Today's memorial was a perfect celebration/evocation/remembrance of Ed.  It was so important to him to create families/community, and the turnout was a testament to his success.  In addition to the program itself, mingling, greeting old friends, meeting new ones from other parts of his life was a real gift.

    Deep gratitude to Ananda, Antonia, Ellyce, Cathy, Amelia, Will, George, and Steve for making this happen.  And of course, deep gratitude to Ed.  We all miss him, yet know he is always with us.

As we gather our memories, I want to include here something I wrote to Ed on his 88th Birthday Scroll:

When I read the dedication in Lon Po Po, “To all the wolves of the world for lending their good name as a tangible symbol for our darkness,“  my heart opened.   Your ability to see the wolf independent of any use we had for him,  to recognize the wolf’s own being, prompted something in me, astonished, to exclaim: “Ah, this is what a human being can be!”  This generous. This alive.

My heart opened still more watching as you cared for the whole community.  I see this in so many ways, including in your book The House Baba Built. You were able to see what your father was doing. Your father built the house for the benefit of many but you recognized what he was doing, created the book to share that caring way of being, and published his letter  “… A successful life and a happy life is one as measured by how much you have accomplished for others not one as measured by how much you’ve done for yourself.”

You live this way. I see how, having been able to study art traditions from around the world and develop your own artistry with the aid of public libraries, and wanting that expanded life for everyone, you work to keep public libraries alive, open and free for those who come after you.

I feel your intense aliveness walking through your house, descending downstairs and across and then up a few steps and over a passage and more stairs and everywhere, an unexpected treasure, powerful words on a wall or a drawing or chart or book galleries or photos from a rich youth or a lantern you’ve created to project poetry into a room or a mobile hanging from the ceiling and me, sighing inside: “Ah, this is what a human being can be!”   This intense aliveness is possible on this earth.

Walking with you through the house, you lift a plank off a bench and there is your life, the details painstakingly noted, harvested, digested, cared for.   Elsewhere, you keep note of every single person you have encountered since you arrived in the US.  Each has contributed to your life, you tell me, especially the people with whom you had difficulties. I see this is possible: to recognize the inter-connectedness of our lives, the value of each life as it intersects our own.

I see too how you do not let the treasures offered by painful experiences escape you. You allow the pain to grow you. You let your pain-radiating knees carry you onto a path you never imagined, one that led to Chang Man Ching and the rest of your life.

Sometimes I am shy with you, go silent, because I am standing there, entirely thunderstruck, feeling: “Ah, this is what a human being can be!”

Dear Antonia and Ananda,

I am so disappointed that I could not be there today to celebrate in the Memorial to your father, Ed Young. I had an allergic reaction at 10:30 am and the medication I need to take completely knocked me out! I slept for 3 hours and missed the event I had so wanted to join.

I have such admiration for Ed. He was brilliant in his thoughts and ways. I often felt like I should take notes whenever we spoke.

He became my friend when I told him how I used many of his books in my teaching. He even visited my school and presented Voices of the Heart to a select group. The children made their own paper quilt  which hung in his studio.

You may remember that you visited my home on Cape Cod. Another year you rented a little cottage across the sand road. I have a 4 foot scroll of all the shells on my windowsill that he drew one day while there. I also have a painting entitled “Ancietnt Matiner” that he gave me as a gift. 

Many years have passed and now memories are all that remain. If there is any portion of today’s service that is being recorded, PLEASE let me know. 

Sincerely,

Linda Cimillo 

I was fortunate to study with Professor Cheng in the 60s and 70s, with Ed as one of my teachers. Ed's tai chi form was impeccable. More amazing was that he seemed to bring the same internal quality to everything he did. We were a disparate group of young people in our 20s who didn't know anything about China. After class we would eat lo mein, congee, and egg foo young at 17 Mott Street. Ed took a group of us to a fine Chinese restaurant and ordered for us, telling us what the unusual (to us) ingredients were and how to eat them.

We went to an apartment that perhaps Ed was going to rent. There was an old refrigerator with a round form on the top, which I had never seen before. I exclaimed, "Look at that!" Most people would have thought this was an old piece of junk, but Ed turned to me and said, "Isn't it beautiful!" At the time I didn't know anything about his background in graphic arts.

Ed did not share much about his childhood, but some how he indicated that sometimes there was not much food. One day, the family's chef produced a dinner with meat. Afterward, the cat was missing. Ed asked the chef, "Where is the cat?" I don't believe he got an answer.

When Professor Cheng passed, Ed said that he wasn't prepared for this. Remarkable as it may seem now, at the time Ed said that he thought they would grow old together.

After several years of studying tai chi, I was in a Correction Class with Ed as teacher. One day he went through the entire form telling us at which points to sink down instead of moving more forward or back. Through all these years I remember that brilliant correction, which for me opened up the profound energy of tai chi.

Edwina Williams (Edwina Gluck  back then) 

When I learned my beloved teacher Ed Young had died, I heard myself saying in my head, “He was a great man.” But then I instantly realized that no, that was wrong. Being great is the booby prize. Ed Young was so much more than great. He was deeply, fully alive. A rare achievement. And in his aliveness he created so much good for so many people. The good he has been creating in so many ways stays with us, a forever blessing.

