Garcia says that his relationship with his teacher, an elderly retiree named Wang Dianzhen, is no less intense than his training. Wang has never been a professional teacher - he practiced tai chi and Beijing opera singing during his spare time - and now he has only one student, and a few "disciples".

"I'm a better husband because of him," Garcia says. "I'm a better father because of him."

Garcia said he turns to his elderly teacher for advice about all matters - work, parenting, even visa issues. When they meet, he says, Wang sometimes just tells him stories.

But Garcia doesn't really want to talk about his own life. He wants to talk about the Tao, a metaphysical philosophy that has become part of some of the religions that followed it. Tao is intrinsically related to the concepts yin and yang, and seeking balance between logical and emotional life. Tao teaches that every action creates unavoidable counter-actions, and practitioners work to accept or work with these natural developments.

"I've been spiritual-minded since I was young," he said. In high school, he studied the Bible, and then yoga.

Garcia says he first discovered Taoism at college in America, and he gave himself a Taoist education during his days reading at the library in Taipei. It's drawn him back to China every time he's gone home; tai chi is fundamentally his way to study the Tao.

"Tai chi comes from the I Ching," Garcia says, referring to a Chinese classic on divination. "So I can pretty much find something in common with any kind of artist, chef or calligrapher.

He studied tai chi during a decade teaching English in Shandong and Guangzhou, before he moved to Beijing in 2004. Taoism can be a religion, Garcia says, but for him it's closer to a philosophy.

Chiefly, he says, Taoism is about the rejection of dichotomy, based on the ancient philosopher Zhuang Zi's dismissal of the efforts of other philosophies to distinguish between physical things and transcendent reality, and his belief that "There's not really anything to strive for, to live is the point".

"Some people say the glass is half full, half empty. But the Taoist says it doesn't really matter, the glass is completely full, half air, half water."

But more important, Garcia says, is Lao Zi, a frequently paradoxical philosopher traditionally considered the founder of Taoism, baffling to many modern readers.

"Lao Zi's like Benny Goodman or someone, you gotta know all his tunes if you want to jam," he said. "I actually started using Lao Zi's philosophy to raise my kids, and it worked pretty well."

He's already teaching tai chi to the oldest of his four children, 6 and 7 years old.

"Lao Zi is about the inherent qualities of things, so it helps me kind of to be myself in a Chinese context."

In the end, Garcia said, he thinks he may return to the US, but he won't give up tai chi.

He doesn't know whether he'll become a tai chi master and take students of his own.

Would he like to set up a school in America?

"I wanted to," he says, "but now Americans don't have any money to pay me to teach them."

(China Daily November 21, 2010)