Editor’s note: This essay presents traditional ideas and lineage teachings preserved by Jia Hui and associated with Chen Yu’s family Gongfu Frame. It includes Daoist cosmology, internal-alchemy theory, oral history, martial arts traditions, and Jia Hui’s own experiences. These should not all be read as modern scientific or archaeological claims. Where historical evidence is uncertain, the traditional account is identified as such.
Chen Yu’s Family Gongfu Frame, often called Gongfujia, is a Chen-style Taijiquan training system transmitted through Chen Fake, Chen Zhaokui, and Chen Yu. Chen Yu’s branch understands the frame as more than a sequence of martial techniques, connecting it with whole-body training, Dantian practice, Daoist Neidan concepts, and family lineage. Some historical claims surrounding the frame remain specific to this lineage and are not universally accepted across Chen-style traditions.
Original Chinese essay by Jia Hui
Translated, edited, and historically annotated by Mark Cheng / ChenStyle.com
From Mountains and Rivers to the Idea of “Lineage”
Ancient Chinese culture often understood civilization through the image of mai (脉)—a vein, channel, or continuing line. Mountains have mountain ranges, families have bloodlines, literature has a cultural lineage, and martial arts have lines of transmission from teacher to student.
In traditional Chinese imagination, great mountain systems and rivers were not merely pieces of geography. They were part of the living pattern of heaven and earth. Mountains could be described as dragon veins, while rivers carried life across the landscape. This way of seeing nature eventually became connected with ideas about family, culture, medicine, self-cultivation, and martial arts.
The region around Mount Kailash and the western Tibetan Plateau is particularly powerful in this symbolic geography because several of Asia’s great river systems have their headwaters nearby. Traditional writers sometimes expanded this image into a much larger cosmological picture of civilization flowing outward from the high mountains of Asia.
Taken literally, not every part of that old geographical picture is correct. But as a cultural metaphor it expresses something important: civilization survives because something is transmitted.
A river survives by continuing to flow. A family survives through generations. A martial art survives only when someone learns it well enough to pass it on.
What Happened to Traditional Chinese Civilization?
In my view, much of traditional Chinese civilization did not disappear. It moved into ordinary families.
It survived in ancestral rituals, medicine, literature, family records, temples, village customs, traditional crafts, and martial arts. Instead of existing only in palaces or books, knowledge continued through relationships between parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, teachers and students.
This is why the word mai, or lineage, remains so important in Chinese culture. We speak of wenmai for a cultural or literary lineage, xuemai for a bloodline, and famai for a transmitted spiritual tradition.
Traditional martial arts developed inside this same culture. A form was not always regarded simply as a sequence of fighting movements. For some families it also carried ideas about the body, morality, cosmology, health, and the relationship between human beings and nature.
This is the background from which I understand the family Gongfu Frame taught by Chen Yu.
Culture Was Preserved Through Both Family and Teacher
Traditional Chinese families placed enormous importance on transmission. Family genealogies recorded blood relationships, while martial lineages recorded teachers and students.
These two systems sometimes overlapped. A skill could remain within a family for generations, but transmission could also continue through carefully selected disciples. In this way there were effectively two safeguards: family transmission and teacher-disciple transmission.
This helps explain why Chinese martial arts history can be difficult to reconstruct. Some knowledge was public. Other material was taught only in small circles. Written records might preserve one part while oral instruction preserved another.
For people who grew up inside this culture, xiushen—cultivating oneself—was not just a philosophical slogan. It included character, education, health, self-discipline, and sometimes martial training. The old saying connected self-cultivation with ordering the family and eventually serving society.
Dao, Yijing and the Traditional View of the Human Body
Chinese philosophy repeatedly asks a fundamental question: what lies underneath constant change?
The Daodejing uses the word Dao (道). The Yijing examines change through yin, yang, images, numbers, and relationships. Later Daoist, medical, and martial traditions developed their own ways of applying these ideas to the human body.
