Short biography of Master Jan Silberstorff

written by Manfred Miethe

Childhood and youth

Jan Silberstorff was born in Hamburg-Barmbek in 1967 and is now one of the best-known Western Taiji masters. He first encountered Korean taekwondo at the age of eight and realised at such a young age that martial arts were his calling. However, it would be another ten years before he learnt Taijiquan at the age of 18 and decided to make it his life's work.

He spent some pretty wild teenage years as a punk, experienced a lot of violence on the streets through conflicts with other youth gangs and the police and was actually looking for something that would enable him to defend himself better. That it ended up being Taijiquan after a few attempts at other martial arts was perhaps coincidence or providence. But perhaps it was also due to the fact that Jan already showed signs of alcoholism due to a hereditary predisposition and was undergoing medical treatment for drug abuse. He started smoking and drinking at the age of 11. These addictions accompanied him until that fateful day in 1986 when he had his first Taijiquan lesson.

After that, his life changed rapidly: drugs, alcohol and cigarettes disappeared from his everyday life and were replaced by training.

Instead of getting drunk and rioting in public at weekends, he found himself practising peacefully in gyms. It was only later that he realised that his father's fatal illness caused by alcohol and nicotine abuse and work-related stress may have led him to taijiquan.

Years of apprenticeship and travelling

His first Chinese teachers were Master Sui Qingbo, who had just moved to Hamburg at the time, and his wife Lena Du Hong. Through them he saw the Chen style of Taijiquan for the first time and it was immediately clear to him that it should be this style and nothing else. But the information available on this particular style was very scarce in Germany at the time and so it was these two teachers who gave him a solid grounding not only in Chen and Yang style Taijiquan, but also in Tang Lang Quan (Praying Mantis Boxing), Cha Quan, as well as important insights into modern Wushu and Chinese philosophy.

He also learnt various Qigong systems from both of them, such as Baduanjin, two sets of 18 Taiji Qigong, Crane Qigong, the Six Healing Sounds, muscle-tendon Qigong, as well as the basics of acupressure and traditional Chinese medicine.

It was also Sui Qingbo who gave Jan Silberstorff the idea of continuing his studies in China after winning a championship early on. In 1989, he followed him to the Shandong Province of the People's Republic of China for the first time and learnt Chen Taijiquan in the style of Grand Master Chen Zhaokui and the Small Frame, as well as Tang Lang Quan and modern Wushu from a traditional master. At the end of his two-month stay, he successfully passed the examination to become a state-certified teacher of Taijiquan in the People's Republic of China.

In order to be able to understand the instructions of his teachers, he began studying sinology in Hamburg.

Another three-month trip to China followed in 1990, during which Silberstorff travelled the entire country with a friend and visited more than 30 Wushu schools recommended to him by Sui Qingbo. He also met the actors in the film "Kung Fu - The Master's Daughter", with whom he stayed privately for several weeks. But he was still searching for Chen Taijiquan.

Finally, on his third trip to China in 1991, he met his first shifu, Master Shen Xijing, in Xian. He came from a neighbouring village of Chenjiagou, the birthplace of Taijiquan. At that time, Shen Xijing was working as a close combat instructor for the police after his professional career as a full-contact fighter.

Never before had Silberstorff experienced Chen Taijiquan as a complete system with such beauty and high martial efficiency. This very fateful encounter prompted him to move to China completely. Shen Xijing offered to become his direct disciple and take him into his home. Before Silberstorff actually moved to China at the beginning of 1992, he trained very intensively in Hamburg in Wun Hop Kuen Do under the guidance of Master Christian Wulf and also began training with Eskrima Master Bernd Schubert. He also took some lessons with the Wing Chun masters Thomas Roggenkamp and Rolf Hellmann and later became a private student of Tan Tien Tschüan founder Helmut Barthel for a year.