I used to read Ed’s books over and over again to my grand-nephew Clinton when he was younger. One book we loved was Lon Po Po, a Chinese story similar to Little Red Riding Hood with its wicked wolf. And we never tired of The Seven Blind Mice.

When Clinton, now seven, visited me recently in Plymouth, Massachusetts, I said, “You know, Ed Young died.”

“Yes,” he said. “Mom told me.”

“I loved him,” I said.

“I loved him, too,” he replied.

We then drew together as he prepares for the book he wants to illustrate and write, Plymouth Pebble. He told me he wants to become an author and illustrator. I had had no idea the deep influence Ed was having on this child as he listened ravenously to his books and savored the illustrations.

“If in accord with the Tao, one is everlasting,

“And even though his body ceases to be, he is not destroyed.”

(Lao-Tzu: “My words are very easy to understand” – Cheng Man-ching.)

Ed and my dad, Kuo-ho Chang of Hastings, were friends. Over a lifetime of friendship, he became my friend too.  My father worked for the United Nations and could enter China (and get back out)  when others could not. He told me a story of meeting Ed's parents in China. I don't know the year but it was a pivotal moment in Ed's life, when he chose to be an artist.  For many years it was dangerous for those in America to communicate with family in China, and vice-versa. This severing of communication between separated family was a great hardship.  Ed's family must have known someone from New York  was visiting Shanghai and could bring or send messages to their son.   Ed's parents asked my dad to give a package to  Ed. Dad returned to Hastings and gave Ed the gift (he did to know Ed at the time).  It turned out to be a very important package: it contained calligraphy pens other painting and art supplies. Ed parents were conveying to Ed they supported his decision to become an artist, which Ed did not know. This is how the friendship between Dad and Ed began.  

Over the years, but especially in the past fifteen or twenty, Ed and I became friends too. He knew I was writing a mystery-memoir-daughter-father story about my search for my Chinese grandmother (who died mysteriously in Shanghai in 1936). He'd always asked about my progress, translated inscriptions on art as best he could, and suggested people I might contact, including a writer neighbor of his daughter, and another friend who also grew up in Shanghai to whom he gave a gigantic cloth map (he made) of the International Settlement of Shanghai.   When my father died in 2013, he wrote a poem and created an art card dedicated to him.  

In 2021, I traveled to White Plains with my husband to go to Ed's exhibit and to lunch with him.  My parents had moved in with us (in Boston)  in 2012, and I'd hardly been back to Hastings, except for their memorials. Just this past June, Ed recommended a book to me, the Last Kings of Shanghai: The Rival Jewish Dynasties That Helped Create Modern China, by Jonathan Kaufman, with a note that said, this is the Shanghai your father and I grew up in.  I read it right away. It was marvelous to have a friend like Ed. 

I thought my husband and I would be coming to the memorial today, but at the last minute, we can not. I will be watching from here.  I wish I could have met others who knew and loved Ed, and his two daughters and their family. He was an inspiration and source of love to so many. 

Rita Chang

Barbara DaCosta

Several years ago, I invited Ed to do a presentation on Professor Cheng's paintings for the local T''ai Chi community here in DC. After his presentation, he answered questions posed by those attending. One of the questions was, "What was the most amazing thing about Professor Cheng?" Ed took a long pause, then, choking back his emotions, replied, "that he was just a man, a man who was willing to do the work". He elaborated, but those words, and the emotion behind them have never left me. Ed was also someone who was wiling to "do the work". He was a man who "walked the walk".

I was fortunate to have met him.

I was a Tai Chi student of Ed’s over 50 years ago in NYC.  

I have a memory from a Tai Chi corrections class in Ed’s west side apartment: probably 1971 or 72. He had a bad case of poison ivy, his first encounter with this awful stuff, and his attitude about it struck me as so unusual. Although he was obviously uncomfortable, he seemed mostly CURIOUS about it, asking us students what we knew and did we have any remedies?. As I remember this, although he was suffering quite a bit, he seemed to be going through this experience without being caught by it; a direct lesson and one that’s stuck with me for decades.

I’m so nourished by all these pictures and stories on this website . Ed was among a few great teachers I had. It’s lovely for me to know that he moved through his own life with the same direct wisdom, balance, and generosity of spirit I knew. I was lucky to encounter him, even briefly, so early in my own life.

In the currents of life, Ed Young was a glistening gem, polished, unique, smooth, endearing. He understood the nuances of East and West and navigated both with grace and understated charm. He radiated the basics of Tai Chi; understood the power of inner strength.

Professor Cheng Man Ching once pointed out that Chi is everywhere. Chi enables a blade of grass to root, and a mountain to stand. Yin and Yang as one.

Ed Young's life embodied that understanding and he lived it, shared it, taught it.

His passing is a special loss for those of us in that first generation of American students fortunate enough to have learned directly from Professor Cheng in the 1960s. It was Professor Cheng's vision to bring Tai Chi to the United States. Ed has over the pass 50 years, contributed to that vision with his teachings, and work within the Tai Chi community.

Thank you, Ed.

Remembering and Honoring Ed Young

written by Joann Lee