Wu Kung Yi and Wu Kung Cho: Stepping Out of Yang's Shadow

Wu Kung Yi (1901–1970) and Wu Kung Cho (1900–1985), sons of founder Wu Chien Chuan (1870–1942) and grandsons of Wu Chuan Yau (1834–1902), form the core of Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan’s third generation. In early twentieth-century Beijing the Yang family school stood alone at the top, and the Wu house lived in its shadow; even in the Republic’s great guoshu boom, when tai chi masters everywhere found patronage, the Wus remained quietly unsuccessful. Then one unexpected act — a charity contest — became something like a roadshow for the family art, and Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan flourished as never before. Drawing on historical records and disciples’ memoirs, this article follows the two brothers from Beijing to Canton, Changsha, and Hong Kong, and maps the third generation as a whole.

Key Facts at a Glance

Wu Kung Yi: chief martial arts instructor to Shandong governor Qu Yingguang (1919); tai chi instructor at Whampoa Military Academy (1924); central figure of the 1954 Macau contest; first president of the Hong Kong Chien Chuan Tai Chi Chuan Association
Wu Kung Cho: martial arts instructor with the 13th National Revolutionary Army (1927); instructor at the Hunan Guoshu Training Institute (1933); led the Hunan delegation to the 1934 second national guoshu examination (ten first places)
Key patron: the novelist Xiang Kuiran (“Pingjiang Buxiaosheng”), who wrote Wu Chien Chuan into his novels and brought the brothers to Hunan in 1933
Turning point: the 17 January 1954 Macau charity contest — declared “no win, no draw, no loss” — propelled Wu Style to its golden age and helped inspire the new school of wuxia fiction

I. Trained at Home: The Brothers from the Beijing Physical Education Research Society

The Wu family were descendants of the Plain Red Banner. Grandfather and father alike rose from low-ranking imperial guardsmen, yet both loved the martial arts, so it is no exaggeration to say the brothers trained from childhood. In 1912 Hsu Yu Sheng founded the Beijing Physical Education Research Society to study traditional Chinese boxing through modern physical education; Wu Chien Chuan taught there alongside Yang Shao Hou and Yang Cheng Fu, and Wu Kung Yi and Wu Kung Cho were among its first students. Compared with their father’s generation, they received a modern school education — wider knowledge, wider horizons.

Wu Kung Yi, however, liked to advertise his connection to the Yang family art. Lo Pak Tong, his Hong Kong student, recalled: when Wu Kung Yi trained under his father, push hands proved so hard to master that he suffered beatings and scoldings, and once even considered abandoning the art and running away from home. Yang Shao Hou learned of it, called the boy over, took his hand to explain the principles of push hands, and practised with him personally. The lesson landed: interest rekindled, Wu Kung Yi became a constant visitor to the Yang household — partly to be near Uncle Yang, partly to seek the art in earnest. The frame Yang Shao Hou taught him sat a little higher in the horse stance, with smaller, tighter circles.

The memory may not be exact in every word — far away in Hong Kong, Lo Pak Tong could only have heard it from Wu Kung Yi himself. But the form Wu Kung Yi demonstrated really did differ from his father’s. Xiang Yixue, son of the novelist Xiang Kuiran, said the same: Wu Kung Yi “practised a high, small frame that prized attack and victory by speed — small circles seeking directness and quickness, hard and soft in balance, often leaving an opponent unable to stand firm.” Wu Kung Cho, by contrast, “kept the same big-circled, low frame as his grandfather-teacher Wu Chien Chuan.” Wu Kung Yi’s study with Yang Shao Hou seems genuine; Wu Kung Cho simply inherited the family art.

II. A Golden Age for the Martial Arts

In 1914 Ma Liang invited experts from many schools to compile his “New Chinese Boxing,” which rode the militarized-education wave to become official drill for the army, police, and schools. In 1915 the Ministry of Education resolved that “schools should add China’s traditional martial skills,” written into the Military Citizen Education Implementation Plan, and the national education federation further resolved that “such teachers be trained in the normal schools.” Martial arts spread first through the army and schools, then through the martial arts halls and athletic associations opening across the country — martial artists became the scarce talent of the age.

