HUANG, Alfred 1921-

PERSONAL: Born October 29, 1921, in Shanghai, China; immigrated to the United States, 1980; naturalized U.S. citizen; son of Samuel C. L. and Laura S. L. (Loh) Huang; divorced. Ethnicity: "Chinese" Education: St. John's University, Shanghai, China, B.A., 1943, M.A., 1945. Politics: "Democracy." Religion: "All."

ADDRESSES: Home and offıce—Pure Land of Peace and Harmony, P.O. Box 793, Hana, HI 96713. E-mail— [email protected].

CAREER: Shanghai Normal College, Shanghai, China, dean of students, 1945-47; Shanghai University, Shanghai, dean of students, 1947-49; Ling Liang Senior High School, Shanghai, principal, 1949-57; under house arrest and sentenced to manual labor, 1957-66; imprisoned, 1966-79; Pure Land of Peace and Harmony (formerly known as New Harmony—Friends of Total Health), Hana, HI, founder and president, 1984—.

WRITINGS:

Complete Tai Chi: The Definitive Guide to Physical and Emotional Self-Improvement, Tuttle (Rutland, VT), 1993.

Creating a Better Future [and] Seven Acts, New Harmony (Paia, HI), 1996.

The Complete I Ching: The Definitive Translation, Inner Traditions (Rochester, VT), 1998.

The Century of the Dragon: Creating Your Success and Prosperity in the Twenty-first Century, Inner Traditions (Rochester, VT), 1999.

The Numerology of the I Ching: A Sourcebook of Symbols, Structures, and Traditions, Inner Traditions (Rochester, VT), 2000.

Dragon Flying in the Sky: I Ching Guide to Prosperity and Success in the Twenty-first Century, the Century of the Dragon, Vantage Press (New York, NY), 2001.

SIDELIGHTS: Alfred Huang described himself as "an I Ching Master, a professor of Taoist philosophy, a third-generation master of Wu-style tai chi chuan, chi kung, and oriental meditation, an adept of total health and promotion of wellness and prevention of illness."

Huang told CA: "My spirit journey and self-healing process began when I was eighteen months old. I got scarlet fever and could not open my mouth to eat. My mother chewed food and fed me from her own mouth. Three days later my mother was infected and passed away. My grandmother kept on feeding me the same way as my mother. From my mother and grandmother I learned the meaning and value of life: that life is to love and love is to concern the one I love, without concern for my own self.

At age twelve, I was faced with more serious illness, first tuberculosis and then typhoid fever, both of which proved nearly fatal. My faith in God and belief in self-healing power led me to practice chi kung, an ancient Chinese art of self-healing and rejuvenation. I complemented it with Eastern and Western conventional medicines and survived. After two years, I built my strength and was able to practice tai chi, another ancient Chinese self-healing and rejuvenation art. I consider all of these serious illnesses as gifts that provided opportunities for me to learn and experience various Chinese self-healing arts for wellness and rejuvenation.

"In 1957, as an influential democratic party leader, I was invited by the Chinese Communist Party to take a lead in criticizing the party at the beginning of the movement of "Letting a Hundred Flowers Blossom," initiated by Mao. Sincerely and truthfully I revealed the fundamental interests and opinions of the people whom I contacted at a convention in Shanghai. I was accused of being a first-class counter-revolutionary Rightist and put under house arrest. After enduring over nine years of manual labor, in July, 1966, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, I was imprisoned. After nine years in jail, I was sentenced to death and transferred to the prison, waiting for persecution. My faith in God and belief in the power of self-healing helped me sustain various physical and mental tortures. Three years after Mao passed away, in 1979 the supreme court of China declared me innocent and released me from prison. I weighed only eighty pounds and could barely walk. I continued to practice chi kung, Taoist meditation, [and] tai chi, and to use a Chinese healing diet and tonic herbs to build my strength and vitality. In the fall of 1980, I immigrated to the United States. I began to share with Westerners my experience of cultivating and developing better health through integrating body, mind, and spirit and promoting wellness and preventing illness.