As he had already travelled to China by plane and the trans-Siberian railway, he now wanted to travel by sea via the West to the East. To do so, he signed on to a container ship to Mexico, hitchhiked to the USA and visited the leading martial arts schools in California. These included the Filipino master and Bruce Lee student Dan Insosanto, the Tung/Dong family of Yang Taijiquan, the Hapkido master Bong Soo-Han, Master Doc-Fai Wong of Choy Li Fut and Master Bill Owens of Wun Hop Kuen Do / Kajukenbo. Silberstorff then travelled to China via Shanghai after a stopover in Japan.

In-depth training in Chen style in China

Now began a four-year, very intensive training period under Master Shen Xijing in all aspects of Chen Taijiquan. In addition to hand and weapon forms and sitting meditation, this also included tuishou (push hands), self-defence and free combat as well as Xingyiquan and Baguazhang.

Silberstorff and his teacher lived about half the time at the Chinese Opera Institute in Xian and half the time in Chenjiagou, which was still a very simple, poor village at the time.

Silberstorff was one of the first Westerners to set foot in the legendary home of the Chen family. In the meantime, he began to speak and write Chinese fluently. From 1993, the two occasionally travelled to Germany to organise the first seminars there.

At various events in the People's Republic of China, Silberstorff came into contact with the Yang style grandmaster Fu Zhongwen, his son and grandson, as well as Yang Zhenduo and Yang Zhenhe. He took private lessons for a while with the Chen-style grandmaster Chen Yu, from which a deep friendship developed. He often trained in Xian alongside Chen-style grandmaster Chen Liqing and 'Uncle' Chen Quanzhong. He also learnt Zhaobao Taijiquan in Xian for a while. He also studied in Chenjiagou with Grandmaster Ren Guangyao and Grandmaster Chen Guizhen, who also became a good friend of his. He also met regularly with the Chen grandmasters Chen Zhenglei, Zhu Tiancai, Chen Shitong, Chen Qingzhou and Wang Xian, with whose sons he trained intensively in competitive push hands.

Meeting the Grand Master

In 1994, the current lineage holder of Chen Taijiquan and head of the Chen family, Grandmaster Chen Xiaowang, visited Chenjiagou (he had emigrated to Australia). Master Shen Xijing introduced him to Jan Silberstorff and asked him to take over the training of his student. As a result, Silberstorff was the first Westerner to be appointed a direct private student of GM Chen Xiaowang and was accepted into the Chen family as a member of the 20th generation. From this point onwards, Jan concentrated exclusively on the Taijiquan of his shifu Chen Xiaowang, as he found everything he had always been looking for in Taijiquan at the highest level for the first time. This was also the birth of the WCTA (later also CXWTA), which was to become the largest international association for Taijiquan, founded by GM Chen Xiaowang together with his Western master student.

GM Chen Xiaowang offered Silberstorff the opportunity to live with him in order to continue his intensive training. Silberstorff therefore followed him to Sydney, Australia, where he lived and studied with him and his sons Chen Yingjun and Chen Pengfei for many weeks every year. For the rest of the year, he accompanied GM Chen Xiaowang on his world tours and often assisted in his lessons.

Founding of associations and association activities

In Germany, Silberstorff founded WCTA-Germany, which became the leading association for Taijiquan in Germany. The German association counted over 400 training groups and schools in over 160 German cities.

Silberstorff also taught in 15 different countries. In some of these, he not only gave regular lessons, but also founded associations - for example in Brazil (2006), Mexico (2009), Chile (2010) and Cuba in 2014. The German WCTAG also had branches in Poland, Belgium and Sri Lanka, among others.

Jan Silberstorff made a significant contribution to Taijiquan being recognised as a martial art in Germany. He also promoted the sitting meditation aspect of the Chen style, which was little recognised at the time, and introduced the single and double short stick form into Chen Taijiquan after a presentation in Chenjiagou in the presence of almost all the leading grandmasters and masters.

