Wang Mao Zhai's Iron Triangle of Wu Style Tai Chi

The Northern school of Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan flourished under Wang Mao Zhai (1862–1940), founding disciple of the art’s founder Wu Chuan Yau. In the Republican era, Beijing knew the third generation by name — Chao T’ieh An, Xiu Pi Xun, Wang Tzu Ying, Yang Yu Ting, Wu Tu Nan — under the nickname the “Five Tiger Generals of Tai Chi.” Sources state it plainly: among Wang Mao Zhai’s students, Wang Tzu Ying, Chao T’ieh An, and Xiu Pi Xun were universally acknowledged as his three foremost disciples. One was the only surviving son carrying the family art; one was a bookkeeper who could not learn a single posture in six months; one was a Baguazhang fighter who lost in a single touch and converted. Three different lives, gathered around one master — the iron triangle of the Northern school.

Key Facts

Wang Tzu Ying (Wang Chieh, courtesy Tzu Ying, 1902–1967), second son of Wang Mao Zhai and the only one of three brothers to reach adulthood; led the Northern school after his father’s death in 1940, famed for push hands “unmatched in Beijing.”
Chao T’ieh An (Chao Ch’ung Yu, courtesy T’ieh An, also Ch’i T’ing, b. 1881, disappearance date unknown), began training in his thirties, later admitted to both Wang Mao Zhai and Wu Chien Chuan — the senior disciple of two grandmasters, and Wu Chien Chuan’s sole traveling companion when he went south to Shanghai in 1928.
Xiu Pi Xun (1892–1976), the ninth admitted disciple, who lost to Wang Mao Zhai in a 1918 challenge and later preserved the original old frame in Shandong (covered in a separate article).
Wang Tzu Ying’s art: “seizing and neutralizing in weightlessness, issuing with the weight of Mount Tai.” Chao T’ieh An was known for the “Seven Stars Hand” and “Five Elements Jin,” his issuing famed as cold, crisp, and fast.
After the war Chao T’ieh An quietly vanished without a trace; Wang Tzu Ying was persecuted to death during the Cultural Revolution (1967).
Wang T’i (courtesy Tzu Ch’ao) appears only in lineage records — a silent link of transmission, noted here as such.

Wang Tzu Ying: The Young Master Who Led the Northern School

Wang Tzu Ying stood over 1.8 meters tall. Wang Mao Zhai’s eldest son died young of typhoid after training and bathing — the father’s hair turned white overnight — and of three brothers only Wang Tzu Ying survived to inherit the family art in full: the Thirteen-Posture Tai Chi Sabre, the four-corner push hands (ch’en fen), and the fourth and fifth stages of Tai Chi internal work.

He served at the Beijing Physical Education Research Society and the Imperial Ancestral Temple Tai Chi association. To be precise: the association’s chief instructor was Wang Mao Zhai, its assistant Yang Yu Ting; Wang Tzu Ying’s role was that of a senior-uncle-generation advisor — yet in practice he carried much of the push hands teaching, and fourth-generation figures like Li Ching Wu and Wang Pei Sheng all received his careful guidance. Li Ching Wu recalled that in push hands he “was further favored by the patient guidance of Uncle Wang Tzu Ying, Wang Mao Zhai’s second son, who excelled at it.” The Dictionary of Chinese Tai Chi Chuan records that “from the 1940s to the 1960s his push hands skill ranked first-class nationwide, and in the 1950s–60s he judged Beijing municipal and national wushu competitions.”

His style was unmistakable: powerfully built, yet never winning by force — purely by listening and neutralizing. Li Ching Wu summed up the feel of his issuing:

Wang Tzu Ying’s kung fu seizes and neutralizes in weightlessness, and issues with the weight of Mount Tai — one feels forever on the edge of an abyss.

No stiff force to be found, yet impossible to grasp or control; lose your attention for a moment and you were already flying.

