Steffan de Graffenried

Steffan de Graffenried founded Golden Eagle Martial Arts Centers in 1997 in northern Alabama. Over the following two decades the schools taught Choy Li Fut and Yang Style Tai Chi across Huntsville, Moulton, Florence, Decatur, Athens, and Muscle Shoals, and their websites — online since the late 1990s — became an early English-language reference for Chinese martial arts history. This archive preserves those documents.[1]

Teaching

De Graffenried’s Choy Li Fut teaching was grounded in the Plum Blossom International Federation lineage, and his Tai Chi teaching followed the Yang family large frame with its classical texts. School materials from 1998 advertised the complete method — forms, 36 weapons, Chin Na, Shuai Jiao, San Shou — and the 2010s programs expanded the northern systems, documenting Bajiquan, Piguazhang, Mantis, Northern Shaolin, and Mizong Luohan with 52 weapons.[1]

Translation

The archive’s classical texts carry his translations: the Taijiquan Treatise of Wang Zongyue and Wu Yuxiang’s Four-Character Secret, both published with the source text alongside the English — the documentary convention this archive keeps.

The archive

The first goldeneaglemac.com pages in 1998 — the Nine Dragon Trident study, the Li Shuwen document, the Yang Chengfu biography — were cited by encyclopedia articles within a few years of publication. The re-digitized archive keeps those pages at their original addresses so the citations resolve, and records its editorial method openly.

[1] Golden Eagle Martial Arts Centers, historical school materials and archived site captures, 1998–2018.