Master Ko was one of the three main masters that Master Ong trained with. Master Ong mainly spoke Cantonese and so referred to him using the Cantonese pronunciation of his name of Master Ko. Master Ko was from Shandong Province where Mandarin was spoken and was known there as Gao Dao-Sheng (Mandarin pronunciation of the same Chinese characters).
Master Gao was born in 1915 in the city of Jimo wich is now a district of of Qingdao in Shandong Province. He trained in Di Gong Men with Master Fan Zhong-Ching as a youngster. Then in his early teens went to work in a matchstick factory. It was at this time that he started learning long fist at one of the martial arts schools in Qingdao.
His training up to this point earned him acceptance at the renowned Qingdao Martial Arts School. One of the instructors he learned from there there was Wang Song-Ting who would later accept him as a disciple. He then traveled to the Laoshan district in Qingdao to learn Pai Da which is a hard qigong body conditioning program from the Daoist priest Fa Zhou. Pai da is one of many so-called iron shirt trainings. Master Gao also trained in Qing Gong under Fa Zhou. This consisted of first digging a hole and then jumping into and out of the hole. Each day he would dig the hole a little deeper again jumping in and out. Eventually he was able to jump very high.