He headed the Taijiquan department of the "Traditional Kungfu Association of Germany" (TKV) for many years, was a board member of the "German Umbrella Organisation for Qigong and Taijiquan" (DDQT), whose training system he founded, and continuously ran his own competition team, which regularly produced many tournament winners. In 2016, together with Yang style master Jan Leminsky, he founded "Team Taiji Deutschland" (TTD), a cross-style tournament organisation aimed at promoting the sporting and martial aspect of taijiquan as well as youth work.

In 2017, he founded the Latin American umbrella organisation WCTA-Lat and in 2019, together with Eric David, the movement and relaxation concept Welaxx, designed to compensate for the frequent lack of exercise in the workplace.

Together with Huizhang Ren Farong, the Louguan Tai Temple and the Chinese Academy of Sciences Xian, he founded the "Institute of Daodejing Studies" in 2013, a project to research the Daodejing. Not only were many multi-year training cycles on the Daodejing taught here, Silberstorff also published what is probably the most comprehensive commentary on the Daodejing in German in six volumes. He also became known for his unrivalled comparison of the Daodejing with the Bible, which he studied intensively throughout his life. With the help of Master Chen Ziqiang and Master Dessislav Goranov, he also intensively studied both theoretically and practically the practice material of the Chen family from the time before the ancestor Chen Changxing back to the historical founder of the style, Chen Wangting, and further back to his sources.

Together with his Chinese partner Mi Hongqing, he also organised travel groups of German, Brazilian and American students to and through China for many years, which he accompanied himself as a tour guide, translator and trainer.

Charitable commitment

At the same time, together with Sujith Jayasekara, he set up an aid project in Sri Lanka in 2004 (Silberstorff was there immediately after the tsunami) for 100 children whose parents had either lost their lives or their jobs as a result of the disaster. Later, a Buddhist monk school for children in Sri Lanka was included in the support programme.

Building on this experience, he founded the non-profit aid organisation "WCTAG hilft e.V." with Ulrike Kramer in 2009, moved to Brazil for many years and established the "Island of Children" there with her. A large plot of land was purchased on an island near the city of Salvador, on which a day care centre for 140 children was then built. Here, needy and impoverished street children not only receive regular meals every day, but also psychological and medical care, security and safety, as well as daily school lessons.

In Germany, too, "WCTAG hilft e.V." supported 180 children from Syria at the beginning of the refugee crisis in cooperation with "Kids welcome".

Internal practice

In addition to all these external activities, Jan Silberstorff attaches great importance to his inner practice. He spends half the year living in seclusion under retreat conditions so that he can devote himself fully to his taiji and meditation practice.

For many years he also practised intensive meditation retreats lasting several weeks under his Buddhist tutor Bhikkhu Analayo in a Theravada temple in Sri Lanka; visited the Daoist Louguan Tai Temple (where Laozi is said to have left his Daodejing) and his Daoist master Huizhang Ren Farong every year; lived for a year and a half in a Catholic monastery in Spain under the guidance of Father Daniel de Yzaguirre and made pilgrimages to the most famous places of pilgrimage worldwide.

However, silence always prevails in his life and he currently lives in seclusion in a village in the Bulgarian countryside.

Tournament successes

In 1993 Silberstorff was the first foreigner ever to finish third at the first international tournament in Chenjiagou, directly behind the sons of the leading grandmasters of the Chen family.

He won a total of 25 international tournaments in a row in the areas of form, weapons, tuishou and free fighting. For example, he was Grand Champion of the Dacascos Open, the largest tournament in Europe at the time, Grand Champion of the Dutch Stichting Taiji Championships, won a European Championship in Switzerland, German Championships, other Chinese Championships and many more.

After finishing his tournament career, he was regularly nominated as a referee for tournaments, including alongside Chen Taijiquan Grandmaster Feng Zhiqiang, whom he often visited in the People's Republic of China.

Silberstorff has been honoured several times by the Chinese government (including with the highest duang degree within the WCTA/CXWTA) and in 1998 was the first non-Asian to be invited to the official Masters event of the state of Singapore.

