Both my Tai Chi teach­ers eschew the title of “Master”, and pre­fer to be called by their first names. As I’ve had it explained to me, even the true mas­ters feel like they need a cou­ple extra life­times to com­plete­ly mas­ter Tai Chi. This is what my teach­ers com­pare them­selves to, so I sus­pect they feel it erro­neous to use the same title, even though they’ve been teach­ing for decades.

I find it very awk­ward. In Chinese, the word “Master” or “Sifu” implies a teacher, not nec­es­sar­i­ly a lev­el of skill.

When I was young, I called my cousin by his Chinese name, because I thought it was insult­ing to address him by his rela­tion­al title of biu dai for “mater­nal younger male cousin” (or “moth­er’s sib­lings’ son who is younger than me”). I thought the “dai” part referred to some­one as “under”, the way “junior” could be used pejo­ra­tive­ly in English. The thing I did­n’t under­stand was that it was appro­pri­ate, per­haps even more appro­pri­ate than address­ing him by name. I’ve since become privy to the com­plex rules of Chinese names and titles, espe­cial­ly rela­tion­al fam­i­ly ones.

People con­tin­ue this tra­di­tion though, and even as par­ents, they’ll address their elders the same way. It’s a way of rec­og­niz­ing and respect­ing the roles in the fam­i­ly. Even though my Tai Chi teacher is Occidental, I feel com­pelled to address my teacher as “Master”, instead of “Mike”.

And it’s hard habit for me to break.