This volume has three aims. First, it brings together Zheng Manqing's articles, lectures, and senior Chinese students' "class notes" not previously available in English. These include a range of topics that go beyond his "Thirteen Chapters" or "New Method of Self-Study" as well as new teachings on taijiquan. Second, it offers new information on Zheng's life from formal biographies, newspaper articles, anecdotes, and first hand accounts of contemporaries. These impressions, going back to his years on the Mainland and Taiwan, offer a more vivid and rounded picture of this multi-faceted man. Finally it makes a first attempt to locate Zheng in the political, intellectual, and cultural landscape of his place anad times, widening out from his hometown to the provincial, national, and international scene. It concludes with a sense that his attainments in the arts were both a personal quest and part of a greater mission of cultural nationalism.