When Wang Mao Zhai died in 1940, Wang Tzu Ying took over the Northern school. After 1949 a national leader — himself once his student — invited him to teach at the cadres’ sanatorium in Beidaihe. He declined, citing his “capitalist background and bad temper,” and recommended his senior nephew Li Ching Wu instead — a refusal that made Li’s teaching career there possible, and showed a character that never flattered. In the Cultural Revolution he was dragged from Beijing back to his home county of Yexian, Shandong, and died unjustly in 1967. His students included Wang Yu Wei, Yao Chun Ch’ien, Mao Yu Feng, and Li Kuang T’i.

Two family anecdotes survive. The refused sword: a prince of the fallen dynasty offered a precious blade to study under Wang Mao Zhai and was turned away; he gave it to Wang Tzu Ying instead and was accepted — Wang Mao Zhai scolded his son roundly when he found out. The silver on the street: Wang Mao Zhai once poured most of a bag of silver — forty strings — to a total stranger who asked for help. The boy was puzzled; the father said only: “Their family is in hardship. The words alone were enough.” Kindness and stubbornness, in both generations alike.

Chao T’ieh An: The Bookkeeper Who Couldn’t Learn Grasp Bird’s Tail

Chao T’ieh An was born in 1881, in the Guangxu reign. He took up the art in his thirties — “a bookkeeper with a body of loose flesh,” without the slightest foundation. After six months he still could not learn a single Grasp Bird’s Tail. Wang Mao Zhai said: “Give it up.” Chao begged: “Then let me simply keep following you.”

From then on he was always first to arrive and last to leave the training ground, in every season. Within a few years the transformation was real:

After three years of practice he sent both Xiu Pi Xun, the Baguazhang fighter, and “Steamed-Bun Kuo,” who studied Baguazhang alongside Yang Yu Ting, flying more than two meters — and it was witnessing this that decided Yang Yu Ting to enroll under Wang Mao Zhai.

One issuing changed the course of another future grandmaster’s life.

The Wisteria Incident: One Posture, Two Masters’ Disciple

One morning a famous internal-arts expert — a townsman and cousin of Wang Mao Zhai — arrived at the training ground and demanded haughtily: “How do you actually use Grasp Bird’s Tail?” — moving as he spoke. Forced into it, Chao issued the posture and sent the man flying a full zhang into the wisteria trellis, petals raining down.

Believing he had struck an elder, Chao went to Wang Mao Zhai’s house to confess. Wang heard the story — and instead of reproaching him, saw his potential and recommended him to his own junior brother, Wu Chien Chuan. Thus Chao became the admitted disciple of two grandmasters, a standing unmatched in the Wu school.

When Wu Chien Chuan went south to Shanghai in 1928, the only disciple who traveled with him was Chao T’ieh An (he returned north early on other business). In the 1933 group photograph of the Wu Style fellow disciples — front row, Wang Mao Zhai second from right, Kuo Sung T’ing third from right — Chao stands first on the right.

The Seven Stars Hand and the Five Elements Jin

Chao never married, devoting himself entirely to the art. First-class in push hands within the school, he was known across northern martial circles for the exquisite “Five Elements Jin” in his hands, and for the “Seven Stars Hand.” Later generations summarized his issuing in three words — cold, crisp, fast:

Cold: with “Embracing Seven Stars” he bounced a provocateur a full zhang into a wall hung with clothes, leaving blood on the wooden pegs.
Crisp: one Grasp Bird’s Tail launched the internal-arts expert beyond the trellis — clean, with nothing wasted.
Fast: in “hand conversation” with Li Ching Wu, a few exchanges left the younger man gasping and immobilized while Chao remained perfectly composed. Li described the quality: “It was like punching cotton — no way to apply force — as if my limbs were being bound by invisible ropes.”

