---
title: "Li Cunyi (李存義, 1847–1921) — \"Single-Saber Li,\" the anchor of northern Xingyi"
---

**Li Cunyi** (**李存義 / Lǐ Cúnyì**, 1847–1921), courtesy name **Zhongyuan (忠元)**, was the great Hebei **Xingyi** master who became the **institutional anchor** of the Republican-era northern arts — the **"Single-Saber Li" (單刀李)** who escorted caravans with a sabre, taught the generation that taught nearly everyone, and lent his authority to the **Chinese Warriors' Association (中華武士會)**, the first modern public martial-arts society in the north.

## Life

Born in **深州 (Shenzhou), Hebei** — the same martial heartland that produced Li Luoneng and Guo Yunshen. He learned **Xingyiquan from **[**Liu Qilan**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/liu-qilan) (with additional guidance from [**Guo Yunshen**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/guo-yunshen)), and **Bagua** in [Cheng Tinghua's](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/cheng-tinghua) circle. He earned his living on the road as a **caravan guard (鏢師)**, founding the **萬通鏢局 (Wantong Escort Bureau)** in Baoding, and served for a time as a military martial-arts instructor.

## The Chinese Warriors' Association

In **1912** Li Cunyi stood at the centre of the public founding, in Tianjin, of the **中華武士會 (Chinese Warriors' Association)** — the first great *modern, public* martial-arts society in the north, conceived from around 1910 by the revolutionary organisers **葉雲表 (Ye Yunbiao)** and [**Ma Fengtu**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/ma-fengtu). Li was its **senior authority and chief instructor** (named in some accounts as its chair), the figure around whom the Xingyi–Bagua teaching cohered. It was a direct forerunner of the institutional impulse that produced the [Jingwu](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/jingwu) and the [Central Guoshu Institute](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/central-guoshu-institute).

<Callout type="info">
  **"Single-Saber Li."** Tradition ties the nickname to **1900**: in the Boxer upheaval, Li is said to have led disciples in a night raid on Tianjin's **老龍頭 (Old Dragon Head) railway station** against the foreign troops, sabre in hand. The dramatic body-counts in the retellings are embellishment; the sabre reputation itself is well-attested.
</Callout>

## Students

Li's line is the most disseminated Hebei Xingyi of all, and his students are a who's-who: **尚雲祥 (Shang Yunxiang**, founder of Shang-style Xingyi\*\*), 郝恩光, 黃柏年, 傅劍秋, 薛顛 (Xue Dian), 陳泮嶺, 褚桂亭\*\*, and many more — "hundreds," the sources say. Through them most of the Republican and modern Hebei Xingyi descends.

He left the manuals **《拳術教範》** and **《刺殺拳譜》**.

## See also

<PageRef space="notes" slug="xingyi" text="Xingyi (形意拳) — the style overview" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="liu-qilan" text="Liu Qilan (劉奇蘭) — his teacher" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="foreign-challengers" text="Foreign Strongmen &amp; the Big-Sword Army — the 中華武士會 and the Kang Tai'er challenge" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="central-guoshu-institute" text="Central Guoshu Institute — the national academy his generation's impulse produced" />

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

## Sources

**[1]** *李存義*, Chinese Wikipedia ([zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/李存義\_(清朝)](https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%9D%8E%E5%AD%98%E7%BE%A9_(%E6%B8%85%E6%9C%9D))) and Baidu Baike — dates, the Liu Qilan lineage, the escort-bureau career, the students, the "Single-Saber" tradition.

**[2]** Benjamin Judkins, *Kung Fu Tea / Chinese Martial Studies* — on the 中華武士會 and the historiography of the period's "Boxer-fighter" legends ([chinesemartialstudies.com](https://chinesemartialstudies.com/)).