Wu Quanyou was a military officer cadet of Manchu ancestry in the Yellow Banner camp (see Qing Dynasty Military) in the Forbidden City, Beijing and also a hereditary officer of the Imperial Guards Brigade.
[3] At that time, Yang Luchan was the martial arts instructor in the Imperial Guards, teaching tai chi, and in 1850 Wu Quanyou became one of his students.
[6] Wu Jianquan moved his family south from Beijing (where an important school founded by other students of his father is headquartered, popularly known as the Northern Wu style) to Shanghai in 1928, where he founded the Jianquan Taijiquan Association (鑑泉太極拳社) in 1935.
[3] Wu Gongyi then moved the family headquarters to Hong Kong in 1948, while His younger sister Wu Yinghua and her husband Ma Yueliang stayed behind to manage the original Shanghai school.
The Wu style's distinctive hand form, pushing hands and weapons trainings emphasize parallel footwork and horse stance training with the feet relatively closer together than the modern Yang or Chen styles, small circle hand techniques (although large circle techniques are trained as well) and differs from the other tai chi family styles martially with Wu style's initial focus on grappling, throws (Shuai jiao), tumbling, jumping, footsweeps, pressure point leverage and joint locks and breaks, which are trained in addition to more conventional tai chi sparring and fencing at advanced levels.