This eventually produced a large traditional vocabulary: Wuji, Taiji, yin and yang, Dantian, Jing, Qi, Shen, opening and closing, Kan and Li, and returning from the acquired condition to the original condition.
These concepts belong to Chinese intellectual and spiritual history. They should not automatically be translated into modern anatomy or physics, but they are essential if we want to understand the language used by many traditional Tai Chi teachers.
1. Dao and Wuji
Traditional Daoist cosmology describes an original state before differentiation. It is sometimes called Wuji (无极)—without polarity or distinction.
The opening of the Daodejing famously warns that the Dao that can be completely described is not the eternal Dao. In later traditions, Wuji became a useful image for an undivided state before yin and yang emerged.
For martial artists, Wuji is also practical language. Before the movement begins, the body stands quietly. Nothing has yet been divided into advance or retreat, left or right, opening or closing. The practitioner is present, but the movement has not yet taken form.
2. “Dao Gives Birth to One”
The Daodejing says that Dao gives birth to One, One gives birth to Two, Two gives birth to Three, and Three gives birth to the ten thousand things.
Traditional commentators understood “One” in different ways. In martial arts and Daoist cultivation, it is often associated with an original unity before the body and mind become divided into opposing actions.
For practice, I find this idea more useful when it is not overcomplicated. Before movement becomes left and right, hard and soft, attack and defense, there must first be a center from which those changes occur.
3. “One Gives Birth to Two”: Yin and Yang
The “Two” are traditionally understood as yin and yang.
Tai Chi uses this idea constantly. Moving and stillness, opening and closing, rising and sinking, substantial and insubstantial, storing and issuing—all can be described as changing relationships of yin and yang.
The important point is that yin and yang are not completely separate. Each depends on the other. A movement that opens is already preparing to close. A leg that becomes substantial allows the other leg to become empty.
Without change between the two, Tai Chi becomes dead.
4. “Two Gives Birth to Three”: Harmony
Traditional Daoist interpretation often sees the “Three” as the interaction of yin, yang, and the harmonizing force that allows them to produce further change.
This idea later became important in cultivation traditions that emphasize harmony between heaven, earth, and humanity. In martial arts, the same language can be used more practically: the practitioner stands between heaven and earth, organizing the body so opposing forces can work together rather than fight each other.
5. “Three Gives Birth to the Ten Thousand Things”
Once differentiation and interaction begin, endless change becomes possible.
The old cosmological language speaks of heaven, earth, sun, moon, stars, wind, water, mountains, plants, animals, and human beings emerging within this process. Whether read philosophically, religiously, or symbolically, the central idea is that complexity grows out of a small number of fundamental relationships.
Martial arts forms follow a similar logic. A relatively small number of principles can generate hundreds of visible movements.
Jing, Qi and Shen
Traditional Daoism often speaks of the Three Treasures of the human body: Jing (精), Qi (气), and Shen (神).
These words can be translated approximately as essence, vital energy, and spirit, but no English translation captures their full historical meaning.
For traditional practitioners, cultivating the body was not simply a matter of making muscles stronger. Sleep, breathing, sexual restraint, diet, mental state, posture, meditation, and exercise could all be discussed within the same cultivation framework.
Modern readers should be careful here. These concepts belong to traditional Chinese medicine and Daoist cultivation; they should not automatically be interpreted as scientifically measured substances circulating through the body.
Kan, Li and Internal Alchemy
Daoist inner-alchemy traditions developed elaborate symbolic systems around Kan (坎) and Li (离), commonly associated with water and fire.
Texts speak metaphorically about “drawing from Kan to fill Li,” returning from the acquired state to the original state, refining Jing into Qi, Qi into Shen, and Shen toward emptiness.
These ideas became an important part of Neidan (内丹), or internal alchemy.
