Yang Guotai (Yang Shifu) began his martial arts training at the age of 8 back in the early 1920′s. For the first 5 years he practised what is called ‘wu xing’ (5 elements) daily from one end of the field to the other repeatedly, and nothing else. His Shifu was Xu Zhenbiao, disciple of Lu Bin (1866-1930).
When Yang Shifu was 13 his Shifu (Xu Zhenbiao) asked him “do you now understand the 5 elements? Good, lets practise bagua zhang now…” and from that day forward his martial arts career was dedicated to Cheng Style Bagua (cheng shi bagua zhang). Yang Shifu spent many years with his teacher Xu Zhenbiao (1913-1991) and his teacher’s peers such as Wang Wenkui who Yang Shifu often talked about with fond memories and vivid stories about the challenges Wang Wenkui would accept.
Yang Guotai would often venture out from the Beijing Bagua Institute where he trained and go to the public parks to challenge other martial artists that had a reputation for themselves, in particular other bagua practitioners to see how well they could fare against him. *(see note at bottom)
Yang Guotai moved to Vancouver in the early 90s after the death of his Shifu, Xu Zhenbiao where he gradually started teaching bagua and gathering students in semi private groups outdoors.
While Yang Guotai had a number of students his ’inner door’ students in Vancouver were:
- Dave Meikle – Vancouver
- Josh Crossley – Nanaimo
- Namhin Sinha – Vancouver
- Dennis Mace – Seattle
- Will Winram – Switzerland
Yang Guotai has since returned to Beijing in 2010 where he currently resides with his family.
*This developed a bit of a reputation for himself which one of his Vancouver students was practising in a park one day and was seen by a chinese man on tour visiting from Beijing. He had watched the student’s bagua, noticing how unique it was as it does not resemble contemporary wushu. When asked who his teacher was (Yang Guotai) the man became quite excited… he asked the student if his teacher had a severed thumb (he does) and began to go into great detail about how Yang Guotai was ‘the badass at the park’ that many people revered many years ago.
