Zhang Sanfeng

There are conflicting accounts of where Zhang Sanfeng was born. According to the History of Ming, he was born in Liaoning in the late Song and lived up to 212 years. In 2014, the local government of Shaowu, Fujian province, claimed that he was born in their city. His given name was Tong (通) and his courtesy name was Junbao (君寶, 君宝). He specialised in Confucian and Taoist studies, scholarly and literary arts. During the reign of Emperor Shizu in the Yuan dynasty, he was nominated as a candidate to join the civil service and held office as the Magistrate of Boling County (博陵縣; around present-day Dingzhou, Baoding, Hebei). While touring around the mountainous regions near present-day Baoji, Shaanxi, he saw the summits of three mountains and decided to give himself the Taoist name "Sanfengzi" (三丰子), hence he also became known as "Zhang Sanfeng". Zhang Sanfeng's life was one of indifference to fame and wealth. After declining to serve the government and giving away his property to his clan, he travelled around China and lived as an ascetic. He spent several years on Mount Hua before settling in the Wudang Mountains.

Zhang Sanfeng is purported as having created the concept of neijia (內家) in Chinese martial arts, specifically tai chi, a Neo-Confucian syncretism of martial arts with his mastery of daoyin (or neigong) principles. On one occasion, he observed a bird attacking a snake and was greatly inspired by the snake's defensive tactics. It remained still and alert in the face of the bird's onslaught until it made a lunge and fatally bit its attacker. This incident inspired him to create a set of 75 tai chi movements. He is also associated with the Taoist monasteries in the Wudang Mountains. Huang Zongxi's Epitaph for Wang Zhengnan (1669) gave Zhang Sanfeng credit for the development of a Taoist "internal martial arts" style, as opposed to the "external" style of the Shaolin martial arts tradition. Stanley Henning's article, Ignorance, Legend and Taijiquan, criticised the myth that Zhang Sanfeng created tai chi and cast doubt on whether Zhang really existed. Zhang Sanfeng was also an expert in the White Crane and Snake styles of Chinese martial arts, and in the use of the jian (double-edged Chinese sword). According to 19th-century documents preserved in the archives of the Yang and Wu-styles tai chi families, Zhang Sanfeng's master was Xu Xuanping, a Tang dynasty Taoist poet and daoyin expert.