stadium for competitions to the north of the village (below the big ying-yang sign in the photo),  a hotel complex nearby to house competitors, and a Tai chi museum and surrounding park (around the small ying-yang sign).

The main road thought he village, which I'll call Main Street, runs north-south.   The largest and most famous taiji  school is on the main road next to the entrance to the museum (to the left of where it says 'Taiji Quanzuci').   The school I enrolled in, was 'Chenjiagou Taijiquan Gongfu School' on the west side of the village with a nice view over fields.    Across the field to the south of the school it is a temple.  My teacher June has a house in the south a bit below where it says 'N 1st St'

Chengiagou is a small village so takes only about 10 min to walk from the school to the the main street or June's house.  There are 2-3 restaurants, just a few shops and one supermarket, although there is a market every 10-days in the road to the sough of the village (bottom right in photo).