---
title: Cheng Tinghua (程廷華, 1848–1900) — Glasses Cheng
---

**Cheng Tinghua** (**程廷華 / Chéng Tínghuá**, 1848–1900) was **Dong Haichuan's** most widely-transmitted disciple and the founder of **Cheng-style Baguazhang** (程派八卦掌). A professional **wrestler** (摔跤) before he met Dong, he folded the throws and body-power of Chinese wrestling into the circle-walking palm art — producing the larger, more open frame that most of the world now recognizes as Bagua. A Beijing eyeglasses merchant by trade, he was known across the martial world as **"Glasses Cheng"** (眼鏡程). He was killed in 1900 during the foreign occupation of Beijing, and is remembered as much for the manner of his death as for his art.

## Life

Born in **程村 Cheng Village, 深縣 Shen County, Hebei** — the same county that produced the Xingyi founder [Li Luoneng](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/li-luoneng) and his disciple [Guo Yunshen](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/guo-yunshen), and one of the dense martial heartlands of the north. Cheng came to Beijing as a young man and set up as a maker and seller of spectacles near the **Hua Shi (花市)** district by Chongwenmen — hence the affectionate nickname **眼鏡程, "Glasses Cheng."**

He was already an accomplished **shuai jiao** wrestler with a formidable local reputation when he became a disciple of [**Dong Haichuan**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/dong-haichuan), the founder of Bagua, then teaching in the capital. Cheng is counted — with [**Yin Fu**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/yin-fu) — among Dong's senior students, and he became the most prolific transmitter of the art.

<Callout type="warning">
  **His death — the traditional account.** In the summer of **1900**, as the **Eight-Nation Alliance** entered Beijing to break the Boxer siege, Cheng Tinghua is said to have encountered a party of foreign (Allied) soldiers in the streets. The lineage accounts hold that he killed several before being shot down by rifle fire — refusing to flee his quarter of the city. The details vary by telling and carry the colour of martial legend, but his death in the 1900 occupation is firmly fixed in the record, and it sealed his standing in the Bagua community.
</Callout>

## What he gave the art — Cheng-style Bagua

Cheng's branch is the **larger-frame, palm-striking** stream of Bagua, and the one from which most modern sub-branches descend:

- **The open "dragon-claw palm" (龍爪掌)** — the tiger's-mouth open, fingers spread and alive, in contrast to the tighter [Yin-style](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/yin-fu) "ox-tongue palm."
- **A larger, rounder frame** with a pronounced **"swimming-body" (游身)** continuity — the whole torso turning and coiling as the practitioner walks the circle.
- **Integrated wrestling.** Cheng's *shuai jiao* throws, trips, and close-body uprooting are woven into the palm changes — a signature of the Cheng line.

## The branches that descend from him

The Cheng line is the most fertile in modern Bagua:

- **His sons** 程有龍 (Cheng Youlong / Cheng Haiting) and 程有信 (Cheng Youxin) carried the family transmission.
- **孫祿堂 **[**Sun Lutang**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/sun-lutang) studied Bagua under Cheng Tinghua, and the system Sun set down in his *八卦拳學* (1916) — the first printed Bagua treatise — is the Cheng transmission.
- **張占魁 (Zhang Zhaodong)**, better known for Xingyi, also trained Bagua in Cheng's circle, founding an influential Tianjin Xingyi-Bagua line.
- **高義盛 (Gao Yisheng)** received the Cheng material (via Zhou Yuxiang) and built the **Gao style (高式八卦)** of 64 linear post-circle forms.
- Further students — 馮俊義, 李文彪, 劉斌, 周祥, 韓福順 — seeded schools across Beijing, Tianjin, and beyond.

## See also

<PageRef space="notes" slug="dong-haichuan" text="Dong Haichuan (董海川) — Cheng's teacher, the founder of Bagua" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="bagua" text="Bagua Palm (八卦掌) — the full style overview" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="yin-fu" text="Yin Fu (尹福) — Dong's other great disciple; the contrasting Yin branch" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="sun-lutang" text="Sun Lutang (孫祿堂) — Cheng's Bagua student; author of the first printed Bagua treatise" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="history" text="A Short History of Chinese Martial Arts" />

## Sources

**[1]** *Cheng Tinghua*, Wikipedia ([en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheng\_Tinghua](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheng_Tinghua)) and the Chinese Wikipedia counterpart — biography, the Glasses-Cheng trade, the 1900 death, the Cheng-style lineage.

**[2]** 孫祿堂 *八卦拳學* (Sun Lutang, *Study of Bagua Boxing*, 1916) — the first printed Bagua treatise, recording the Cheng transmission Sun received. Held in the codex's `Sources/internal-arts-manuals/`.

**[3]** *董海川* lineage inscriptions, Wan'an Cemetery, Beijing — naming Cheng among Dong's senior disciples.