Kongtong Mountain in the west of Pingliang City of north China’s Gansu Province is the birthplace of Kongtong Martial Arts. It has been a famous mountain of Taoism in Chinese history.

Kongtong Martial Arts is a branch of the Taoist school for lay disciples. It showed up at a very early age. The first book of lexicon in China, Er Ya, records that: “People of practice martial arts.” According to legend, Kongtong Martial Arts was created by a Taoist in the Tang Dynasty (618-907) named Fei Hongzi. It combines martial arts with Taoist thinking, sets fighting skills and physical fitness as its main purpose, and asserts its own style in the handwork of fist fighting and forms.

Kongtong Martial Arts is divided into eight major sub-categories, namely the Feilong Men (Flying Dragon School), Zhuihun Men (the Soul Chaser School), Duoming Men (the Life Snatching School), Zui Men (the Drunken School), Shenquan Men (the Holy Fist School), Huajia Men (the Floral Rack School), Qibing Men (the Grotesque Martial School), and Xuankong Men (the Profound Void School). Each school has more than a dozen forms of fist fighting techniques and weapon skills. The movements of Kongtong Martial Arts are featured by a soft sense of beauty. Its body movements, footwork and hand techniques are delivered in arc lines and curves with an aesthetic touch. All of the weapons used are small and short, soft and light, and somewhat strange, such as fans, dusters, and whips. These unique weapons are one of the major characteristics of Kongtong Martial Arts. Though they are outside of the category of the Eighteen Arms of Chinese Martial Arts, they are various in form-compact, lightweight and easy to carry. In actual fights, they are often able to execute surprise attacks.