Kwan Ying Do

Master Ko aka Gao Dao Sheng

Master Gao
Master Gao

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.

Master Gao at the Daxian Temple /
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Master Gao at the Daxian Temple

Then in his mid teens Master Gao reunited with Wang Songting and became his disciple. Under Wang he studied Long Fist and Praying Mantis and trained with him until his early twenties when the war with Japan broke out and he enlisted in the army to fight the Japanese.

Master Gao moved to Taiwan in 1949 after the communist takeover of mainland China. After retiring from the army in 1961 he started the Hsing-Sheng Martial Arts School in Taipei, Taiwan.

During the seventies in Taiwan Master Gao taught at the Daxian Temple in the city of Tainan. This is where some pictures of him were taken for the Inside Kung Fu article about him.

Master Gao was known for his hard training. If there were two ways (an easy way or a hard way) to get a certain ability in the art, Master Gao would always pick the hard training to get it.

Master Gao performs Shao Fu Yin
Master Gao performs a De Tong Form