says people who have no clue! while a lot of it has devolved into that due to the longevity benefits, any real taiji person will tell you it is as deadly as you want to make it and any real taiji teacher will never separate the longevity stuff from the martial application, because the martial application ensures the correct posture and hence most longevity benefit - I've seen some amazingly fast taiji players - dont be fooled that since it is an internal martial art it doesnt mean its super effective - especially if the practitioner learns all 3 of the main chinese martial arts - taiji flows, bagua circles, xingyi (shing-ee) is straight-line. So for example if you've seen Jet Li's "The One" his main character is a bagua guy and the adversary is a xingyi guy. I think one of Jet Li's older movies is called tai chi master or something like that - its a good film, there you can actually see some martial applications of taiji.
real world applications ftw
good intention, but kung fu is a generic term, bastardized from "gongfu" which literally means energy-time - so if you ask some random old chinese person what gongfu they practice, they could respond by saying "tending my garden." I'm not even sure what people mean exactly when they say "kung fu" like the 12 animal sports? (which I think is white crane)