"Move as a swimming dragon — turn and reverse as a hawk in flight."
— Classical description of Bagua Zhang's movement principle
Creation of the Circular Art
Bagua Zhang (八卦掌 — "Palm of the Eight Trigrams") stands as one of China's three great internal martial arts (neijia quan 內家拳), alongside Taijiquan and Xingyiquan. It is unique in the entire world of martial arts for one radical organizing principle: the practitioner moves continuously in a circle — walking, turning, spiraling, reversing — while executing technique. Combat never ceases its motion. This circling walk is not a delivery mechanism for technique but the technique itself.
The art was created by Dong Hai Chuan (董海川, c. 1797–1882), a native of Zhujiawu Village, Wen'an County, Hebei Province. The most reliable record of his life is the memorial stele inscribed by his disciples in 1883, one year after his death — the first contemporaneous written account. According to multiple Chinese historical sources, Dong traveled south during the Xianfeng period (1851–1861), where he was inspired by Daoist circle-walking meditation practices (zhuanzhang 轉掌), and synthesized this with his existing martial knowledge of Luohan Quan (羅漢拳) and various weapons arts to create the embryonic form he initially called "転掌" — "Rotating Palm."
Dong eventually arrived in Beijing, where — for reasons that remain historically disputed — he entered the household of Prince Su (肅王府) as a palace servant. It was here, during a chance moment when court guests witnessed his extraordinary movement, that he began teaching openly. The art quickly spread through Beijing's martial arts world. Dong Hai Chuan defeated challenger after challenger, including the renowned Luohan boxing expert Yin Fu, the wrestling specialist Cheng Tinghua, and leg specialist Shi Jidong — each of whom then became a disciple. He later incorporated the metaphysics of the Yi Jing (易經 — Book of Changes) into the art's philosophy and renamed it "八卦掌" — Bagua Zhang.
After retiring from Prince Su's household in 1874, Dong taught prolifically. His memorial stele records that students requesting instruction included "prominent officials, wealthy merchants, and common people, amounting to nearly a thousand." His gravestone, twice rebuilt by disciples (first in 1883, then relocated to Wan'an Cemetery in Beijing in 1982 after Cultural Revolution destruction), lists 67 named disciples. From this root, Bagua Zhang branched into numerous distinct lineages — most prominently the Yin Fu (尹福) lineage and the Cheng Tinghua (程廷華) lineage — each reflecting the founder's philosophy of teaching each student according to their individual nature.
The Eight Trigrams
Unlike martial arts that draw their names from animals, regions, or founders, Bagua Zhang names itself after one of Chinese civilization's most ancient cosmological frameworks — the eight trigrams (bagua 八卦) of the Yi Jing (I Ching). Each trigram — composed of three lines, either broken (yin) or unbroken (yang) — represents a fundamental state of change in the universe: Heaven, Earth, Water, Fire, Thunder, Wind, Mountain, and Lake. Their 64 combinations form the complete grammar of reality's transformations.
In Bagua Zhang, these eight trigrams correspond to eight fundamental palm changes, eight body postures, eight methods of footwork, and eight strategic principles. The practitioner is understood not merely as a fighter, but as a moving embodiment of universal change — present in every direction simultaneously, committed to no fixed position, impossible to pin. The art's training methodology — walking in a circle for hours, changing direction at intervals, maintaining complete structural unity throughout — is both a physical practice and a philosophical meditation on impermanence and adaptability.
Nature of the Art
Bagua Zhang is classified as an internal art (neijia 內家) — which means its power derives not from muscular exertion but from the coordinated cultivation of internal energy, whole-body connection, and structural efficiency. Its defining characteristic is perpetual movement: there are no static stances, no fixed "ready positions," no moment of stillness. Everything flows. Its technical vocabulary is summarized in the classical formula: yi zou, er shi, san zuo, si fan (一走、二視、三坐、四翻 — "First walk, second gaze, third sit, fourth turn").