The brothers finished their training just in time. In 1919, aged twenty, Wu Kung Yi became chief martial arts instructor to Shandong governor Qu Yingguang; he then served as chief boxing instructor in warlord Zhang Zongchang’s strike brigade, and taught at the Chin Woo Athletic Association in Shanghai. In 1924, on the recommendation of acting National Canton University president Chu Minyi, Whampoa Military Academy commandant Chiang Kai-shek engaged him as tai chi instructor to the cadet corps and senior classes, with a concurrent lectureship in physical education at the university (renamed Sun Yat-sen University in 1926) — among his students were such notables as Fang Dingying, Tan Yankai, and Zhu Peide. His younger brother Wu Kung Cho became martial arts instructor to the 13th National Revolutionary Army stationed at Changsha in 1927, and joined the Shanghai Chin Woo Athletic Association as an instructor in 1929.

In 1928 came a still greater opportunity: boxing was renamed “national arts” (guoshu), and after the Central Guoshu Academy opened, province, city, and county academies followed wherever conditions allowed. The army, the schools, government offices, and private citizens all took pride in studying guoshu — an age when any martial artist of real skill could find work. Martial arts had never been so flourishing before, and never would be again.

III. Shanghai: Still the Yang Family’s City

Also in 1928, Wu Chien Chuan came south from Beijing to head the Wudang Division of the Shanghai Guoshu Academy, taught at Chin Woo, and took on plenty of private pupils. As a professional martial artist he had standing, reputation, and a good income in Shanghai — but the city belonged to the Yang school: Zhi Rou Boxing Society, founded in 1925 by Yang Cheng Fu’s student Chen Weiming, dominated the Shanghai tai chi market, while another student, Ye Dami, opened his Wudang Tai Chi Society in 1926 in counterpoint; in 1928 Wu Huichuan, who claimed seniority among Yang Cheng Fu’s students, opened the Huichuan Tai Chi Society on Avenue Joffre. In the Shanghai of that moment, only Wu Chien Chuan carried any influence for the Wu family art.

And then, unbidden, a wuxia novelist walked into the Wu family’s life.

IV. The Patron: Pingjiang Buxiaosheng

Xiang Kuiran (1889–1957), pen name “Pingjiang Buxiaosheng,” was the founding father of Republican wuxia fiction. Making his living in Shanghai as a novelist, he was also devoted to the practice of boxing, and he and Wu Chien Chuan formed a deep friendship — soulmates across the years. He modelled fictional heroes on Wu Chien Chuan repeatedly; in chapters 55 and 59 of A Chivalric Hero’s Tale the master appears under his own name as a knight-errant who rights wrongs wherever he finds them.

The bond between the two families went further. In 1933 Hunan governor Ho Chien recalled Xiang Kuiran to head the provincial guoshu training institute, and Xiang urged Wu Chien Chuan to come teach in Changsha. Shanghai kept the master busy, so he sent his two sons instead. Xiang’s second son Xiang Yixue was then training at the institute, and when Wu Kung Cho arrived he took that young man as his teacher — which is why Xiang’s memoirs call Wu Chien Chuan “grandfather-teacher.” Wu Kung Cho’s constant line to the martial world: “Without Xiang Kuiran, there would be no Wu Kung Cho.”

In Hunan, Wu Kung Cho defeated the challenge of the “flying adventurer” Qu Guoliang with techniques such as Apparent Close-Up, winning the local martial community over to Wu Style completely; in 1934 he led the Hunan delegation to the second national guoshu examination in Nanjing and carried off ten first places.

