Who was Chang Dsu Yao?

Chang Dsu Yao (also known as Chang Ch'eng Hsün) was born on 14th June 1918 in P'ei (a provinceof Kiang Su, China).

At the age of five he watched his first Shaolin Kung Fu demonstration and was fascinated. He was too young to go to a gymnasium, but he insisted so much that when he was six, his father (a well-off land-owner) called Master Liu Pao Chün to give him private lessons at home.

Liu Pao Chün (also known as Liu Chin Ch'en) - who at that time was about 45 years old - had a reputation for being one of the strongest and most all-round masters of Northern China. Liu had studied T'ai Chi Ch'üan with great Yang Cheng Fu (leader of the Yang style) and Shaolin Ch'üan (and other external styles) with Master Wu (very famous as well). Master Liu knew many external and internal styles to perfection and handled in a marvellous way all Kung Fu traditional weapons. He was considered invincible. He died over ninety.

For over twenty years, for seven days a week and for many hours a day, young Chang trained and studied with Liu Pao Chün, at first at home, then at master's school. The training was very hard. The students had to keep still in perfect concentration for long periods in the most difficult positions, such as standing on one leg. The ones who staggered or gave out received a stick blow. They were neither allowed to bat their eyelids! Master Liu said that he had to mould both their body and their mind, acting as a blacksmith. Master Chang told: "My passion was so great that in reality I didn't feel neither the fatigue nor the pain. I trained for at least four hours a day and I used every free minute in the day to repeat the exercises. Furthermore I was always thinking at Kung Fu, even when I was eating or I was at school, and by night I dreamed of training or fighting. Master Liu Pao Chün had about two thousand students, but he transmitted all his knowledge to only five of us. I am the only one survived and I wish this knowledge does not die with me".

When he finished studying, young Chang decided to embark upon military career and he enroled for Officer Academy of Kuei Lin. Here he studied martial arts with other famous masters. Master Chang Ching P'o (who had studied with Yang Cheng Fu and with Sun Lu Tang) taught him Hsing I Ch'üan, Pa Kua Chang and Liang I Ch'üan. While a master called Fu taught him Szu Hsiang Ch'üan, a style that himself had created.

Then the war came, first against Japan, then the civil war. On the battlefield Chang Dsu Yao had to use his martial knowledge and he acted like a hero. For his merits and the valour showed on the battlefield he was promoted colonel of Chinese Army when he was not yet thirty years old.
During the war he suffered ugly wounds. The worst was the break of his spine, caused by falling down a 40 ft tower after the explosion of a bomb.
His chest was crossed by a long and deep scar. It was caused by a bayonet blow while he was fighting alone against six opponents.
Another ugly wound, in his leg, gave rise to a frequent phlebitis, which was probably, many years later, the indirect cause of his death.

In 1949, at the end of the civil war, Chang moved to Taipei (the capital of Taiwan). There he carried on his relationship with Master Chang Ching P'o (who had moved to Taiwan too), and became martial arts chief trainer of the Armed Forces. At the beginning of the sixties, after Chang Ching P'o's death, he took his place and became Kung Fu chief trainer of the police too. He also taught martial arts at Taipei University.
While living in Taiwan, Chang Dsu Yao met many famous martial arts masters. He became a friend of Cheng Man Ching, a great T'ai Chi Ch'üan master, very famous for bringing this art in the U.S.A., and for being the last student of Yang Cheng Fu.

Master Chang Dsu Yao became famous in Taiwan when he fought against a Mafia gang levying taxes on Taipei market. A reporter of the most important newspaper was a witness of that big riot. He was amazed by how easily no longer young Chang had got rid of the opponents, many of which had staffes and knives, and he asked him how he did that. The master laconicaly answered: "I don't know, I don't remember". That was a perfect example of "mental blank", the condition that every martial arts practitioner should reach in critical moments.
Then Master Chang he had to fight again, this time against cancer. It was a long battle, but he won.

In 1974 Chang Dsu Yao discharged from the Army and decided to move to Italy, to spread his art all over Europe. He initially moved to Bologna, where an old friend of his lived. It was difficult to begin, also because at that time he did not speak Italian. But in 1977 Roberto Fassi invited him to teach in Milan, and here a quick spreading began. A group of very faithful students, formed by Ignazio Cuturello, Giuseppe Ghezzi, Alfredo Santini, Nicola Ragno, Luigi Bestetti and Fassi himself, helped him to found Italian and European organizations.
Master Chang taught many hours a day and made seminars and stages in Italy and across Europe. By Roberto Fassi's collaboration, he wrote many books about Shaolin, T'ai Chi Ch'üan and Kung Fu in general.
Chang Dsu Yao was a great calligraphist too. In Taiwan he got many recognitions for his skill (in China calligraphy is considered a real art, like painting). He loved composing pictures with artistic ideograms that he gave to his school centers and to his faithful students.

In 1992 Chang Dsu Yao went for a short holiday to Taiwan, where he died all of a sudden (on 7th February), leaving a deep sorrow in the hearts of all his students, who considered him a real father.
Grandmaster Chang was a real living example of a sublime skill. His eldest students, to pay honour to his memory, have the task to transmit unchanged his high teaching.