Bagua & the Imperial Guard
Of all the martial arts that penetrated China's imperial court, none was more deeply institutionalized than the Yin Fu lineage of Bagua Zhang. Yin Fu (尹福, 1840–1909) — a Hebei native who came to Beijing as a young man selling sesame rings and oil fritters, earning the street nickname "Thin Yin" — became Dong Hai Chuan's most senior disciple, listed first among the eight great disciples when his teacher died. Known also as "Iron Bracelet" (鐵鐲子) for his crushing grip, and trained originally in the hard striking arts of Luohan Quan, he merged that hard hitting tradition into Bagua's circular framework, creating what became known as "Bagua Hard Palm" (八卦硬掌).
Yin Fu worked within the Forbidden City — teaching palace guards and members of the imperial family, with records suggesting even the Guangxu Emperor received instruction from him, earning Yin the respectful title "Imperial Teacher" (帝師). During the catastrophic Boxer Rebellion and Eight-Nation Alliance invasion of 1900, Yin Fu personally escorted the Empress Dowager Cixi and Emperor Guangxu in their flight from Beijing to Xi'an — one of the most consequential protective missions in the final decades of imperial China. He died in 1909, the year after the emperor.
Yin Fu's transmission continued most prominently through his disciple Gong Bao Tian (宮寶田, 1870–1943). Born into a poor family in Qingshan Village, Muping County, Shandong, Gong came to Beijing at age thirteen through his elder brother and found employment at a rice merchant whose trade routes passed through the imperial palace. It was here that Yin Fu, recognizing exceptional potential in the young man, accepted him as a student — and personally introduced him to the aged Dong Hai Chuan for a meeting and early guidance. Gong Bao Tian trained under Yin Fu for years.
In 1897, Gong Bao Tian was summoned into the imperial palace, receiving the rank of Fourth-Grade Sword-Bearing Guard (四品帶刀侍衛), the personal protector of Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor. In the 1900 crisis, like his teacher Yin Fu, he escorted the imperial party to Xi'an and was awarded the coveted Yellow Riding Jacket (Huáng Mǎguà 黃馬褂) for his service. He later served as martial arts instructor and personal security advisor to warlord Zhang Zuolin's Fengtian Army (1922), tutored Zhang Zuolin's son Zhang Xueliang, and trained the last class of palace guards. After retirement to Shandong, he established dozens of community martial arts clubs and accepted scores of disciples — including, crucially, a young man who had arrived from Cangzhou with the master of Eight Extremities Fist: Liu Yun Qiao.
The Line of Transmission
This is the specific chain through which the Gong-style Yin-lineage Bagua Zhang reaches us today — a line that begins in Beijing's imperial palace, passes through the final years of the Qing Dynasty, crosses the chaos of Republican China's warlord era, survives two world wars, and crosses the Taiwan Strait.
Arriving in Beijing around 1865, he entered Prince Su's household (肅親王府) as a palace attendant of the seventh rank. His skills became known through a famous incident where he leapt over a crowd of spectators carrying a tea tray rather than push through them — an act of such astonishing agility that Prince Su demanded a demonstration. From then on, the art spread rapidly through Beijing's martial community. Dong taught with extraordinary discrimination — every disciple was already an accomplished martial artist bringing prior skills, and he shaped the art differently for each one. He died in 1882; the stele erected by Yin Fu and other disciples in 1883 remains the primary historical source. His tomb, destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, was rebuilt at Wan'an Cemetery in Beijing through the efforts of Bagua disciples in 1981–1982.
Yin Fu worked within the imperial palace structures as a guard and instructor, teaching numerous palace guards and reportedly the Guangxu Emperor himself — earning the name "Imperial Teacher" (帝師). He and his faction were called the "Inside Palace Lineage" (宮內派), in contrast to his fellow disciple Cheng Tinghua's "Outside Palace Lineage" (宮外派) — the two great branches that would define the art for centuries. In 1900, he led the escort of the imperial court through the chaos of the Eight-Nation Alliance invasion. He died in 1909, shortly after his imperial patron. Yin Fu personally erected the first memorial stele for his master Dong Hai Chuan in 1883 — his act of filial piety that became the art's most important historical document.
