Yin Fu (尹福, 1840–1909) — the senior disciple, "Thin Yin"

Yin Fu (尹福 / Yǐn Fú, 1840–1909), courtesy name 德安 (De'an), was Dong Haichuan's earliest and most senior disciple, and the founder of Yin-style Baguazhang (尹派八卦掌). Lean and spare in build — the martial world called him "Thin Yin" (瘦尹) — he brought a Luohan / long-fist background to Dong's circle-walking art and kept its harder, more percussive flavor. Where Cheng Tinghua's branch opened the frame, Yin's stayed tight, vertical, and weapon-like. He is also the branch with the closest ties to the Qing court.

Life

Born in 漁子山, 冀縣 Ji County, Hebei, Yin came to Beijing as a young man and, by tradition, earned his living as a small tradesman in the capital. He was already trained in 羅漢拳 (Luohan boxing) and northern long-fist — including **彈腿 **tan tui — when he became the disciple of Dong Haichuan. He is generally counted as Dong's first and longest-serving student, and attended the master closely in his old age.

Yin's reputation reached the imperial palace: he is recorded as having served the Qing court as a martial instructor and guard, and lineage tradition connects him to the protection of the court during the upheavals of 1900. His standing made the Yin branch the most "official" of the Bagua lines in late-Qing Beijing.

He died in Beijing in 1909.

What he gave the art — Yin-style Bagua

Yin's branch is the tight, hard, percussive stream of Bagua:

• The "ox-tongue palm" (牛舌掌) — fingers held together and flat, thumb tucked, the hand shaped like an ox's tongue — in deliberate contrast to the open dragon-claw of the Cheng line.

• A tighter, more vertical frame with shorter, sharper issuing of power; the Luohan hardness Yin brought from his first art is preserved rather than dissolved.

• A dense weapon and striking vocabulary — the Yin line is often described as the most "外家-flavored" of the Bagua branches, retaining a long-fist crispness inside the circle-walking method.

The branches that descend from him

• 宮寶田 (Gong Baotian) — Yin's disciple, who served as an imperial bodyguard and carried the Yin-line Bagua into the 20th century; through Gong, the Yin transmission later reached Liu Yunqiao in the Baji world.

• 馬貴 (Ma Gui, "Wooden Ma" 木馬) — a famously rigorous Yin-style holder in Beijing.

• 門寶珍 (Men Baozhen), 楊俊峰 (Yang Junfeng), 居慶元 (Ju Qingyuan), and Yin's son 尹成章 (Yin Chengzhang) — who seeded the continuing Yin-style schools.

The Yin-line published record includes **孫錫堃 **八卦拳真傳 (1934, 2 vols), one of the early printed Bagua treatises, held in the codex.

See also

Dong Haichuan (董海川) — Yin's teacher, the founder of Bagua

Bagua Palm (八卦掌) — the full style overview

Cheng Tinghua (程廷華) — Dong's other great disciple; the contrasting Cheng branch

Liu Yunqiao (劉雲樵) — inheritor of the Yin-line Bagua via Gong Baotian

A Short History of Chinese Martial Arts

Sources

[1] Yin Fu, Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yin_Fu) and the Chinese Wikipedia counterpart — biography, the Luohan background, the court connection, the Yin-style lineage.

[2] 孫錫堃 八卦拳真傳 (1934, 2 vols) — a Yin-line printed Bagua treatise, held in the codex's Sources/internal-arts-manuals/.

[3] 董海川 lineage inscriptions, Wan'an Cemetery, Beijing — naming Yin Fu as the senior disciple.