He showed us his photo collections, including a rare picture of his father as a youth with a muscle pose, and another with five of the greats of the Beijing internal martial arts scene, including Feng Zhi Qiang of the Chen style and Sun Lu Tang’s daughter. Gao is a very kind and gracious 70 year-old individual. Bagua is a unique cultural treasure of China, spanning thousands of years in development that has tremendous health, martial and meditation applications. This is a personal perspective I also share and the primary reason I created the Bagua Mastery Program over the past decade. Gao considers his prime responsibility is to help preserve this aspect of Chinese culture-bagua and the internal martial arts-for future generations. It emphasizes standing postures, forms and fighting applications, especially the switching hands of the single palm change, which I Chuan also favors. Gao’s family’s Gao Style Bagua combines all four forms. Likewise, his father was also an expert in hsing-i, Yang Style tai chi and the Da Cheng Chuan (I-Chuan) of Wang Xian Zai, who created the eight standing postures system. Gao explained that his grandfather was a close disciple of the Yin Fu style of bagua. In the middle of our conversation, while sitting down, we crossed hands lightly as he emphasized intent and the switching hand changes of ba gua’s single palm change. While eating I interviewed him for a new tai chi website, which we are currently developing. Quite unexpectedly, Gao then invited us to his home for lunch. Then in the traditional manner, he emphasized to her the importance of intent, or mind, over the movements. The former had just won a national tai chi competition in the 42 national wu shu style. Then his two female students did the same one with the circular walking form, the other in a 64-hand linear form. Not only that, but when my first bagua teacher Wang Shu Jin came to Beijing to pay respects at Dong Hai Chuan’s grave (founder of the modern martial art of bagua), Gao was actually his host! That re ally broke the ice. The Beijing Bagua Association was begun by his father’s close kung fu frien d Li Zi Ming in the 1980s. Meeting Gao Ji Wu – President of the Beijing Bagua AssociationĪs it turned out his ‘kung fu’ brother is Gao Ji Wu, the 5th and current presiden t of the Beijing Bagua Association.
The theoretical 30-minute trip to meet Gao takes over an hour, due to a comedy of errors typical of Beijing but we eventually arrive near his home in a small park. He makes a phone call to his bagua brother, Gao, who agrees to meet me. Then he says, “You should really see my bagua brother who is much better than me.” Li and I then engaged in a lively conversation about bagua’s technical points and then exchange hands with the single palm change for a bit. He and his partner do two types of Shaolin practices – the Muslim one of Cha Chuan, and Pi Kua, brought to Taiwan by Liu Wen Chiao and taught in the U.S. Li says Feng’s Chen style group is over there somewhere, but that Feng now has his own school and no longer comes to the park. I asked him where in the park the traditional bagua and tai chi people practice. His energy felt like a player in the scene. Meeting a Fellow Bagua PractitionerĪfter a while in this area of the park we started talking to a gentleman named Li. As we walked down the road through the park, we saw people practicing with steel whips, a traditional Chin ese weapon. We then met an elder man who pointed us in a different direction.
When we got there we asked and were directed towards where people are practicing some martial arts. Today it was extremely cold, but when you have an intuition you have to see where it leads you. Don’t ask me how but I have always had a knack for finding masters in the oddest ways. I also spent a lot of time in the park practicing a rare form of Northern Praying Mantis which I did with Li Jing Ru who is also known for bagua.īack then, Tien Tan Park was one of the largest and most important parks for martial artists to practice. I knew not who! It is important to follow your hunches in life.Īfter rousing my wife, off we went to Tien Tan (Temple of Heaven) Park, where I used to learn and practice with Feng Zher Chiang over 25 years ago. In Beijing last week I awoke super early and had the feeling I should go to the park to meet someone.