The Tianshan Mountain system extends from the east to the west over the west of China and parts of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyz. It is one of the largest mountain ranges in Asia. Tianshan Martial Arts was founded in the first year of Shaoxi (1190) under the reign of Emperor Guangzong in the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279). It has enjoyed 800 years of history up to now. The founder of Tianshan Martial Arts, Yang Jiming, was a descendant of renowned general, Yang Jiye, in the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127). In his childhood, he practiced the martial arts of the Dan Ding (Red Furnace) School under the tutor of Wang Shiguang, the ninth generation descendant of the Taoist Master Ge Hong in the Jin Dynasty. As the Southern Song Dynasty declined and chaotic wars occurred, he retreated into seclusion in the Western Regions (around the Bogda Mountain region in Tianshan Mountain of the current Xinjiang) to practice martial arts and monastic cultivation.

At the time, Yang Jiming’s son, Yang Yantian, worked in self-cultivation with Sa Shoujian, a disciple of the Taoist of Shenxiao Sect, Wang Wenqing, and created the school and formulated its regulations. The third-generation descendant of the Tianshan School, Zhang Zhiping, blended in the martial arts of the Tianshan School with the cultivation doctrine of Quanzhen Taoism and enhanced the martial arts skills and regulations of the Tianshan Sect.

The Martial Arts of Tianshan School were based upon the internal cultivation of the Dan Ding School and combined the mental practice of the Shenxiao Sect with the hereditary martial arts of the Yang family to form its own unique system. It emphasizes the internal training of the mind, external training of the body and the use of external exercise to complement the internal exercise. It aims at the unity of the profound truth, human, and heaven, and the search for the state of immortality to attain the truth. Due to the hermitic nature of the school as well as the vicissitudes it has experienced, fewer fist fighting styles of Tianshan Martial Arts had been heard of by later generations.