Early years
Kuo Lien-Ying’s father was a silk merchant, and the family was independently wealthy. As a youngster, Kuo apparently had no interest in an academic education, wanting only to learn the fighting arts. In 1907, at the age of 12, Kuo started training in Northern Style Shaolin Kung-Fu, studying for five years with Master Li Lin, who was especially skilled in Chang Chuan (Long Fist). Kuo became very proficient and skillful at this powerful and rigorous martial arts system, which was originally developed by Buddhist monks.
At 23, Kuo became one of only four inner-door disciples of the 100 year old master Wang Jiao-Yu, himself one of only two inner-door students of Yang Pan-Hou. Yang Pan-Hou was the son of Yang
Lu-Chan, born Kuang-P'ing (Guang Ping), the
founder of
Yang style Tai Chi and what has become known as Guang Ping
Yang
Tai Chi Chuan. When he was 28, Kuo studied Xingyiquan for two years with Master Huang Gin-Yin, a highly skilled student of Guo Yunshen, the teacher of Xingi master and founder of Yiquan Wang Xiangzhai. Kuo also studied Baguazhang with Chang Hsin-Zhai and Cheng Ting-Hua.
Early History
Kuo Lien-Ying reportedly worked for a while as a bodyguard for the gold caravans in China, protecting the caravans on horseback with his unrivaled rope-dart techniques. He allegedly became a governor of a province in China, and later a general in the army of Chiang Kai Shek.
In 1947, after the Communist takeover, he fled to Taiwan, became a congressman and opened up a martial arts school. Although he left his four wives and eight children in China when he fled Mao Tse Tung, Kuo married the 21 year old sister of one of his students, Ein Simmone Kuo.
Kuo was so confident of his fighting skills that in 1951 he issued a challenge to world boxing champion Joe Louis, to meet him for a fight. In 1972 Kuo claimed to the San Francisco Chronicle, “I could have thrown him.”
Kuo Lien-Ying in America
In 1965, he emmigrated to the United States and settled in San Francisco’s Chinatown, leaving his young wife behind in Taiwan. At the request of his first U.S. student, David Chin, Kuo began teaching a few students on the roof of a local hotel. After less than a year, Kuo returned to Taiwan to bring Simmone Kuo to San Francisco. While he was in Taiwan, his students in San Francisco located an empty storefront at 11 Brenham Place, an alley which faced Portsmouth Square Park, which was unfortunately adjacent to a funeral parlor. The empty storefront was available due to the superstitions of the local residents who did not want to inhabit a place next to a mortuary. But according to one of his later students, Henry Look, Kuo often told him, “Don’t worry about dead people, worry about live ones.”
The students converted the storefront
into a martial arts studio, with living quarters in the rear. Kuo named
his new school, “Lien-Ying Tai-Chi Chuan Martial Arts Academy.” In 1967 Kuo and Simmone had a son, Chung-Mei Kuo. Chung-Mei was trained in Shaolin Kung Fu and Tai Chi Chuan at an early age, achieving Chin-to-Toe at 18 months.
Kuo was one of the major theorists of the Chin school, which offers the closest blend of the hard and soft styles. Chin stylists claim there is a 50-50 blend of the two because while you are yielding, you are most conscious of unyielding and that is the only way you can take advantage of all things.
Portsmouth Square, Chinatown
One of the stories that Kuo told his students was about the time he was walking in a Chinatown alley late one evening and was set upon by a group of robbers. Kuo reached down and picked up a piece of metal laying on the ground and with his bare hands pounded the spike into the brick wall of the nearest building, and then hung his jacket on the spike. The would-be robbers fled. Kuo Lien-Ying was very flirtatious, with an eye for pretty young women, and developed a reputation for trying to seduce his female students. He was well-known for eating several cloves of raw garlic every morning, and he was also very fond of Gaoliang, a strong Chinese liquor.
With an uncanny sixth sense, Kuo knew when his students would sleep in, missing the five a.m. practice session, and he would phone them, shouting in Chinese, “Come to practice, practice, tai chi, tai chi!”
Kuo Lien-Ying was among the first Chinese martial arts masters in America to teach Asian fighting arts to American students, and was often admonished by other Chinese teachers for teaching Westerners.
In 1983, Kuo returned to Mongolia, and passed away in 1984.
Kuo's widow Simmone, continues to teach and carry on her husband's tradition, not changing the unique and age-old forms at the Lien-Ying Tai-Chi Chuan Martial Arts Academy in Chinatown as well as at San Francisco State University.
There are many of Kuo’s direct students teaching the Guang Ping Yang Tai Chi Chuan form today; among them are Y.C. Chiang, David Chin, Bing Gong, Marilyn Cooper, Donald and Cheryl Lynne Rubbo, Randall Fung, Henry Look, Jarl Forsman, and Ellen Serber. Robert Bergman (Indian), one of the few students taught the monkey form by Master Kuo, teaches Kuo's Shaolin Kung-Fu.