About the International Taiji World Championship Federation

The federation

The International Taiji World Championship Federation is responsible for the organisation of the annual world championship, the custody of its rulebook and the maintenance of its archive. Its statutes trace the federation’s authority to a single sentence agreed in a Kaifeng teahouse in the winter of 1955: whoever spills the tea first has lost.

The federation’s tasks are threefold. It awards the championship to a host city and approves the venue. It appoints the jury and the judges for each edition. And it keeps the record: results, rule changes, and the official chronicle begun by the Norwegian competitor who took part in 1974, was eliminated in the first round, and devoted the following years to writing everything down.

The rulebook

The rulebook is amended rarely and reluctantly. The most consequential amendments concern the format of the final: a single bout until 1978, a best-of-five series from 1979 and a best-of-seven series from 1983. The most famous clause is the Tianchi Protocol of 1978, which governs championships at elevated or unusual locations and which was invoked in 1987 to move game seven of the final to the crater rim of Tianchi. That final is documented in detail in our account of the 1987 Taiji World Championship.

The archive

This website is the federation’s public archive. It covers the championships from 1955 to 1987: the history of the championship and its eras, and the Hall of Champions with every title holder of the period. Image material in the archive is incomplete; only surviving photographs are shown.