Dong Haichuan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dong Haichuan

Dong Haichuan (董海川) was born on the 13th of October 1797 (or 1813) in Zhu village, Ju Jia Wu Township, Wen An County, Hebei Province, China and died on the 25th of October 1882 in Beijing. He is widely credited as the founder of Baguazhang and most, if not all, existing schools of Baguazhang place Dong Haichuan at the beginning of their lineage.

As a child and young man he trained the martial arts of his village intensely. The arts were probably Shaolin-based and may have included Ba Fan Quan, Hong Quan, Xing Men Quan, and Jin Gang Quan. These were the arts being taught in and around Dong’s village at this time according to Pa Kua Journal 3-1.

His family is thought to have been poor so at some point around 1853 Dong left Hebei Province to seek work elsewhere. In many accounts he is described as spending his youth travelling, penniless, and often getting in trouble. But he, even by his own claims, continued to study martial arts intensely during his travels. Where, by whom and what he was taught varies depending on the source. But it is generally accepted that, during this time, Dong studied Daoist training methods that included some kind of circle walking practice. He synthesized his previous experience with his village arts, what he had learned in his travels and his Daoist experiences to create a unique art originally called Zhuan Zhang (Turning Palms). Zhuan Zhang was Ba Gua Zhang in its formative years.

Around 1864 Dong arrived in Beijing and he got a service job at the residence of the prince of Su. Later Prince Su gave him the job of tax collector. Dong and his top student Yin Fu went to Mongolia to collect taxes for ten years. Upon his return he left the princes household and he began to teach publicly, giving up all other occupations to fully devote himself to developing and teaching Baguazhang. It is generally believed that among his later students he only accepted experienced martial artists. He consistently taught only the first three palms, Single Change Palm, Double Change Palm and the Smooth Body Palm and then he would vary the last five depending on the individuals’ previous martial arts experience. It was also in his public teaching period that the art was given the name Baguazhang (eight tri-gram palm).

In his later years he was poor and lived with Yin Fu's student Ma Gui. Ma owned a lumber yard and Dong lived on the premises. He died in 1882.

Baguazhang had become a well-known fighting style in Beijing and northern China by the late-1800s and Dong Haichuan and his students became famous. This gave rise to many fictitious stories and written pulp novels which were adopted as fact.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

Smith, Robert W. "Chinese Boxing", ISBN 1-55643-085-X
Liang, Shou-Yu; Yang, Jwing-Ming; Wu, Wen-Ching "Baguazhang : Emei Baguazhang Theory and Applications", pp 36-38, ISBN 0-940871-30-0
Smith, Robert W.; Pittman, Allen "Pa-Kua - Eight Trigram Boxing" pp 19-22, ISBN 0-8048-1618-2