The Lineage

About · The Lineage

The Lineage

Lineage in the Chinese internal arts is not a decorative claim. It is the record of who physically corrected whose posture, year after year, until the material transferred. Everything taught at this school arrived through the chain below, and every link in it is a person who could be named by the one after.

From the Temple

The Little Nine Heaven system traces by tradition to Huang-Ti, the Yellow Emperor, and the Nine Chamber scriptures attributed to his reign around 2698 BC. For most of the intervening centuries it passed to a single Taoist priest per generation, carried by word of mouth rather than in writing. In the early 1800s the priest Lushan Daoren established a Little Nine Heaven temple on Yi Wu Lu Mountain in north-eastern China.

Grandmaster Chiao Chang-Hung

At sixteen, Chiao Chang-Hung was accepted to train at that temple. He went on to add Hsing-I under Liu Tsu-Yen and Ba Kua under Yan Ju-Lin, fought in the war, served as Chiang Kai-Shek's chief bodyguard, and later headed Taiwan's kung-fu association — challenged frequently and never beaten. As the thirty-third generation holder he was the first to open any of the system to the wider world, selecting a small number of disciples and sending them to nine countries.

Master James McNeil

Master McNeil trained with Grandmaster Chiao in Taipei from 1983 until Chiao's death in 2001, receiving his sword — the certification authorising him to teach the complete Little Nine Heaven system, held by only ten instructors worldwide. He also studied Chen Tai-Chi with Pan Wing-Chow, Hsing-I and healing arts with Hsu Hong-Chi, Tzu Men Chuan and Iron Hand with Chin Cheng-Yen, Splashing Hands with Haumea Lefiti, and further methods with Ralph Shun.

Southern California

Ajay Kumra trained under Master McNeil and teaches this material here. The curriculum is not a synthesis or a modernisation — it is what was transmitted, taught in the form it was received.

The pages below cover each master in the line individually.