Gong's career reads as a summary of the era's history: named Fourth-Grade Sword-Bearing Palace Guard in 1897; escorted Cixi and Guangxu to Xi'an in 1900 under fire and chaos; awarded the Yellow Riding Jacket — the Qing court's highest non-military honor; served as final head of palace martial arts instruction until 1905 when he retired to Shandong. He was recruited by warlord Zhang Zuolin to serve as martial arts instructor and bodyguard to the Fengtian Army, teaching Zhang Zuolin's son the future "Young Marshal" Zhang Xueliang personally. He later ran dozens of community Bagua clubs throughout Shandong's Yantai and Muping regions.
In 1931, when the young Liu Yun Qiao arrived in Shandong's Huangxian County accompanying his own teacher Li Shu Wen, fate arranged the meeting: Liu Yun Qiao traveled to Yantai and studied Gong-style Bagua Zhang under Gong Bao Tian for approximately two years (1933–1935), receiving the complete transmission of the Yin Fu lineage's Bagua system in its Shandong form. Gong Bao Tian died at Qingshan Village in 1943 at 72. His cousin-disciple Gong Bao Zhai (宮寶齋) later retreated to Taiwan with the ROC forces in 1949 — where he and Liu Yun Qiao continued their friendship, addressing each other as fellow-disciples (師兄弟), regularly discussing and exchanging the Bagua transmission into old age.
In Taiwan's Wu Tan system, Liu Yun Qiao taught Bagua Zhang as a complementary art alongside the primary Baji Quan curriculum — described by his disciple Adam Hsu (徐紀) in a detailed lineage essay as an art Liu "taught more than Pigua, but less than Baji." The specific Gong-style characteristics he transmitted include: the ox-tongue palm form, the Luohan-derived entry sequences that Gong Bao Tian designed to ease transition from hard boxing backgrounds, the "roll, drill, struggle, wrap" (滾攢掙裹) arm cultivation method that Liu called "the golden key seen nowhere else outside this tradition," and the complete set of Gong-style palm changes. Liu Yun Qiao emphasized that the circle walk was not decoration or exercise — it was combat methodology itself, training the body to continuously transform its angle of engagement, never offering a stable target, always pressing into the opponent's blind spots.
The lineage path of this specific Bagua branch, in the words recorded by Taiwan's Adam Hsu: 北京 → 煙台 → 台北 — "Beijing → Yantai → Taipei." An ocean crossing that preserved, intact, a direct imperial-era transmission.
From the Forbidden City to Taiwan
No other lineage in Bagua Zhang traces so continuously through the centers of Chinese political power — from the Qing imperial court to the warlord armies of Republican China, to the presidential guard of the Republic of China on Taiwan. This is the path of the Dong → Yin → Gong → Liu transmission.
Bagua in Liu Yun Qiao's Complete System
Liu Yun Qiao's genius as a martial artist lay not only in mastering multiple great traditions independently, but in understanding the deep structural relationships between them. In the Wu Tan curriculum, Bagua Zhang is not a separate, hermetically sealed system — it is the complementary art that provides what Baji Quan is least able to offer.
Baji Quan specializes in explosive close-range entry: root, structure, forward momentum, and the destruction of the opponent's foundation. Its logic is linear penetration. Bagua Zhang specializes in continuous circular evasion, angular repositioning, and attacking from outside the opponent's awareness. Its logic is orbital — never where the opponent expects, always at an angle that compromises their stability. Together they create a practitioner who can both charge directly into contact and flow continuously around an opponent's defenses — the straight and the circular, the fixed and the mobile, the sudden and the sustained.
Liu Yun Qiao's disciple Adam Hsu recorded that Liu specifically noted the Gong-style arm training method — the gǔn zuān zhēng guǒ (滾攢掙裹 — roll, drill, struggle, wrap) spiral cultivation — as something "not seen anywhere outside this tradition," a genuine secret transmission from Gong Bao Tian that developed the quality of force his Baji students needed to understand. The two arts informed and deepened each other. This integration — holding both traditions at once, the hard and the circular — represents Liu Yun Qiao's greatest pedagogical contribution.