My China Dream | Rose Oliver

A British tai chi master in China lives the aspiration she shared with her late husband, who was her first teacher. Wu Ni reports in Shanghai.

A back injury led Briton Rose Oliver to tai chi, which led her to her husband and then took both of them to China. But three years after moving to Shanghai to pursue their dream, Oliver's husband died, leaving her alone to follow their shared passion for tai chi.

Briton Rose Oliver practices tai chi with her students at a Shanghai park. Gao Erqiang / China Daily

Oliver teaches tai chi to her students in her school in Shanghai. Provided to China Daily

Twenty years ago, Oliver's back injury crushed her childhood dream of becoming a ballerina.

But the injury did lead her to tai chi, a martial art typically practiced in slow motion. Her initial hope was to improve her health.

She later married her instructor, Rey Nelson, and founded a school with him, teaching the martial art to more than 10,000 students over eight years.

The 49-year-old recalls the injury that left her bedridden for six months when she was 21 years old and with constant pain for decades.

"I was active and could not bear resting in bed," she recalls.

"But the soft tissue injuries were hard to heal. I thought I had to find some way to recover my health."

Oliver saw a poster for a tai chi class and decided to try the "mysterious exotic sport". She was struck by the beautiful movements and the "nice, patient instructor" - Nelson.

The couple later opened a tai chi school in the United Kingdom that attracted thousands. But they found themselves in a bottleneck.

"It was not enough for us to improve ourselves when we just learned from tai chi masters for two or four weeks a year," she says.

So the couple moved to Shanghai in 2000. They taught English in universities and happily learned tai chi under various gurus. After years of practice, Oliver found her occasional backaches had disappeared.

But her greatest pain came when her husband died in 2003.

She thought of giving up.