Louis Swaim lives and practices in Oakland, California. He is the translator of the highly regarded handbook on the art of taijiquan, Fu Zhongwen: Mastering Yang Style Taijiquan (North Atlantic Books, 1999). He studied Chinese history, Mandarin, and Classical Chinese at U.C. Berkeley. After completing a master's degree, he continued his language study at the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies in Taiwan. He has been a taijiquan practitioner for thirty years.