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Gia-fu Feng was born in Shanghai in 1919 into a fairly wealthy family of some influence. His father was a banker and he was educated privately in his own home in the classics of the Chinese tradition. His family were followers of Taoism and in the springtime, they traveled to a temple in the mountains of Hang-Chou for the spring festivals. When Gia-fu stayed at the temple for longer periods, he was trained in Taoist practices. He continued with his education by going to Beijing University where he gained a bachelor's of arts degree.

Shortly after, in 1947, the communists took over China. Gia-fu left the country and traveled to America. After further study at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a master's of arts degree, he started wandering all over the country. He spent some time in a quaker community and in the early fifties he moved to the west coast, where he became involved in teaching Taoism.

First he taught at the American Academy of Asian Studies, the center directed by Frederic Spiegelberg where Alan Watts was also teaching, and later at the Esalen Institute, where he met Fritz Pearls, a relevant influence in his later work. He founded his own center of taoist studies in the Santa Cruz mountains and called it Stillpont, after T.S Eliot's The Waste Land.

Later on he moved to Colorado and restarted Stillpoint in Manitou Springs, in a house at the foot of Pikes Peak. There he worked on his translation of the Tao Te Ching and the Chuang Tzu, and started to teach Tai Chi Chuan in Europe, Canada and Australia. At some moment he moved again Stillpoint to a property in the mountains, near Wetmore, where he died 1n 1985, soon after a trip to Europe.

Bibliography

• Tai Chi, A Way of Centering & I Ching (1970)
• Lao Tsu - Tao Te Ching (calligraphy) in collaboration with Jane English (1974)
• Chuang Tsu - Inner Chapters in collaboration with Jane English (1974)

1919 births | Living people