Some traditional martial lineages later interpreted their training methods through the same vocabulary. This is the cultural background behind claims that certain martial forms were not simply fighting routines but also vehicles for internal cultivation.
From Inner Alchemy to Gongfu Frames
According to the traditional account preserved in this lineage, ancient practitioners did not separate physical movement from cultivation. Breathing methods, postural training, Dantian work, opening and closing, and movement patterns were combined into structured exercises.
Instead of thinking only in terms of a taolu, or performance routine, this tradition prefers the expression Gongfu Frame—功夫架子. The emphasis is on what the frame develops inside the practitioner, not merely on how many postures it contains.
Some practitioners used religious names for such methods, including references to the Golden Elixir, immortals, arhats, or “Diamond” cultivation. These names belong to the religious and symbolic world in which the practices developed.
My Understanding of Chen Yu’s Family Gongfu Frame
This is where the subject becomes personal for me.
I began studying traditional martial arts in the early 1980s and learned from several teachers over the years, including Cheng Zhimin, Wang Xi’an, Chen Suying, Hong Junsheng, Xu Hongyan, Zhu Tiancai, and Zhang Qilin. In the summer of 2005, I went to Beijing and began studying the family Gongfu Frame with Chen Yu, the son of Chen Zhaokui and grandson of Chen Fake.
That experience changed the way I looked at a Tai Chi form.
Instead of seeing the frame simply as a sequence of techniques, I began paying more attention to the cultural and internal-training explanations surrounding it. The movements were still martial movements, but within the family teaching they were connected to a larger discussion of Dantian training, opening and closing, spiraling, breath, structure, and traditional cultivation.
Chen Fake and the Beijing Transmission
Chen Fake is one of the most important figures in modern Chen Style Tai Chi history. He was born in Chenjiagou in 1887 and moved to Beijing in 1928, where he taught Chen-family Taijiquan publicly and established an influential group of students.
His father was Chen Yanxi, and his son Chen Zhaokui became another important transmitter of the family art. Chen Zhaokui later taught in several parts of China, including returns to Chenjiagou.
The historically verifiable part is important: Chen Fake took Chen-family Tai Chi from the village environment into Beijing and became one of the principal figures responsible for its wider twentieth-century transmission.
Beyond those established facts, different branches preserve different explanations of exactly how Chen Fake’s later frame developed and how it should be classified.
The Family Account of the 91-Posture Frame
According to the lineage explanation I received through Chen Yu’s family, Chen Fake preserved an advanced family Gongfu Frame that differed in important ways from what many people now call the 74-posture Laojia routine.
Within this family interpretation, the later frame is not regarded simply as a modern “New Frame” created by adding several movements to an older sequence. Instead, it is treated as a deeper family method transmitted through Chen Yanxi → Chen Fake → Chen Zhaokui → Chen Yu.
Chen Yu has publicly maintained that his grandfather Chen Fake refined his Gongfu frame late in life and passed it to Chen Zhaokui. Other Chen-family branches explain the history differently, so I think readers should understand this as a lineage-specific interpretation rather than uncontested historical consensus.
That distinction does not make the tradition less valuable. It simply tells us where the claim comes from.
Why the Frame Was Kept Private
Traditional martial arts families often protected advanced material.
According to stories preserved in this branch, Chen Fake practiced publicly during the day but reserved certain family material for private practice. The explanation I heard was that he treated the frame as something inherited from his father and therefore something he could not casually alter.
Chen Zhaokui reportedly gave similar instructions to his son Chen Yu: follow the frame as it was taught and do not change it simply because later generations think they know better.
Whether every detail of these family stories can be independently documented today is difficult. But I have heard this attitude many times in traditional Chinese martial arts: what is received from the teacher is first preserved, practiced, and understood before someone decides to improve it.
Why Some Call It a “Golden Elixir Frame”
Within the lineage interpretation discussed here, the Gongfu Frame is sometimes described as a form of Neidan or Golden Elixir training.
