South China Morning Post interview
w/ WTCQD Founder

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World Tai Chi Day is next Saturday, and Douglas hopes the world - and particularly the world's health organisations and professionals - will join in.

Last year they had 108 events around the world - by coincidence a lucky number in Chinese tradition - and this year they hope to have as many as three times that - from Slovenia to South Afric, from Thailand to Tel Aviv.

He has staked his savings on setting up the website (www.worldtaichiday.org) and getting everything organised - the fax bill alone last month was about 15,000 dollars: what return can he possible expect?

"I don't know: I have no idea," he admitted on the phone from his home town of Kansas City. "I just know I had to try it."

Douglas, now 43, first became interested in spreading the word about tai chi when his mother died several years ago during an angioplasty operation. Already a teacher of the martial arts form, he tried to interest his parents in trying tai chi for their health, but both had rejected it as "too weird."

But afterwards he found a note his mother had written just before the operation.

"She said she wished that a couple of years ago she had paid attention to the exercise I wanted to teach her: she said she wished she had done it so that she could see her grandchildren grow up."

It made Douglas think about how many other people he could help before it was too late: "I wanted tai chi to be so widespread that nobody could think of it as weird."