Cheng Ting Hung called our style the Wudang Style of Taijiquan in order to demonstrate that the style had returmed to its roots.
He felt that the family styles Chen, Yang , Wu , Sun , Li , Hao had moved away from the fundamentals and either had added to or taken away
elements from the style.
The roots of Taijiquan are the Daoist martial arts whose spiritual home is the Wudang
mountains.
Thus all aspects, including the health maintaining aspects, of the
art are practiced in their correct martial context with proper focus and
direct simplicity.
As his lineage derived from the Yang family via Yang Pan-hou, the Wu family through Wu Jian-chuan and the Chen family via Wang Lan-ting he felt the need to refrain from classifying the style by family.
Our hand form is recognisable as the Wu style empty hand form but there are elements in our style that appear more closely in the other family styles and other elements that are rarely taught because their sole purpose is to enhance fighting skills and hence are not well known in the West.
It is Grandmaster Cheng's greatest fear that the true art of Taijiquan would die out due to the popularity of the popular soft and gentle versions that require little effort and endeavour. This has meant that the art has only attracted those who wish to study it for health reasons and led to a general belief that Taijiquan is not an effective martial art. He taught my teacher Master Dan Docherty the complete art so that this misunderstanding in the West could be rectified and Taijiquan would once again be recognised as the fully functional martial arts system that it actually is.