Cheng Tinghua — Eyeglasses Cheng and the swimming-body Bagua

Why Cheng Tinghua matters here

If Dong Haichuan founded Baguazhang, Cheng Tinghua (程廷華) is one of the main reasons the art spread. Yin Fu is remembered as Dong’s earliest long-term disciple; Cheng is remembered as the teacher who took Bagua into the open — many students, a recognisable flavour of practice, and a web of friendships that tied Bagua to Xingyiquan across Beijing and Tianjin.

For The Moral Dragon that history is not abstract. Our Gao-style syllabus sits in the Cheng branch: Gao Yisheng trained under Zhou Yuxiang (a Cheng-line crashing-palm specialist) and was later introduced to Cheng Tinghua himself. What we call Yizong — pre-heaven circle work and the sixty-four post-heaven palms — grows from that stream.

From Shen County to Beijing

Cheng Tinghua (also known as Cheng Yingfang) was born in 1848 in the Cheng family village, Shen County, Hebei. As a young man he left home for Beijing and apprenticed with an eyeglasses-maker. The trade stuck: martial artists knew him as Eyeglasses Cheng (眼镜程).

He was already serious about martial skill before Bagua. In Beijing he trained Chinese wrestling — shuai jiao — including the quicker Baoding “fast” style that throws as soon as contact is made and mixes locking and striking with the throw. Stories of his shop practice emphasise legs and patience: grinding glass while holding a seated posture with no chair beneath him, switching legs when one tired.

By the mid-1870s Dong Haichuan’s reputation in Beijing was high. Around 1876, when Cheng was about twenty-eight, he sought Dong out — encouraged, some accounts say, by early Bagua men such as Yin Fu and Shi Jidong. Dong tested him with wrestling; Cheng could not land cleanly, knelt, and asked to study. Research associated with Dong’s memorial listings often places Cheng among the earliest recorded Bagua disciples. Dong died in 1882, so Cheng’s time with him was short — perhaps five or six years — but formative.

Teaching, friendship, and the “internal” arts

Cheng taught more openly than many of Dong’s students. That generosity is part of why Cheng-branch Bagua appears so widely later. He also moved in a circle of skilled friends — among them Xingyi men such as Li Cunyi and Zhang Zhaodong — who exchanged skill and mutual respect rather than treating Bagua and Xingyi as sealed boxes.

Those friendships matter for how we train today. Li Cunyi and Zhang Zhaodong sit behind the Xingyi that later travelled with Gao Yisheng and Zhang Junfeng; Cheng sits behind the Bagua. When Luo Dexiu teaches Bagua and Xingyi together, and when we do the same in Bath, we are continuing a pattern that was already visible in Cheng’s generation.

Cheng’s circle is also linked — for better and worse — with the later habit of grouping Taiji, Xingyi, and Bagua as “internal” or “Wudang” arts. The historical picture is messier than the marketing; what remains useful is the practical idea that these arts can share a roof without pretending they share a single mythical origin.

Swimming body, dragon claw

After Dong’s death Cheng organised what he had learned and what his own body already knew. The result is usually called Cheng-style swimming-body Bagua (you shen bagua).

In broad strokes — and every later teacher adds their own detail — Cheng-branch work tends toward:

• Dragon-claw palms used for gripping, coiling, and unbalancing at close range
• Fast body turning that keeps the hands and torso connected
• Footwork that closes distance, hooks, and traps rather than only fleeing
• A relatively open, upright frame compared with the tighter Yin Fu flavour

Yin Fu’s Bagua is often associated with the ox-tongue palm, adhering and piercing, and a more evasive foot method. The contrast is a teaching tool, not a claim that either master owned only one idea. Cheng’s wrestling past makes the swimming-body emphasis feel inevitable: get in, take structure, throw or finish.

Training outlines recorded from later Cheng-line teachers usually move from standing and circle-walking postures, through mud-stepping and direction-changing footwork, into mother palms (single, double, and smooth changing), then into linked and continuous “swimming body” sets. Different branches vary the later forms; the flavour of coiling entry and whole-body change is the common thread.

Sons, village, and a wide tree

Cheng taught in Beijing and also took the art home. On visits to Shen County he taught villagers; after his death his brother Cheng Dianhua and sons — notably Cheng Youlong and Cheng Youxin — continued that village transmission. That rural line is often treated as especially close to the family practice.

Famous names swirl around Cheng’s wider teaching: Sun Lutang studied with him for a few years and later published widely; Beijing elders interviewed in the 1990s often ranked other Cheng-line fighters higher for pure Bagua skill. What matters historically is the breadth of the tree. Much of the Bagua that left Beijing for Tianjin and beyond can be traced, directly or by association, through Cheng’s generation.

Death in 1900

Cheng Tinghua was killed during the foreign occupation of Beijing in 1900, aged fifty-two. Popular retellings cast him as a lone patriot cutting down a German patrol. A more sober version is that German soldiers were forcing locals into a work detail near the Chongwen Gate area where Cheng’s shop stood. Cheng resisted, a fight broke out, he drew a short knife, and he was shot while trying to escape over a wall.

Either way, the teacher who had opened Bagua to so many students was gone at the height of his influence. The art continued through family, disciples, and the Xingyi friends who had already crossed paths with him.

From Cheng to Gao to Yizong

The line that reaches our school runs roughly like this:

Dong Haichuan → Cheng Tinghua → Zhou Yuxiang → Gao Yisheng → Zhang Junfeng → the Hong brothers → Luo Dexiu → our classes in Bath.

Zhou Yuxiang’s crashing palm (zhuang zhang) is the bridge story every Gao-style student hears: Gao fought him, lost three times, and asked to become his student. Because they were close in age, Zhou would not formally bring Gao into the system himself — instead he took Gao to Beijing and presented him to Cheng Tinghua, who accepted him. Gao then learned most of his Bagua from Zhou, visiting Cheng periodically until Cheng’s death in 1900. Decades later, Gao organised that Cheng-branch material into the clear pre-heaven / post-heaven syllabus and named his line Yizong (易宗).

When we walk the circle, change palms, or run a post-heaven line, we are still inside that Cheng-branch problem: how to keep the body swimming, the hands alive, and the wrestling mind close — without losing the structure Dong planted on the circle.

Sources

This article summarises and retells material from:

• Dan Miller, “The Pa Kua Chang of Ch’eng T’ing-Hua,” Pa Kua Chang Journal Vol. 3 No. 2 (January/February 1993)
• Dan Miller, “Ba Gua Zhang in the Cheng Family Village,” Pa Kua Chang Journal Vol. 4 No. 4 (May/June 1994)

Spellings here follow the pinyin used elsewhere on this site (Cheng Tinghua, Dong Haichuan, Gao Yisheng). The journals use Wade–Giles (Ch’eng T’ing-Hua, Tung Hai-Ch’uan, Kao I-Sheng).

Further reading on this site: Yizong lineage, Baguazhang, and Post-Heaven Baguazhang.