Gao Yisheng - Life

Life

Gao Yisheng was born in Da Zhuang Zi Village, Da Shan Township, Wu Di County, Shandong province, China in 1866. During his childhood his family fortune was lost so they moved to Wu Ching County, Shaogao township in Hebei province to find employment. When he was young his leg was broken by a mule cart and the bone was set incorrectly so Gao walked with a cane the rest of his life. As a boy he learned the art of Da Hung Chuan (Big Red Fist) in his home village.

In 1892 when Gao was twenty-six years old he began his study of Baguazhang with Dong Haichuan’s student Sung Zhangjun (Song Changrong). After three years of practice with Sung all he had learned was basic circle walking and the single palm change. Gao asked for more instruction, but Sung refused and Gao left to find another teacher.

At age thirty, in 1896, Gao met Zhou Yuxiang. Zhou was a talented student of Cheng Tinghua. Zhou’s skill in fighting had earned him the nickname “Peerless Palm” Zhou. Gao and Zhou “crossed hands” three times and Gao was defeated each time. Gao knelt and asked to become Zhou’s disciple. Zhou said they were too close in age for him to bring him into the system so Zhou took Gao to Beijing to meet his teacher Cheng Tinghua. Cheng accepted him as his student because of his previous experience with Sung and on Zhou Yuxiang’s recommendation. Gao learned the majority of the system from Zhou and would travel to Beijing periodically to study with Cheng, until Cheng’s death four years later. Gao learned the eight xian tian palms, weapons forms and applications.

After six years of intense study Gao began teaching Cheng Tinghua Style Ba Gua Zhang in Shao-gao township, Wu Ching County, Hebei province. Some time between 1902 and 1911 Gao also studied Xingyi Quan with Li Cunyi. In 1911 he returned to his home village Shandong province at the age of forty – five at which time he started teaching his Gao style Baguazhang.

Around 1912 Gao claimed he met Sung Yi-Ren, a Taoist from Guang Hua Mountain who gave him the Hou Tien sets. It is likely that this is a fabrication because the Chinese attribute many of their martial arts to famous yet obscure sources. Even his direct students expressed doubts about this story. There are many Baguazhang systems with application based short forms similar to Gao’s Hou Tien Sets. It is not difficult to imagine that Gao had learned some of them from Cheng or Zhuo. Another student of Zhuo Yuxiang wrote a book that had thirty-one of Gao’s sixty-four Hou Tien palms in it. Han Muxia, grand-student of Cheng Tinghua and friend of Zhuo Yuxiang’s had forty - eight straight line Baguazhang sets almost identical to Gao’s. Based on the above facts, it is possible that Gao may have standardized forty-eight of the Hou Tiens from his experience with Zhou, Cheng and Li Cunyi then rounded out the total number to sixty-four in accordance with well known Daoist cosmology.

Between 1911 and 1917, Gao moved to Yang village, Wu Ching county, Hebei province, about ten miles from Tianjin city. He taught in Yang village and in Tianjin city. Gao would also periodically return to his home village in Da Shan Township in Shandong province to teach. Tianjin was a rough and violent place with many experienced martial artists, gangsters and coarse people. Anyone who taught martial arts in Tianjin City had to have real fighting skill.

Gao’s main source of income was teaching martial arts classes so his class structure was designed to teach anyone who wanted to learn. His public classes contained multiple levels, each level of study costing more money; some students only wanted to learn Baguazhang for health, others for show, some could not afford to learn more than what was taught in the basic class and still others wanted fighting skill. He trained his students according to their interests, attitude, and physical condition.

In 1942 he fought with a Taijiquan teacher in the park. Gao defeated him but injured him so badly he died three days later. To avoid the police Gao fled to Wu Ching village outside Tianjin city. He never returned to Tianjin and spent his remaining years living in the back of a Chinese medicine shop; he died in 1951 at the age of eighty-five.