Life
Zhang Sanfeng appears in the record as a Taoist adept associated with the Wudang mountains, variously dated across three centuries, credited with immortality and with founding the internal school of martial arts after watching a snake fight a crane.
Historians have not been able to make him one person, and the attribution of taijiquan to him is demonstrably late — it belongs to the Ming and Qing rather than to any contemporary source. What is not in doubt is the effect of the attribution: a prestigious ancestor turned a family of techniques into a tradition, and the arts taught under his name today are real arts with real teachers.
He is here for the parallel, which is exact and worth sitting with. A modern practice acquires an ancient founder; the founder is unverifiable; the practice is not thereby false. Mo Pai's claim on Mozi has the same shape, and the same two halves have to be assessed separately. See the lineage article.
