Dong Yingjie

Dong Yingjie

Dong Yingjie ( Chinese  董英杰 , Pinyin Dǒng Yīngjié , W.-G. Tung Ying Chieh ) (born November 8, 1898 in Ren County, Xingtai City in Hebei Province , Chinese Empire ; † 1961 ) was an influential teacher of Taijiquan .

In his youth, Dong Yingjie was distinguished by high intelligence. However, his health was poor. He was interested in martial arts even at that time. When asked about his goals in life, he replied to Liu Ying Zhou , a friend of the famous Taijiquan master Yang Lao Zhen from Canton, “I want to become a master of Taijiquan in order to strengthen my health and to be able to defend myself. If I succeed, I want to spread the martial arts worldwide. ” Liu Ying Zhou admired these ambitions, so he explained some basic exercises to Dong Yingjie. However, due to his old age of over 70, he was not able to demonstrate the exercises. A few months later, Li Zeng Kui , a student of Yang Lao , taught Dong Yingjie the 13 basic techniques of Taijiquan.

A year later, Master Liu took the young Dong Yingjie on a trip to see the master of the Wu / Hao style ("old Wu style") Li Xiang Yuan . He accepted Dong Yingjie as his student. Several years of daily practice resulted in Dong Yingjie becoming strong and in good health. When he returned home, Dong Yingjie continued to study and established good contacts with many martial artists from all corners of the country, whom he invited and entertained well.

Because he admired the Yang family's taijiquan, Dong Yingjie went to Beijing . Nor did he give up claiming that Mr. Yang only passed his taijiquan on within the family. He replied: “Determination can set heaven and earth in motion.” So Dong Yingjie became the master student of Yang Chengfu (1883–1936) and accompanied him around the clock and on all his travels for three years.

When he met again with Master Li Zeng Kui, he found that Dong Yingjie still had too little inner strength / energy ( Chinese  内勁 , Pinyin nèi jìng ) and therefore stayed in Suzhou for a year and helped Dong Yingjie, great inner strength to develop and refine its applications.

In 1931, Dong Yingjie followed his master Yang Chengfu to Canton . By then he had been studying with him for more than ten years. Because of his serious efforts, Yang Chengfu decided to teach Dong Yingjie entirely in the Yang style. Together with Yang Shou Zhong , the eldest son of Yang Chengfu, Dong Yingjie later inherited the Yang family. He stayed in Canton to fulfill his dream and that of his teacher by teaching and promoting Taijiquan there and throughout Southeast Asia.

While Hong Kong fell into the hands of the Japanese , Dong Yingjie lived a secluded life in Macau and enjoyed Chinese painting and calligraphy .

Dong Huling (董虎嶺) (1917–92), the son of Dong Yingjie, was famous for his martial arts skills. Two of his sons, Tung Kaiying (董繼英) (* 1941), and Dong Zengchen (董增辰) now teach and inspire students of Taijiquan.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} History - Grand Master Tung Ying Jie ( Memento of the original from August 12, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ Classical Tai Chi Text, 13 postures of Tai Chi
3. ↑ Dong Taijiquan Dao Academy

Web links

• History - Grand Master Tung Ying Jie

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Dong is the family name here, Yingjie is the first name.