Anhui Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage · No. VI-19
Two hundred years in one fist:
from Chaohu Lake to West Africa
I'm Zixuan Niu (牛子轩), a student at Ghana International School in Accra. Niu Hehou — the fourth-generation bearer of Niumen Hongquan — is my grandmaster: my teacher's teacher. The art I practise came down to me through his hands, and I now teach it to my African classmates.
Origin
Niuguanbao: two centuries of a “village of boxers”
Niumen Hongquan comes from Niuguanbao — today Xing'er Village, Changlinhe Town, Feidong County, on the northern shore of Chaohu Lake in Anhui. Local gazetteers from the Ming–Qing period already called it the martial-art village of eastern Hefei. A folk verse still circulates: “Once there was the chivalrous Niuguanbao; one sword-flash chilled all four directions.”
A village where everyone trained
Nestled between Qingyang Mountain and the Fei River, Niuguanbao developed a culture of practice that ran through every household. Men, women and children all trained; a local saying held that “anyone who grows up inside the gate knows three parts of it even if they never learned.” Villagers were known for defending the poor, righting wrongs and standing up for what was fair.
From one family's art to a province's heritage
Before 1949, the art was bound by its own code and passed only within the Niu family, across a handful of hamlets. Miaoqian Niu village kept a lion dance tradition — and the lion dance required real martial skill to perform, which is precisely how the boxing survived from generation to generation. On 5 November 2017, Niumen Hongquan was inscribed on Anhui's fifth provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage list.
Two founders, two branches
Niu Hanzhang
“Third Master Niu” · a name that carried across the escort agencies
Born around 1842 into a family of military graduates, he trained under his father, then left home to study elsewhere, returning with the famed “iron shirt” and “golden bell” hard-body skills. He served in the army, then roamed the martial world and made his name in the northern and southern escort agencies. Back home he opened a school, synthesised what he had learned, and created Great Hong Fist, Small Hong Fist, Ten-Road Spring Legs and Blue Dragon Hand — one branch of the art.
Niu Hongchuan
“The Great Hero of Jianghuai” · who walked on snow without a trace
Born 1872, nephew of Niu Hanzhang and his disciple from childhood, he later travelled the country with Master Huiyun. He was said to possess supreme lightness skill — “walking on snow leaving no print, crossing water leaving no ripple, moving across rooftops as if on flat ground.” He robbed the rich to feed the poor and earned the title “Great Hero of Jianghuai”. Returning home near fifty, he built on his uncle's teaching and created Great and Small Hong Fist, Four-Gate Fist, Water Margin Fist and Baji Fist, plus the weapon sets Bagua Dragon Sword, Six-Route Sabre, Staff, Brow-Height Cudgel, Bench Flower and Spring-Autumn Great Blade — the second branch.
Two generations later, disciples Niu Shanbi and Niu Shanping — and after them Niu Jinkang, Niu Hebing and others — compared notes, filled each other's gaps and merged the two branches into one, producing the Niumen Hongquan we know today.
Forms & Principles
How the art moves
The whole system compresses into sixteen characters. It is neither the Northern style (“the hands are two doors; the legs do the fighting”) nor the Southern (“the legs are two roots; the hands do the work”) — it draws on both.
Apart from the 108-move Great Hong set, the forms are short, low, unadorned and overwhelmingly practical. Great and Small Hong Fist and Arhat Palm are considered the most refined.
Anything can become a weapon. In Bench Flower a wooden bench is both shield and blade; the Spring-Autumn Great Blade moves like wind; the Bagua Dragon Sword shows what lightness skill can do.
Seventeen core attacking and defending hand methods. Each move both attacks and defends.