The Manuscript and the Vanishing

Chao took few students — Li Ching Wu and Sun Feng Ch’iu among them. Around the autumn of 1945, after the war’s end, he solemnly passed to Li Ching Wu his treasured Tai Chi Chuan Secret Manual (Taiji Mitzung): Wu Chien Chuan’s personally transmitted hand-copied volume, 32-octavo thread-bound, a deep purplish-red cover about a centimeter thick, brush-written in fine small regular script. The colophon on its last page reads:

“Seven days before the Double Ninth of the kuei-yu year (1933), Brother T’ieh An taught me the art and entrusted this copy to be made… written by your junior fellow, Chin Yu Tsung.”

Li Ching Wu treasured the book and rarely showed it. After Li’s death in 1997 the original disappeared — fortunately disciples’ hand copies survive.

As for Chao himself: after the victory of 1945 he quietly withdrew and was never heard of again. Three legends circulate: that he was a secret agent of the Nationalists — the mysterious “Number One of the T’ien roster” said to be him; that he left via Chongqing for Taiwan under a new name; that he died not long after the war. Nothing can be verified. The senior disciple of two grandmasters exited in the most mysterious way possible, leaving behind a purplish-red manuscript.

Xiu Pi Xun: From Baguazhang to Keeper of the Old Frame

The third of the triangle, Xiu Pi Xun, challenged Wang Mao Zhai in 1918 as a hardened Baguazhang man, lost in a single touch, knelt, followed the master to Beijing for eight years of unlearning his hard force, then returned home around 1926 — preserving Wang Mao Zhai’s original frame and the Thirteen Sabres. His lineage was inscribed as Shandong provincial intangible cultural heritage in 2009. His full story has its own article:

Xiu Pi Xun: Keeping the Old Frame of Wu Style Tai Chi

The Silent Link: Wang T’i

One more of Wang Mao Zhai’s disciples must be mentioned: Wang T’i, courtesy Tzu Ch’ao. He appears almost only in lineage lists — “the Northern school descends from Grandmaster Wang Mao Zhai, whose main students included Wang Chieh (Tzu Ying), Wang T’i (Tzu Ch’ao), Chao T’ieh An, Hsiu P’i Hsun, Peng Kuang I (Jen Hsuan), and Yang Yu Ting,” with second-generation students such as Chao An Hsiang. No independent biography survives in public records, and there is no basis for tales of “oral manuals” or “old photographs” attributed to him.

But a name in the lineage has its own weight: a tradition continues not only through those with the best stories, but also through those who leave no anecdotes — only continuity. Wang T’i belongs to the latter. We record his place honestly, and leave the rest unspoken.

After the Triangle

After Wang Tzu Ying, Chao T’ieh An, and Xiu Pi Xun, the Northern school’s flame split into streams: Li Ching Wu taught and passed the manuscript at Beidaihe; Yang Yu Ting’s textbook-style teaching raised tens of thousands of students (his own article in this series); the Hsiu family still guards the old frame in Laizhou. When Wang Mao Zhai exited the stage in 1940, the people around him each answered the same question in their own way: how does kung fu survive an age of turmoil? Wang Tzu Ying’s answer was integrity. Chao T’ieh An’s answer was disappearance. Xiu Pi Xun’s answer was going home. And the art itself — the art remained.

Timeline

1881 — Chao T’ieh An born (Guangxu reign)
1902 — Wang Tzu Ying born
c. 1910s — Chao T’ieh An joins Wang Mao Zhai in his thirties; after the wisteria incident, also admitted by Wu Chien Chuan
1918 — Xiu Pi Xun loses to Wang Mao Zhai and becomes his ninth admitted disciple
1928 — Wu Chien Chuan goes south to Shanghai; Chao T’ieh An is his sole traveling disciple
1933 — group photograph of the Wu Style disciples; Chao stands front right
1940 — Wang Mao Zhai dies; Wang Tzu Ying leads the Northern school
c. 1945 — Chao T’ieh An passes the Tai Chi Secret Manual to Li Ching Wu, then vanishes
1950s–60s — Wang Tzu Ying judges Beijing municipal and national wushu competitions
1967 — Wang Tzu Ying dies unjustly in the Cultural Revolution
1997 — Li Ching Wu dies; the original manuscript’s whereabouts unknown