Film roles

Silberstorff appeared in several supporting roles on German and Chinese television, including in the series Faust with Heiner Lauterbach - but turned down two leading roles for feature films (1993 with Michelle Yeoh and 2003's "Der Schwarzarbeiter", which won Best Short Film in Germany) on the grounds that he did not want to be distracted from his traditional martial arts training.

Publications

Books

Chen Xiaowang, Jan Silberstorff: ''Die 5 Level des Taijiquan, von Großmeister Chen Xiaowang''
commented by Master Jan Silberstorff
Lotus-Press, Lohne 2007, ISBN 978-3-9353-6768-4
Jan Silberstorff: „Schiebende Hände“
Lotus-Press, Lohne 2008 und 2011, ISBN 978-3-9353-6740-0
Jan Silberstorff: „Laozi‘s DAO DE JING: Band 1 – DAO“
Lotus-Press, Lohne 2012, ISBN 978-3-945430-41-5
Jan Silberstorff: „Chen: Klassisches Taijiquan im lebendigen Stil“
Lotus-Press, Lohne 2014, ISBN 978-3-9353-6748-6
English Edition: "Living Taijiquan in the Classical Style", ISBN 978-1-8481-9021-4
Jan Silberstorff: „Laozi‘s DAO DE JING: Band 2 – DE“
Lotus-Press, Lohne 2014, ISBN 978-3-945430-41-5
Jan Silberstorff, Chen, Xiaowang: „Die 5 Level des Taijiquan nach Großmeister Chen Xiaowang"
commented by Master Jan Silberstorff (with DVD and CD)
Lotus-Press, Lohne 2014, ISBN 978-3-935367-08-0
Jan Silberstorff: „Das Dao De Jing im Taijiquan: Die Übungsanleitung des Laozi“
Lotus-Press, Lohne 2015, ISBN 978-3-945430-15-6
Jan Silberstorff, Judith Ritter: „Das Dao De Jing Wörterbuch“
Lotus-Press, Lohne 2016, ISBN 978-3-945430-44-6
Jan Silberstorff: „Das Qingjingjing: Das heilige Buch von der Stille und der Klarheit“
Lotus-Press, Lohne 2019, ISBN 978-3-9454-3060-6
Jan Silberstorff: „Im Anfang war das Dao“
Lotus-Press, Lohne 2020, ISBN 978-3-945430-87-3
Jan Silberstorff: „Chen Fake: Die verschollene und wiederentdeckte Biografie des großen Taiji-Meisters“
Lotus Press, Lohne 2021, ISBN 978-3-945430-98-9

DVD

Jan Silberstorff: „Das Taiji-Prinzip: Yin und Yang im Taijiquan - Erläutert und dargestellt am Chen-Stil-Taiji“
Lotus Press, Lohne 2007, ISBN 978-3-935367-19-6
Jan Silberstorff: „Schiebende Hände: Die kämpferische Seite des Taijiquan“
2011, ISBN 978-3-935367-55-4
Jan Silberstorff: „Die 9er-Form des Chen Taijiquan“
2018, ISBN 978-3-935367-95-0
Jan Silberstorff: „Chen Taiji-Schwertkampf: Ein Basisweg zum freien Fechten“
ISBN 978-3-935367-57-8
Jan Silberstorff: „Die 19er Form des Chen Taijiquan“
ISBN 978-3-945430-42-2
Jan Silberstorff: „Die Kurzstockformen des Chen Taijiquan“
ISBN 978-3-935367-92-9
Jan Silberstorff: „TAIJIdirekt - der Weg zu effektivem Selbstschutz“
2 DVDs, 2024, ISBN 978-3-910660-26-7

CD

Jan Silberstorff: ''Zhan Zhuang: Die Stehende Säule im Taijiquan''
Audio-CD, Lotus-Press, Lohne 2008, ISBN 978-3-9353-6728-8
Jan Silberstorff, Hilmar Hajek: „Zhan Zhuang, English Version: The Standing Meditation in Taijiquan“
Audio-CD, ISBN 978-3-935367-29-5