Gong Baotian (宮寶田, c. 1870–1943) — the imperial bodyguard of Yin-style Bagua

Gong Baotian (宮寶田 / Gōng Bǎotián, c. 1870–1943), courtesy name Ziying (子英), was a master of Yin-style Baguazhang (尹派八卦掌), a famous Qing imperial bodyguard, and the man who carried the Yin line into Shandong — and, through his student Liu Yunqiao, toward Taiwan and the wider world. Small and astonishingly agile, the martial world nicknamed him "Gong the Monkey" (宮猴子) for his light-body skill.

Life

Born around 1870 in 青山村 (Qingshan Village), in the old 寧海州 (Ninghai Subprefecture) of Dengzhou — today in Rushan (乳山), Shandong. He came to Beijing and became a disciple of Yin Fu, the senior disciple of Bagua's founder Dong Haichuan, placing Gong in the second generation of the art and the Yin (尹派) branch.

The imperial guard

Gong's skill reached the Qing court. By tradition in 1897 he was summoned to the palace as a head of the imperial guard with the rank of 四品帶刀侍衛 ("Fourth-Rank Sword-Bearing Guard"), serving as a personal bodyguard to the Empress Dowager Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor. In the upheaval of 1900 — the Boxer crisis and the Eight-Nation Alliance's entry into Beijing — he is recorded as escorting the imperial party in its flight to Xi'an, and was rewarded with the Yellow Riding Jacket (黃馬褂). He left palace service around 1905 and returned to Shandong. Later, in 1922, the Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin (張作霖) engaged him to instruct his army; Gong withdrew again after Zhang's assassination in 1928. He died in 1943.

What he carried

Gong preserved and transmitted the Yin-style Bagua — the tighter, harder, more percussive branch of the art — and is the principal reason it took root in Shandong.

Students

• Liu Yunqiao — studied Bagua under Gong at Yantai (煙台) around 1933–1935, and later carried it (alongside his primary art, Baji) to Taiwan through his Wutan school. (Liu's main lineage was Baji under Li Shuwen; Bagua via Gong was a second transmission.)

• 王壯飛 (Wang Zhuangfei), 單香陵 (Shan Xiangling), 宮寶齋 (Gong Baozhai), and others continued the line in Shandong and beyond.

Gong left no written manual; his transmission is through his students.

See also

Yin Fu (尹福) — his teacher; the Yin branch of Bagua

Bagua Palm (八卦掌) — the full style overview

Dong Haichuan (董海川) — the founder, two generations above

Liu Yunqiao (劉雲樵) — his Bagua student; carried the line to Taiwan

A Short History of Chinese Martial Arts

Sources

[1] 宮寶田, Chinese Wikipedia (zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/宮寶田) and Shandong (Weihai/Rushan) local historical records — birth (c. 1870), the Yin Fu discipleship, the imperial-guard service under Cixi and Guangxu, the 1900 flight to Xi'an, and the Liu Yunqiao transmission.

[2] Liu Yunqiao, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Yunqiao) — corroborating Liu's study of Bagua under Gong Baotian at Yantai in the 1930s.