Mark was born in the late 1970s in Big Yellow Village, near Chen Village, one of the best-known places associated with traditional Tai Chi. Growing up in this environment gave him early exposure to Chinese martial arts, and he has now practiced Tai Chi and other traditional Chinese martial arts for more than 40 years, including extensive training in Baji Quan.
Over the decades, Mark has traveled around the world to train, study, and attend seminars and classes with respected masters and senior practitioners. His martial arts journey has also taken him into competition, where he has earned multiple gold medals, as well as into judging, serving as a judge at numerous martial arts competitions.
Mark’s writing combines more than four decades of hands-on training with lessons learned from seminars, personal exchanges and interviews with experienced practitioners, competition experience, and research into Chinese-language martial arts sources. His goal is to explain traditional Chinese martial arts from the perspective of someone who has practiced them for most of his life—not simply studied them from books.
