About

What I Carry

I'm John Spak. I've trained in Baguazhang, Taijiquan, and Imperial Longfist for over fifty years. Though I had trained with others before meeting him, what I carry came mostly through one teacher — Xu Gongwei (徐公伟, 1916–2003).

Master Xu was from Nanjing. He was a master of many arts — Taiji, Baguazhang, Xingyi, Chaquan, and others — and was officially designated by the Chinese government as cultural heritage for his depth of knowledge. He moved to Vancouver in 1988 and passed away in 2003.

The transmission he carried came through two distinct lines, both of which I received:

Taiji and Baguazhang: transmitted to Xu Gongwei by Zhou Yifan, a guard employed inside the Forbidden City. Zhou Yifan learned these arts as a single, undifferentiated practice. The modern habit of sorting Baguazhang into "Yin style" and "Cheng style" did not exist when he was trained. Master Xu rejected that categorization outright — he considered it a corruption of the original transmission and grew angry if I spoke in those terms. The art was one art.

Imperial Longfist (Chaquan): transmitted to Xu Gongwei by Yu Zhensheng (于振声, 1871–1959), who served as a martial arts instructor at the Huangpu Military Academy in the 1930s. Yu Zhensheng learned from Yang Hongxiu (杨鸿修, 1864–1944), the progenitor of the Yang branch of Chaquan, who studied under masters Zhang Jingtan and Ma Laowei. Yang Hongxiu also taught Wang Ziping (1881–1973), one of the most renowned martial artists of modern China.

Master Xu also studied Chen Taiji directly under Chen Zhaokui. I do not teach that. He told me that the Wu style he transmitted to me is the best, and that is what I carry.

I later added training in both Yin-style and Cheng-style Baguazhang to deepen my understanding of how the art branched after Dong Haichuan's students began teaching publicly. But the core of what I carry predates those branches. I teach what I was given, as I was given it, because that is how a lineage survives. What I've added through my own study belongs to me, not to the transmission. The distinction matters.

Over decades of practice, I've decoded what I was given — tested it against engineering physics, biomechanics, and the realities of a body under stress. Not to improve on the transmission, but to understand it well enough to transmit the truth of it. Forms preserved without understanding become empty shapes. I won't pass on empty shapes. I pass on what the shapes are for.