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| Liu Yunqiao |
Liu Yunqiao: Bajiquan Master and Founder of Wutan
Taiwanese Masters — Part 2
Among the martial artists who arrived in Taiwan from mainland China during the twentieth century, Liu Yunqiao (劉雲樵, 1909–1992) occupies an important place.
A practitioner of Bajiquan, Piguazhang, Baguazhang and other traditional systems, Liu was also a military officer and later the founder of Wutan (武壇), an organization that became influential in the preservation and international transmission of traditional Chinese martial arts from Taiwan.
His biography also connects several important chapters of twentieth-century Chinese history: the traditional martial culture of northern China, the Sino-Japanese War, the retreat of the Republic of China government to Taiwan, and the subsequent international spread of Chinese martial arts.
Early Life in Cangzhou
Liu Yunqiao was born in 1909 in the Cangzhou region of Hebei Province.
Cangzhou has a particularly rich martial history and became associated with numerous traditional boxing and weapons systems.
According to biographies preserved within the Wutan tradition, Liu came from a relatively prosperous family.
He was reportedly physically weak as a child, and his family introduced him to martial training partly to improve his health.
His early teacher was Zhang Yaoting (張耀庭), who taught him Taizu Changquan (太祖長拳) and Mizongquan (迷蹤拳).
This early training was followed by the relationship that would define Liu's later martial reputation.
Li Shuwen — “God Spear Li”
While Liu was still a child, his family engaged the famous Bajiquan practitioner Li Shuwen (李書文) as his martial teacher.
Li Shuwen was one of the best-known Bajiquan practitioners of his generation and acquired the famous nickname:
“God Spear Li” — 神槍李
because of his reputation with the great spear.
According to the Wutan tradition, Li lived with the Liu family and personally supervised the young Liu Yunqiao's martial education.
Under Li Shuwen, Liu studied:
Bajiquan (八極拳)
Piguazhang (劈掛掌)
Liuhe Daqiang (六合大槍) — Six Harmonies Great Spear
Liu is generally remembered within this tradition as one of Li Shuwen's final disciples.
Stories about Li Shuwen's extraordinary fighting ability are numerous and should be treated with the same caution we apply to the biographies of famous Chinese martial artists generally.
His historical importance to Bajiquan, however, is clear.
Through students such as Liu Yunqiao and others, Li Shuwen became one of the major figures in the modern transmission of the system.
Beyond Bajiquan
Liu Yunqiao did not restrict his martial education to Bajiquan.
He subsequently studied other systems with important teachers of the period.
He learned Six Harmony Praying Mantis Boxing (六合螳螂拳) from Ding Zicheng (丁子成).
He also studied Baguazhang (八卦掌) with Gong Baotian (宮寶田), an important representative of the Yin Fu branch of Baguazhang.
These systems eventually became part of the broader martial curriculum associated with Liu and the Wutan organization.
Nevertheless, Bajiquan remained the art most closely associated with his name.
From Martial Artist to Soldier
Liu Yunqiao came of age during one of the most violent periods of modern Chinese history.
Following the Japanese invasion and the beginning of full-scale war in 1937, Liu entered military service.
Biographical accounts associated with his lineage state that he entered a branch of the Whampoa Military Academy (黃埔軍校) in 1937 and graduated in 1939.
He subsequently served in a number of military positions during the war against Japan.
Accounts of Liu's military career contain considerable detail, including intelligence and reconnaissance work and a succession of command appointments.
Much of this information comes from later biographies connected with Liu and his students rather than documentation I have independently reconstructed.
For that reason, the exact details of every appointment should be treated cautiously.
What can be said with greater confidence is that Liu's adult life combined two worlds that are often separated in modern discussions of Chinese martial arts:
traditional martial training and professional military service.
From Mainland China to Taiwan
The Chinese Civil War transformed Liu's life once again.
Following the Communist victory on the mainland and the relocation of the Republic of China government, Liu moved to Taiwan in 1949.
He continued his military career there.
Later accounts also connect him with the training of personnel responsible for the security of the Republic of China leadership.
Liu's association with presidential security training became one of the best-known parts of his biography.
Bajiquan itself developed a modern reputation as a martial art associated with bodyguards, partly because several practitioners connected with Li Shuwen's wider martial circle became associated with prominent political and military figures.
As always, the individual stories surrounding famous bodyguards require separate verification.
But Liu's relationship with military and security training in Taiwan forms an important part of his later career.
A Different Mission
Eventually another concern became increasingly important to Liu Yunqiao.
Preservation.
The generation of martial artists who moved to Taiwan after 1949 carried with them systems that had developed in different regions of mainland China.
Their relocation created an unusual concentration of traditional martial knowledge on the island.
But traditional transmission was vulnerable.
Teachers grew old.
Students became fewer.
Society changed.
And the traditional environment in which many of these systems had originally existed was disappearing rapidly.
Liu responded by becoming increasingly involved in martial arts education and organization.
The Creation of Wutan
In 1971, Liu Yunqiao established the organization that would become most closely associated with his legacy:
Wutan — 武壇
He also founded Wutan magazine, which provided a platform for writing about Chinese martial arts.
The importance of Wutan extended beyond Liu's own Bajiquan.
It became a broader environment for the teaching and preservation of traditional Chinese martial systems.
Liu's approach was therefore different from simply opening a commercial school devoted to one style.