- 冲
- 点
- 劈
- 砍
- 抹
- 盖
- 撞
- 封
- 托
- 扣
- 缠
- 推
- 提
- 撩
- 拿
- 穿
- 搂
Core rules
- The fist travels one straight line; every step locks into the next
- Attack and defence exist in the same movement — defence turns back into attack
- Strike seven, hold back three — never commit everything
- The body stays still while the fist lands; hands and feet cooperate
- Built on the “four tips”, “five phases”, “six harmonies” and “three drives”
Breath: to train it, and to still it
- Training the breath means making it circulate
- Nourishing the breath means making it stay still
- Mouth closed, tongue kept back; breath sinks to the lower abdomen
- Chest drawn in, abdomen held; shoulders dropped, hips loosened
- Martial art and medicine share one root: students learn the meridians too
“In Great and Small Hong Fist, every move hides a mechanism that travels the world; the Arhat Palm trains inner and outer together and grants long life.” — traditional saying of Niumen Hongquan
Lineage
Four generations
From two founding masters in the late Qing to a fourth generation that now teaches in schools and performs on stage — the art has survived because people kept passing it hand to hand.
| Generation | Bearers | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | Niu Hanzhang · Niu Hongchuan | Founders of the two branches: the empty-hand sets and the six weapon sets respectively. |
| 2nd | Niu Shanbi · Niu Shanping | Merged the two branches into one, comparing, correcting and completing each other's material from form to content. |
| 3rd | Niu Jinkang · Niu Jinrui | Niu Jinkang (b. 1932), son of Niu Shanbi; Niu Jinrui, son of Niu Shanping. Also Niu Hebing and Niu Jinchang. |
| 4th | Niu Hehou | Provincial-level representative bearer. Trained under Niu Jinkang; sixty-plus years of practice; founded three schools; taught over ten thousand students. |
Why it's at risk
Fewer young people are willing to endure the training; parents weigh exam scores over everything else; phones take the hours that used to go to practice. This is exactly what keeps the older generation awake at night.
Into the schools
In September 2015, Changlinhe Central School made Niumen Hongquan part of PE — a required course for third-graders. Niu Hehou wrote a school textbook so children could learn it properly.
Into the museum
Feidong County Museum runs a dedicated “Niumen Hongquan” corridor, where six projectors break the movements down frame by frame along a hand-drawn animated wall.
The Bearer · My Grandmaster
Niu Hehou — my grandmaster
In the classroom he was a senior Chinese-language teacher. Outside it, he carried a two-hundred-year-old art on his shoulders. To me he is also something else: my teacher's teacher.
The branch I practise descends from Niu Hehou. My teacher, teacher's name, is a direct student of Niu Hehou — which makes Niu Hehou my grandmaster (shīyé: the master of my master). He spent fifty-plus years teaching between Anhui and Hunan; what I do in Ghana is one short extension of that same line.
Niu Hehou
My grandmaster · provincial representative bearer · senior secondary-school teacher
Born in 1945 into a farming family in today's Xing'er Village. In 1956 the village held its lion lantern festival, and by custom a martial demonstration followed. His father took the eleven-year-old boy to be formally apprenticed to Niu Jinkang, the third-generation bearer. “My teacher was strict — one horse stance, one bow stance, one punch, one palm, repeated hundreds of times,” he recalls. The twelve-road spring legs alone took him more than a year.
His day job was teaching Chinese literature at senior high school; evenings and weekends went to practice and to students. To go deeper he travelled to Shanghai three times to study under his cousin Niu Hebing (then adviser to the Shanghai Pudong Martial Arts Institute), the elder Niu Jinchang, and Xi Panliang of the Shanghai Yangtze Martial-Therapy Institute, qualifying as an advanced martial therapist. He has now practised Niumen Hongquan, Hua Fist and Taiji (Yang and Chen styles) for over sixty years.