"After teaching Total Wellness—including physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual wellness—for over twenty years, I realized that without financial wellness all other forms of wellness could barely exist. By contacting many people in America, I found that most of them over thirty years of age are without savings or in debt; they need to cure their financial illness. Many people are working very hard without accomplishing much; they need to improve their financial wellness. Many people are retired and without supplementary income; they need to restore their financial wellness. Many people are earning well, yet without watching their spending; they need to safeguard their financial wellness. I began my journey of searching for financial wellness and helping people enhance their spirituality as well as prosperity by sharing my experience of creating a better future through saving money, earning money, and spending money properly."

Discussing his book Complete Tai Chi: The Definitive Guide to Physical and Emotional Self-Improvement, Huang told CA: "After immigrating to the United States in 1980, I found that no tai chi books existed in English that truthfully introduced the history of tai chi and its spiritual aspect. As more people are moving into a new consciousness, tai chi has become part of the New Age movement. People are becoming more aware of their own responsibility for health and the unity of body, mind, and spirit. With these factors in mind, I felt a growing responsibility to introduce the intact essence of tai chi to the Western world, and to share the knowledge and experience I had inherited from my master. I decided to write a book that would bring the authentic perspective of tai chi to the Western world and influence more people to the healing power and spiritual aspect of the tai chi movements.

"In my book I try to merge ancient Chinese experience and wisdom with modern Western scientific methodology by applying the knowledge of body structure, the laws of body mechanics, as well as the laws of mechanical advantage to explain the experience and wisdom embodied in the classic works of tai chi. I created a condensed form of thirty-six postures of the Wu-style tai chi by preserving the original postures, eliminating those repetitions and following the original sequence. I anticipated that Complete Tai Chi would help people to appreciate the true history, understand the authentic theory, learn the correct forms, and enjoy the therapeutic movements of tai chi chuan."

Discussing his book The Complete I Ching: The Definitive Translation, Huang told CA: "I Ching is an ancient Chinese book of wisdom. It instructs people to think and to act properly in any situation to create good fortune and avoid misfortune and to live a valuable and meaningful life. However, after immigrating to the United States I discovered that no translations of the I Ching existed in English that were absolutely truthful to the Chinese original. They were Westernized.

I Ching is a source of much of Chinese culture. Originally, it was a handbook for divination. After Confucius and his students had written commentaries, it was crowned as the head of all Chinese classics and became a book of ancient wisdom. To the Chinese, I Ching is nothing without the commentaries on it by Confucius, the most revered sage to the Chinese. Previous editions in English have not paid proper attention to Confucius's instruction and neglected the wisdom of the Tao of changes.

"During sixteen years in America I waited for a translation that would truly reveal the innermost spirit of the book; however, my wish was not fulfilled. When I moved to Maui in July, 1993, my plan was to write a series of books on Taoist meditation, the practice of staying in stillness. One morning, during meditation, a voice came to me, urging me to make a new translation of the I Ching. At first I totally ignored it. I had never entertained such an idea. Nevertheless, the voice grew louder and louder. I could not escape it. At last, I felt that I had a karmic debt to work out a translation of the I Ching based entirely on Chinese concepts. After five years and eight revisions, the book was finally published.

Discussing what led him to write Bringing the Mystery of the I Ching to Light, an unpublished work, Huang told CA: "Originally I Ching was a book of divination constituted with symbols. The symbols are formed with lines. The lines and symbols are related to numbers. In the course of Chinese history, there appeared two major schools on how to study the I Ching. The first is the School of Moral and Reason. The second is the School of Symbols and Numbers. The first school emphasizes the meaning of the text and its moral message; the second school stresses the significance of the symbols and numbers. The School of Moral and Reason represents the Confucian School of studying the I Ching; the School of Symbols stands for the Taoist School of study. These two schools represent the yin aspect and the yang aspect of the I Ching. They are two aspects of a whole.