Wutan became a network through which knowledge could be organized, taught and eventually transmitted internationally.
This was particularly important during a period when reliable information about traditional Chinese martial arts was still difficult to obtain outside Chinese-speaking communities.
Taking Traditional Martial Arts Overseas
Liu also became involved in international martial exchange.
Beginning in the late 1960s and continuing during the following decades, he traveled outside Taiwan to teach and promote traditional Chinese martial arts.
His activities reached Chinese communities elsewhere in Asia and eventually martial artists farther abroad.
Wutan branches and students subsequently appeared outside Taiwan.
This international transmission would become one of the most important parts of Liu's legacy.
The Students Who Carried Wutan Abroad
A teacher's historical influence cannot be measured only by his own abilities.
It can also be measured by what his students do afterward.
Liu Yunqiao produced a generation of practitioners who continued teaching and writing about traditional Chinese martial arts.
Among the better-known students associated with Wutan were figures such as Adam Hsu (徐紀) and Su Yu-Chang (蘇昱彰), who later became important teachers outside Taiwan.
Through Liu's students and their students, Bajiquan and other systems connected with Wutan reached martial artists throughout Asia, North America, Europe and elsewhere.
For many Western practitioners who encountered Bajiquan during the late twentieth century, the Taiwanese Wutan transmission became one of the important routes through which the system became known.
That is a more historically defensible statement than saying Taiwan—or Liu alone—introduced traditional Chinese martial arts to the entire Western world.
The international spread of Chinese martial arts involved many teachers, organizations and migration networks.
Liu Yunqiao was one important participant in that much larger process.
Bajiquan and the Bodyguard Reputation
One particularly interesting aspect of Liu's legacy is the modern reputation of Bajiquan (八極拳).
Today Bajiquan is frequently described as a “bodyguard martial art.”
There is some historical foundation for the association.
Practitioners belonging to the wider martial network surrounding Li Shuwen became associated with the protection or training of important political figures.
Liu Yunqiao's later involvement with security training in Taiwan reinforced this reputation.
But we should be careful not to turn a historical association into a mythology of the style itself.
Bajiquan was not invented specifically as a presidential bodyguard system.
It was a traditional northern Chinese martial art that, through particular practitioners and historical circumstances, acquired a strong twentieth-century association with military and security personnel.
That distinction matters.
Martial Arts Preservation in Taiwan
Liu Yunqiao's career also illustrates something much larger than the history of Bajiquan.
Taiwan became an important environment for the preservation of traditional Chinese martial arts during the second half of the twentieth century.
Martial artists arriving from different parts of mainland China brought systems from Hebei, Shandong, Henan and other regions.
These traditions encountered Taiwan's existing Fujianese, Hakka and local martial cultures.
The result was an unusually diverse martial environment.
Liu Yunqiao represents one part of that history.
He brought northern martial traditions into Taiwan, taught another generation of practitioners, created an organization dedicated to their transmission, published martial material and encouraged students to carry those traditions beyond the island.
His contribution should therefore be understood not simply as that of a famous Bajiquan fighter.
He became a transmitter and organizer of martial knowledge.
The Problem With Martial Arts Biographies
There is also a methodological reason why Liu Yunqiao is interesting.
Like many famous Chinese martial artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, his biography exists somewhere between documented history and martial tradition.
Basic events can be established.
Other stories have been transmitted through students and martial organizations.
And around famous teachers inevitably accumulate stories about extraordinary fights, secret missions, famous opponents and exceptional abilities.
These stories should not automatically be rejected.
But neither should they automatically be treated as documented history.
When examining Liu Yunqiao, we therefore need to distinguish between:
documented events,
biographical information preserved by his organization and students,
and
martial stories transmitted within the tradition.
All three can be valuable.
They simply tell us different things.
Liu Yunqiao's Legacy
Liu Yunqiao died in Taipei in 1992.
By then, the martial traditions he had carried from northern China had traveled considerably farther.
Wutan had developed beyond Taiwan.
His students were teaching internationally.
Bajiquan, once a comparatively obscure northern Chinese system for most people outside China, had acquired an international following.
Liu was not solely responsible for this development.
No single teacher was.
But his contribution was substantial.
His life represents one of the major patterns in twentieth-century Chinese martial arts history:
China → Taiwan → the wider world.
Political upheaval displaced a generation of martial artists.
Taiwan became their new home.
Some continued teaching.
Their students eventually traveled abroad.
What had once been local martial traditions became international ones.
Liu Yunqiao was one of the people standing at the center of that transformation.
And perhaps this, more than the fighting stories surrounding his name, is his most important contribution to the history of Chinese martial arts.
Sources and Further Reading
Adam Hsu — “Backstory: Liu Yun Chiao”
https://adamhsukungfu.com/backstory-liu-yun-chiao/
Adam Hsu was a student of Liu Yunqiao, making his account particularly useful for understanding the biography transmitted among Liu's students.
Chinese Wutan Association / Wutan tradition
http://www.wutan.tw/
Material from the Wutan community remains important for Liu Yunqiao's martial lineage, teaching and organizational legacy.
All available biographical information concerning Liu's detailed military career and early martial training should be read with appropriate source criticism. Many commonly repeated details ultimately derive from accounts preserved within his martial lineage rather than independently established contemporary documentation.