[1] Both Wu Jianquan and his father were hereditary Manchu cavalry officers of the Yellow Banner as well as the Imperial Guards Brigade, yet the Wu family were to become patriotic supporters of Sun Yat-sen.[2] At the time of the establishment of the Chinese Republic in 1912, China was in turmoil, besieged for many years economically and even militarily by several foreign powers, so Wu Jianquan and his colleagues Yang Shaohou, Yang Chengfu and Sun Lutang promoted the benefits of tai chi training on a national scale.
[3] Wu Jianquan's changes to the initial forms shown to his students included smoothing overt expressions of fa jin, jumps and other abrupt time changes in the training routines in order to make those forms easier for the general public to learn.
In 1935, he established the Jianquan Taijiquan Association on the ninth floor of the Shanghai YMCA to promote and teach tai chi.
Prominent in that number were the senior disciple, Ma Yueliang, Wu Tunan and Cheng Wing Kwong.
[4] His daughter Wu Yinghua and her husband Ma Yueliang continued running the Shanghai Jianquan Taijiquan Association until their deaths in the mid 1990s.