Chang Dongsheng
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Chang Dongsheng (;
Xiao'erjing Xiao'erjing or Xiao'erjin or Xiaor jin or in its shortened form, Xiaojing, literally meaning "children's script" or "minor script" (cf. "original script" referring to the original Perso-Arabic script; zh, s=本经, t=本經, p=Běnjīng, Xiao ...
: ) (1908–1986) was a
Hui The Hui people ( zh, c=, p=Huízú, w=Hui2-tsu2, Xiao'erjing: , dng, Хуэйзў, ) are an East Asian ethnoreligious group predominantly composed of Chinese-speaking adherents of Islam. They are distributed throughout China, mainly in the n ...
martial artist. He was one of the best-known Chinese wrestling (also known as Shuai jiao) practitioners and teachers.


Biography

Born in 1908 in
Baoding Baoding (), formerly known as Baozhou and Qingyuan, is a prefecture-level city in central Hebei province, approximately southwest of Beijing. As of the 2010 census, Baoding City had 11,194,382 inhabitants out of which 2,176,857 lived in the b ...
,
Hebei Hebei or , (; alternately Hopeh) is a northern province of China. Hebei is China's sixth most populous province, with over 75 million people. Shijiazhuang is the capital city. The province is 96% Han Chinese, 3% Manchu, 0.8% Hui, and 0 ...
, Chang was remarkably strong among his peers from his early life. Chang's family roasted chickens, and their business provided sufficient income to allow him private lessons with Zhang Fenyen, a local businessman and Shuai Chiao master who practiced ''baoding shuai jiao'' as instructed by Ping Jinyi. Chang distinguished himself early among Zhang's pupils as a promising martial artist. This led to close personal attention and training in areas normally reserved for more senior students. Zhang taught Chang unorthodox training drills and methods to aid him in developing his shuai jiao skill, including using leg sweeps to drive grasshoppers into the air where the correctly positioned hand could easily catch them. At 20, after marrying master Fenyen's second daughter, Chang left Hopei and moved to Nankin to train at the Kuo Shu, where many Chinese martial artists trained and shared their knowledge. After five years, Tung Sheng competed in 1933 in the 5th National Kuo Shu Tournament (also called the "All China Full Contact Tournament") and won the heavyweight division over several hundred other practitioners, among them the renowned Liu Chiou-Sheng, who went to be his biggest rival. Chang com Now nicknamed the "Flying Butterfly," Chang would go on to win numerous challenge matches before entering China's armed services - traveling across the
Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Tai ...
controlled areas of China to seek out other shuai jiao practitioners in order to test his skills. He may also have first started learning xingyi in this period. In one of his most famous matches, Chang challenged the Mongolian wrestling champion, Hukli, who was supposedly 7 ft tall and weighed near 400 pounds. The contest was judged under wrestling, without strikes or locks. Chang was victorious, throwing down Hukli repeatedly, despite the size difference.Grand Master Chang Tung Sheng - Shuai Chiao
Chang taught at the Nanjing Central Kuoshu Institute () and was the youngest faculty member at the time. There, he exchanged knowledge with other martial arts experts. He created his own variation of
t'ai chi Tai chi (), short for Tai chi ch'üan ( zh, s=太极拳, t=太極拳, first=t, p=Tàijíquán, labels=no), sometimes called " shadowboxing", is an internal Chinese martial art practiced for defense training, health benefits and meditation. ...
and xingyi, Chang t'ai chi, based on
Yang-style t'ai chi ch'uan Yang family-style () T‘ai-Chi Ch‘üan (Taijiquan) in its many variations is the most popular and widely practised style in the world today and the second in terms of seniority among the primary five family styles of T'ai Chi Ch'uan. History ...
, xing yi and his Shuai Jiao knowledge. Chang traveled across all China and studied under around 70 masters, always introducing himself as a simple student in order to learn everything possible. Throughout the
Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...
and
World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, of which China became a part, Chang instructed large numbers of Chinese Nationalist troops in Shuai Chiao (including the elite Red Wall paratroopers), while continuing to fend off numerous challenges. When not otherwise occupied, Chang visited several POW camps to test his Shuai Chiao against Japanese practitioners of
judo is an unarmed modern Japanese martial art, Olympic sport (since 1964), and the most prominent form of jacket wrestling competed internationally.『日本大百科全書』電子版【柔道】(CD-ROM version of Encyclopedia Nipponica, "Judo"). ...
,
jujutsu Jujutsu ( ; ja, link=no, 柔術 , ), also known as jiu-jitsu and ju-jitsu, is a family of Japanese martial arts and a system of close combat (unarmed or with a minor weapon) that can be used in a defensive or offensive manner to kill or subdu ...
and karate. It was specially important his performance in the Kuang-Si prison, where he defeated judo practitioners Haido Takayama, Kuma Hisa and Masao Hichi. Chang represented the Army in 1948 when he was victorious in a nationwide competition for shuai jiao,
Chin Na Qinna () is the set of joint lock techniques used in the Chinese martial arts to control or lock an opponent's joints or muscles/tendons so they cannot move, thus neutralizing the opponent's fighting ability. ''Qinna Shu'' ( meaning "technique") ...
, grappling and throwing all together. When Kuomintang troops under Chiang Kai-shek were driven from mainland China to
Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...
by the Communist rebels, Chang left for Taiwan. On the establishment of the National Police University, in
Taipei Taipei (), officially Taipei City, is the capital and a special municipality of the Republic of China (Taiwan). Located in Northern Taiwan, Taipei City is an enclave of the municipality of New Taipei City that sits about southwest of the ...
in the Republic of China, Chang was given a position of Senior Instructor in unarmed training by Presidential edict. He taught there for over 30 years. There are several famous anecdotes about Chang's short temper. In one occasion, a man came to the Taipei National Police University and asked to train with him; instead of answering, Tung Sheng attacked the visitor and threw him down, forcing him to confess that he had actually come to challenge him after the training, something Chang had already figured out. Similarly, Robert W. Smith once travelled to Taiwan to interview Tung Sheng and train with him, but when he asked the master to show him some of his skills, Chang just kicked Smith in the groin. Never defeated in martial arts challenge matches, Chang died in 1986 of aggressive esophageal cancer.


Personal beliefs

Chang was a devout and practicing Muslim.


References


External links


Master Mollica - biography of Chang
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Chang Tung Sheng 1908 births 1986 deaths Taiwanese martial artists Taiwanese Muslims Taiwanese people of Hui descent Chinese Muslim Wushu practitioners Chinese male sport wrestlers Sportspeople from Baoding Taiwanese people from Hebei Hui sportspeople