148Taijiquan and The Search for The Little Old Chinese ManBut what kind of taijiquan is this that inscribes itself on the city In many ways, for members of the JTA and other lineages that still retain long memories of the pre-1949 Shanghai, there is a certain outsiderness. They are what Watson described as the subaltern in the public city. Whereas massive taijiquan gatherings and bronze statues make the city planners�case for the public city, martially oriented taijiquan practitioners who individually seek gongfu are the case for the political economy of the city, a political economy where reestablished class divisions (and, on the other side of the coin, reestablished economic opportunities) breed alterity. Granted, the JTA participates in the annual, orchestrated mass gathering, but compared with monthly meetings, their participation seems somewhat artificial. In 2001, Wu style players from the various sublineages within the JTA all donned gray JTA sweatshirts and JTA baseball caps and practiced taijiquan in one large group. It was the only time in my many years of association with the group that I saw members wear anything resembling a uniform. Some still hung out on the sidelines and played push hands, but there was a noticeable lack of community spirit on that day. The monthly meetings offer a kind of spectacle, but they are really more about building community. The government-sponsored mass gathering, on the other hand, emphasized spectacle, mere movement over the substance that push hands had to offer. Most JTA members did seem to enjoy the event, but one could not help but feel, if the facial expressions were any indication, that the older members of the group saw only shadows of taijiquan in the fan dances, drum teams, and group taijiquan performances spread out before them. *** While the inscription of the practice upon the city is of fairly recent vintage, the inscription of the city upon the practice has a longer history and is explicit in the changes that have been incorporated into the postures at key points in modern Chinese history. As I mentioned in my introduction to this book, before the establishment of the Republic in 1912, taijiquan remained a rather secretive art. Several converging factors led to the ultimate public outing of the art. First, the shift in Shanghai to a manufacturing economy led to an increase in the city middle class and to the rise of a consumer economy that mimicked European