"The Complete I Ching emphasizes very much the Confucian approach of studying morals and reason. After I finished the book, I felt an obligation to introduce the Taoist way of studying the I Ching to the Western world. The Taoist aspect is presented in [another unpublished work and] Bringing the Mystery of the I Ching into Light. Actually, these two books should be two volumes of one book. The Taoist aspect of the I Ching has never been introduced to the Western world, and Bringing the Mystery of the I Ching into Light fills this void.

"Bringing the Mystery of the I Ching into Light introduces the origin, the development and structure of the symbols and their inter-relationship, and explains the sequence of the sixty-four hexagrams. It explores the four phases of the yang cycle in the first thirty hexagrams in the Upper Canon and the four phases of the yin cycle in the next thirty-four hexagrams in the Lower Canon. The number of hexagrams contained in the Upper Canon and Lower Canon is not even, but there is an inner balance of numbers between the two Canons. Both the Upper Canon and the Lower Canon consist of twenty-eight fundamental hexagrams. Also, there is a balanced number of yin lines with the yang lines in the two Canons. With the knowledge of the symbols and the number, the diviner would understand the revelation of the I Ching beyond the written text. The Chinese believe that if one understands the significance of the symbols and the numbers of the I Ching, one can analyze its meaning by its images because all the interpretations of the I Ching, through history, are based upon the significance of its images."

Commenting on some of his other works, Huang told CA: "The Century of the Dragon: Creating Your Success and Prosperity in the Twenty-first Century is dedicated to those who are interested in and concerned about the future of America and that of China, and to those who want to fly freely with the wings of prosperity and success. Based upon the revelation of the I Ching, I believe with confidence that the twenty-first century will be a century of prosperity and success, and eventually the great harvest of peace and harmony will be achieved in the third millennium. After I completed the two books of the I Ching, there was an urge in the depth of my heart to write a third book which applies the principles of the I Ching to evaluate the present situation and to predict the future potential of America as well as that of China.

"Deep in my heart I always have faith in the future. I believe that, if everyone living at this time makes his or her conscious decision and adapts in a productive way toward meaningful changes, then the collective consciousness of the whole humanity would turn into a powerful collective effort, and the momentum of the transformations and the changes would be strong enough to affect the present situation as well as that of the future.

"The Chinese believe that, by following the wisdom of the I Ching, everyone can be a Dragon, which is the symbol of prosperity and success. Therefore, everyone has the potential to be prosperous and successful. The Chinese also believe that everyone has a fate which is predestined, and everyone's fate is closely related to the fate of the nation and every nation's fate is closely related to the global situation. Although all these fates are predestined, they can be changed by people's subjective initiation and conscious efforts. In The Century of the Dragon I share the Chinese way of approaching personal prosperity and success and examine the situations of the two most influential Dragons of the world: one is China, an ancient Dragon which is reviving, and the other is America, a modern Dragon which is in a new cycle of development."

"I wished to write The Authentic I Ching: The I Ching for Beginners, a [not yet published] book that reveals the authentic features of the I Ching, for a long time. It unfolds the profundity of the philosophy of the I Ching, yet it is easy to read and easy to understand. It is prepared for those who have never picked up the I Ching before, and those who have read the Western version but have never touched the authentic one which is truthfully translated from the original text. People from all walks of life can enjoy the beauty of the ancient wisdom and apply it to daily lives.

"Although the book is subtitled The I Ching for Beginners, advanced students could still get nourishment from it. In this book, all the technical terms have been eliminated. What remains is the essence, simple and clear, shining and bright. It is much easier for the beginners to read, to understand, and to follow the ancient wisdom in dealing with each situation properly in his or her daily life. The explanations in this book are richer than that in The Complete I Ching, as the space of the book allows more explanation. But none of these explanations are fabricated. I Ching is such a serious and well-knitted book that all its instructions are derived from the attributes, the positions, and the interrelationships of the six lines. Each symbol, analogously speaking, is like a formula from which the conclusion is derived.

"This book is composed with interesting and profound fables, allegories and parables. They are truthfully presented. It is one of the most appropriate books for the beginners to read, and one of the most appropriate books for the advanced students to use. Since the advanced students have already known where and how those instructions come from, they need a catalyst to inspire their intuition, imagination, and creation. This book could be their catalyst."