The traditional explanation connects the form with the Dantian, breathing, spiraling, opening and closing, the five phases, eight trigrams, circulation imagery, and the refinement of Jing, Qi, and Shen.
This is a Daoist cultivation interpretation. I do not think it should be presented as proof that a martial form literally manufactures a physical golden substance inside the abdomen. The value is in understanding the traditional framework through which practitioners organized their training.
For someone studying Chinese martial arts seriously, ignoring that cultural layer can be just as misleading as taking every old metaphor literally.
“King Kong Pounds Mortar” and the Structure of the Frame
One of the characteristic movements of Chen Style Tai Chi is Jingang Daodui (金刚捣碓), usually translated as “Buddha’s Warrior Attendant Pounds Mortar” or “King Kong Pounds Mortar.”
Its presence at key points in Chen-family forms has inspired many symbolic interpretations. Some practitioners connect the name to Buddhist or Daoist imagery, while others focus primarily on its martial and structural functions.
In the family Gongfu Frame, the movement is part of a much larger network of postures, transitions, spirals, weight changes, and internal-training instructions.
The name alone cannot prove that the entire form was designed as an alchemical ritual thousands of years ago, but it does show how deeply martial arts terminology absorbed religious and cultural imagery.
Chen Wangting and the Historical Question
Traditional lineage stories sometimes extend the Gongfu Frame backward through Chen Wangting, Chen Bu, Chen Tuan, legendary Daoist teachers, Huangdi, and even earlier culture heroes.
These genealogies should be approached carefully.
Chen Wangting is widely recognized as a major historical figure in the development of Chen-family martial arts during the seventeenth century. Modern historical accounts also note connections between early Chen material, military boxing traditions, Daoyin, breathing practices, and the martial writings of General Qi Jiguang.
Claims that a specific 91-posture frame can be documented unchanged through several thousand years are much harder to establish historically.
For me, there is no need to exaggerate the history. The tradition is already remarkable without forcing every legend to become an archaeological fact.
What the Gongfu Frame Means to Me
The longer I have studied traditional culture, the less interested I become in arguing over whether one old story must be completely literal.
The Gongfu Frame matters to me because it carries multiple layers at the same time. It contains martial techniques, body mechanics, spiraling, standing methods, breathing concepts, Dantian work, lineage memory, and philosophical language inherited from traditional Chinese culture.
That is already enough to make it valuable.
When I began studying in the 1980s, I was primarily looking at martial arts as physical skill. Later, especially through my study with Chen Yu, I became much more interested in what the older generation believed the movements were preserving.
Even when I do not interpret every statement literally, I want to understand why they said it.
Health, Longevity and Traditional Stories
Traditional martial artists have long connected correct practice with health and longevity. Older people in Chenjiagou also told me sayings such as:
“When you are young, the person nourishes the Dan. When you are old, the Dan nourishes the person.”
This is beautiful traditional language. It expresses the belief that years of cultivation eventually support a person later in life.
But it should not be turned into a guarantee that practicing a particular form will prevent disease, eliminate pain at death, or produce extreme longevity. Modern health outcomes depend on many factors, and historical village anecdotes cannot prove a medical treatment.
What I can say personally is that I met older practitioners whose lifelong commitment to martial arts left a strong impression on me. Their discipline was real even when the traditional explanations surrounding that discipline were difficult to measure.
Stories About Chen Zhaokui
During my research I also heard extraordinary stories about Chen Zhaokui. One story says that while he was teaching in Jiaozuo, students later claimed to have seen him at two separate gatherings during the same period.
Traditional Daoist language might describe such a story as yuanshen leaving the body or appearing in more than one place.
I do not present this as historically verified fact. It belongs to the folklore and oral tradition surrounding highly respected masters.
Chinese martial arts history is full of such stories. I think they are worth preserving as stories because they tell us how students remembered their teachers. We do not need to pretend they are laboratory observations.
