Cheng Style Baguazhang
程式八卦掌The most widespread branch of baguazhang; Cheng Tinghua brought into it the grips and throws of shuai jiao wrestling.
Quick Facts
ChinaCharacter & Origin
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
Editorial rating on a 0–3 scale, based on how much room each area gets in ordinary training.
Catalogs & Databases for Cheng Style Baguazhang
About Cheng Style Baguazhang
The Cheng school is the most widespread branch of baguazhang, the eight-trigram palm. It was created by Cheng Tinghua (1848-1900), a native of Shen county in Hebei who made spectacles for a living in Beijing, which earned him the nickname Spectacles Cheng. Before becoming a disciple of Dong Haichuan, the founder of baguazhang, he was a respected shuai jiao wrestler, and that is what sets his version apart: alongside strikes and palm techniques it carries a strong share of grips, locks and throws brought in from wrestling. Its hallmarks are the dragon palm, an open hand with the thumb and index finger spread wide, circle walking with the tang ni bu step, as though the practitioner were wading through mud, and the constant rotation of the whole body, in which the waist and legs move before the hands. Eight basic palm changes and their variations are practised while walking, together with paired drills and weapons, among which the oversized broadswords stand out. Cheng was killed in Beijing in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion. Several independent lines came out of his students: Sun Lutang, the creator of Sun-style taijiquan, Zhang Zhaodong, and Gao Yisheng, after whom the Gao branch of baguazhang is named. The sources give no exact year in which Cheng began teaching his own version of the style, and this page therefore does not state one.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.