V. South to Hong Kong

When the war of resistance broke out in 1937, Wu Kung Yi and Wu Kung Cho moved to Hong Kong and together founded a branch of the Chien Chuan Tai Chi Chuan Association, with Wu Kung Yi as president. On the eve of the Japanese occupation in 1942 the brothers returned to Shanghai; that same year Wu Chien Chuan died in the city, and Wu Kung Yi succeeded him as president of the Shanghai association. In 1948, at the invitation of Hong Kong and Macau patrons, the brothers returned to Hong Kong and re-established the school.

It was during this second Hong Kong chapter that the unexpected event occurred.

VI. 1954: The Accidental “Roadshow”

The brothers had taught in Hong Kong for years, yet many people — then as now — half-doubted tai chi as a fighting art. Wu Kung Yi declared publicly that his association would compare notes with boxers of any school, Chinese or Western, any place, any time. The proclamation caused an uproar. The man who stepped forward was Chan Hak Fu, a White Crane stylist and former Hong Kong boxing champion.

In January 1954 the charity contest, staged to raise relief funds for fire victims, was held poolside at Macau’s Sin Wah Amusement Park — Hong Kong law forbade prizefights — before a crowd of more than ten thousand. Chan was in his prime; Wu Kung Yi was past fifty. At the first exchange Wu borrowed force and struck his opponent’s nose, drawing blood; after a short rest the fight resumed, and when both men repeatedly kicked above the agreed knee-height limit, the referees stopped the contest. The organizers conferred and declared “no win, no draw, no loss” — a full-blooded duel ending in peace. Round-by-round technical detail, the judging panel, and the charitable cause are documented on our academy history page.

No one foresaw the aftermath: the contest’s afterglow carried Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan straight to its golden age, and the spectacle helped inspire the new school of wuxia fiction of Jin Yong and Liang Yusheng.

VII. The Golden Age

After the contest, the Wu family name resounded. Wu Kung Yi sent his eldest son Wu Ta K’uei to open the Kowloon branch on Nathan Road; his second son Wu Ta Chi and nephew Wu Ta Hsin went on to found branches in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Manila. The family bought the top floor of Po Man Building on Jordan Road, Kowloon, for the new headquarters, and the old Lockhart Road headquarters became the Hong Kong branch under Wu Kung Yi’s daughter Wu Yen Hsia and her husband Kuo Shao-chung. Chinese community associations across Southeast Asia vied to invite the Wu brothers to teach. Southeast Asia became, in effect, the kingdom of Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan.

However later generations judge the Wu–Chan contest, for the development of Wu Style it was a heaven-sent opportunity: less a duel than a roadshow for the family art.

The Third Generation of Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan

Wu Kung Yi and Wu Kung Cho: direct heirs of the family teaching and the key figures who carried Wu Style overseas throughout Southeast Asia — not the founders of the style, but the generation that made it travel
Wu Ying Hua: daughter of Wu Chien Chuan, trained by her father from childhood, the central woman master of the Shanghai transmission (her life is told in our article “Wu Ying Hua: The Matriarch of Wu Style Tai Chi Chuan”)
Ma Yueh Liang: closed-door disciple of Wu Chien Chuan, husband of Wu Ying Hua, a major third-generation transmitter and author of several Wu Style books
Xu Zhiyi: distinguished student of Wu Chien Chuan, author of An Introduction to Tai Chi Chuan, the scholarly transmitter who first explained Wu Style theory systematically
The northern school under Wang Mao Zhai: Wang Chieh (Ziying), Wang Ti (Zichao), Zhao Tie’an, Hsiu P’i Hsun, Yang Yu Ting, and others — all third-generation transmitters who spread Wu Style across northern China; read Xiu Pi Xun’s story in “Xiu Pi Xun: Keeping the Old Frame of Wu Style Tai Chi”, Yang Yu Ting’s story of Tai Miao and the 83-form manual in “Yang Yu Ting: The Master Who Turned Wu Style Tai Chi into a Textbook”, and the differences between the two lines in “Comparing the Southern and Northern Schools of Wu Style”

For the complete five-generation family tree, see The Five Generations of the Wu Family.