- ScaleOver ten thousand students in thirty-plus years, through classes at Changlinhe Central School, Huizhi School and the Association
- WritingA 500,000-word novel, The Great Hero of Jianghuai: Niu Hongchuan, and the reference book Niumen Hongquan, co-written with his son
- Free teachingFrom 2012, free classes every Friday to Sunday for left-behind children — sixty-plus children over ten years, twelve of whom won provincial medals
- CompetitionAt the 2023 Hefei Invitational, the Niumen Hongquan youth team took 15 gold, 7 silver and 3 bronze and repeated as team champion
- SouthwardHis son Niu Yi blended the Anhui system with sanda and competition routines in Xiangtan, producing thirty-plus provincial champions
“We don't train to beat people. We train to keep the essence of a culture alive.” — Niu Hehou
What I Did · 我的实践
Bringing a Chinese martial art into an African school
Zixuan Niu (牛子轩) · Ghana International School, Cantonments, Accra, Ghana
YEAR · Apprenticeship
Becoming a student — with Niu Hehou as my grandmaster
I apprenticed myself to teacher's name, a direct student of Niu Hehou, the fourth-generation bearer. In the generation hierarchy of the art, that makes Niu Hehou my grandmaster. I trained in Xing'er Village — the birthplace of Niumen Hongquan, where everyone in the village trains and where this provincial heritage item actually lives.
YEAR · Training
Going back, again and again
I have since joined Niumen Hongquan training sessions multiple times: starting from horse stance, bow stance and straight punch, then working through the Great Hong, Small Hong and Ten-Road Spring Legs sets, and learning what the sixteen-character formula actually means in the body — how to generate power, how to stay low, how to control distance.
N training camps attended; roughly N hours of practice in total.
YEAR · Teaching
Explaining “martial virtue” in Accra
At Ghana International School — founded 1955, with students from more than 56 countries — I started demonstrating the forms to my African classmates on my own initiative: naming the seventeen hand methods, showing what 冲 or 缠 actually does, and explaining why “we don't train to beat people” is the point of the whole thing.
Classmates reached came from N countries; N students in total.
YEAR · Building it
From one demo to something that lasts
I turned scattered demonstrations into a standing activity — club / workshop name, running once a week / monthly — and built this bilingual site as a permanent public record where anyone can leave a message or ask a question.
Next
Making the two ends actually talk
My goal is to get a village art from Anhui and the drum rhythms of a West African campus onto the same field: to write the forms up as a bilingual manual so that classmates with no Chinese can follow them, and to set up regular contact with the heritage bearers back home.
At a glance
If you only have one minute, read this box.
Lineage: Niu Hehou (my grandmaster) → teacher's name (my teacher) → Zixuan Niu (me)
What this shows about me
- Authentic lineage — not a hobbyist: I was taught by a direct student of Niu Hehou, the provincial-level bearer, who is therefore my grandmaster.
- Initiative — nobody assigned me this. I chose it and built it.
- Cross-cultural communication — explaining an entire Chinese conceptual system, in English, to peers from dozens of countries.
- Long-term commitment — years and two continents, not a one-off event.
- Cultural grounding — choosing to be the person who explains your own culture rather than the one who stays quiet.
- Verifiable output — this bilingual site is itself a checkable artefact.
“I want my classmates to understand that Chinese martial arts are not just a set of punches. Behind them is a whole system of thought about how to carry yourself, how to restrain yourself, and how to keep going.” — Zixuan Niu
China × Ghana
Two cultures, one field
Niumen Hongquan speaks of “meeting friends through the martial arts”. GIS's motto is “Understanding of Each Other.” They are the same sentence.
🇨🇳 China · shores of Chaohu Lake
- Niuguanbao Village, Changlinhe, Feidong, Anhui
- Nearly two centuries, from the late Qing to today
- Martial lion dance: a 15-kilogram lion head, only trainable after learning the fist
- Martial art and medicine share one root
- Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage, 2017
🇬🇭 Ghana · Accra
- Ghana International School, founded 1955
- Motto: Understanding of Each Other
- Students from more than 56 countries
- Ghana's only school accredited by both CIS and NEASC
- UN Day, drumming, dance and cultural showcases
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