Why Time Matters
Traditional cultivation repeatedly reminds us that human life is limited.
Zhang Boduan, an influential figure in Daoist internal-alchemy tradition, wrote about the difficulty of obtaining human life and the ease with which time passes. Similar ideas appear throughout Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist practice: if you are fortunate enough to meet a teacher and a method you value, do not assume there will always be more time.
This is one part of the old teaching I understand more clearly as I get older.
When I was young, another year of training felt almost unlimited. Decades later, you realize that every teacher, every student, and every generation has only a limited window in which knowledge can be passed on.
Preserving Without Blindly Believing
I believe traditional Chinese martial arts should be preserved, but preservation does not require us to abandon critical thinking.
We can say that Chen Fake moved to Beijing in 1928 and became enormously influential in spreading Chen-style Taijiquan. We can say that Chen Zhaokui was his son and Chen Yu his grandson. We can also accurately report that Chen Yu’s branch preserves a particular interpretation of the family Gongfu Frame.
At the same time, claims that a specific form was transmitted unchanged from prehistoric immortals, that it can literally produce immortality, or that advanced practitioners can physically exist in two locations at once belong to traditional religious belief and oral legend, not established history or science.
Making that distinction does not disrespect our ancestors. I think it shows more respect.
The Value of Lineage
The word lineage remains important because a traditional art is not preserved by text alone. A book can describe the shape, but a teacher corrects the body. A photograph shows a posture, but it cannot show timing, pressure, balance, or the feeling of the kua opening and closing.
That is why family and teacher transmission mattered so much historically.
A martial art survives when someone receives it, practices it seriously, understands enough of it to preserve its character, and then gives it to another generation.
Whether we describe that transmission as a bloodline, a martial lineage, a cultural vein, or simply good teaching, the basic problem is the same.
If the next generation does not receive it, the line ends.
About the Author: Jia Hui
Jia Hui was born in Beijing in March 1957 and has spent much of his life studying traditional Chinese culture, folk culture, Tai Chi, and ideas concerning life cultivation.
He grew up in a family environment that valued traditional culture and studied many classical works from Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, traditional Chinese medicine, and Chinese literature, including the Yijing, Book of Songs, Chuci, Analects, Mencius, Doctrine of the Mean, Great Learning, Daodejing, Diamond Sutra, Heart Sutra, Huangdi Neijing, Shanghan Zabing Lun, and Shennong Bencao Jing.
Beginning in 1981, Jia Hui studied Tai Chi and traditional martial arts with a number of teachers, including Cheng Zhimin, Wang Xi’an, Chen Suying, Hong Junsheng, Xu Hongyan, Zhu Tiancai, and Zhang Qilin. In the summer of 2005 he went to Beijing to study Chen Yu’s family Gongfu Frame and continued to explore its cultural and martial meaning.
He has worked as a cultural consultant for businesses and non-government academic organizations in China and has published extensively in Chinese media. He has also participated in television and online programs discussing martial arts and traditional culture.
Final Thoughts
For me, Chen Yu’s family Gongfu Frame is valuable because it sits at the intersection of martial skill, family lineage, Chinese philosophy, Daoist cultivation, and personal transmission.
Some parts of its story can be documented historically. Other parts are family memory, religious interpretation, or oral tradition. Those categories should not be confused.
But they do not need to be erased either.
When I began studying martial arts more than forty years ago, I mainly wanted to understand how the movements worked. Over time, another question became equally important: what did the people who preserved these movements believe they were passing down?
That is the question behind this essay.
A traditional form is easy to dismiss as a sequence of old movements. It is also easy to romanticize it as an unchanged secret from immortals thousands of years ago. I prefer a middle path. Practice the movements seriously. Preserve the stories honestly. Verify what can be verified. Clearly identify what belongs to tradition.
Then let the next generation decide what value it finds there.
Original Chinese essay by Jia Hui
English translation, editing and historical annotations by ChenStyle.com
