The making of modern Qigong: Liu Guizhen, Tangshan and Beidaihe

Author: Raymond Hackland · Last reviewed: 18 October 2026 · Reading time: about 9 minutes

In short

• What this is: The story of how “Qigong” became a medical field in 1950s China: the cadre Liu Guizhen, the method called neiyanggong, the first Qigong sanatorium in Tangshan (1953/54), the large sanatorium at Beidaihe (1955/56), and the collapse of it all in the 1960s. Part 1 of our Qigong series, following What is Qigong? An introduction.
• What the evidence says: The main events are well documented by historians, mostly from memoirs and publications of the time. Some details, such as the exact year the name was settled, differ between sources.
• What it means for your practice: Much of what is taught as “Qigong” today was shaped in these clinics. Old practices were kept, but also renamed, cleaned of religious language and given a new, medical history. Knowing this helps you read claims about “ancient Qigong” with care.

What tradition says

Label for this section: Tradition only (documented history).

Before the word. Breathing, stretching and meditation practices are much older than the 1950s. Our neigong introduction traces daoyin (导引, “guiding and pulling”) back to the 2nd century BCE. According to the historian David Palmer, before 1949 such techniques were practised in monastic, medical, literati and sectarian circles, but there was no movement that tried to unite them [1]. What happened in the 1950s was not the invention of breathing practice, but the creation of a new category, with a new name, inside the state’s health system.

The political background. At the first National Conference on Public Health in 1950, the new government said that Chinese and Western medicine should be “united”, and Chinese medicine “reformed”. In 1954 Mao Zedong and other leaders praised traditional medicine and called for developing the “Motherland’s medical heritage” (祖国医学遗产), including folk remedies and popular body cultivation practices. Campaigns followed under slogans such as “Western medicine should learn from Chinese medicine” [2]. This is the setting in which Qigong therapy grew, as the historians Utiraruto Otehode and Benjamin Penny describe in detail [2].

Liu Guizhen and neiyanggong. Liu Guizhen (刘贵珍, 劉貴珍) was a Party cadre and local government official in Nangong county, Hebei province [1, 2]. By his own account, in 1948 he was diagnosed with stomach ulcers, pulmonary tuberculosis and neurasthenia, and nothing he tried helped. Back in his rural home, he heard of a practice called neiyanggong (内养功, “inner nourishing work”), according to Otehode and Penny “from an old peasant”, and, again by his own account, was well after three months of practice [2]. Palmer dates his return home to 1947 and speaks of 102 days of practice [3]. That is his story, not a test of the method. Neiyanggong had been practised in rural Hebei since the end of the Ming dynasty and was passed on in a traditional line; Liu learned it from Liu Duzhou (刘渡舟, 1890–1972), who was regarded as its fifth-generation holder [2]. Palmer calls Liu Duzhou “an old master” [3]; a 2021 account from the Hebei medical Qigong hospital, which grew out of the Beidaihe sanatorium, calls him a distant uncle of Liu Guizhen [4]. The sources do not say whether the “old peasant” and Liu Duzhou were the same person. In 1949 Liu Guizhen became secretary of a local cadre sanatorium and began teaching the method to patients [2, 3]. Palmer adds that his superiors asked him to do clinical research on it, and that he and his colleagues chose the name Qigong for it [1, 3].

The name. A medical team from the Hebei health authorities studied neiyanggong early in the 1950s. Doctors argued about what to call it. The team leader, Huang Yueting, proposed Qigong (气功), because qi could mean oxygen to a Western-trained doctor and “primordial qi” (元气) to a doctor of Chinese medicine [2]. The characters took a while to settle: the Tangshan sanatorium’s official stamp still read 氣工 instead of 氣功. In 1955 Liu published the first academic article on Qigong therapy, using 氣功; the change probably happened around 1954 or 1955 [2]. “Qigong therapy” (气功疗法, qìgōng liáofǎ) became the generic name for the two main methods, neiyanggong and qiangzhuanggong (强壮功, “strengthening work”) [2].

Tangshan, 1954: the first Qigong institution. After a change in health policy in 1953, the Hebei Department of Health took an interest in Liu’s work. With its support and that of the Tangshan city government, Liu rented space in a city workers’ sanatorium and in 1954 founded the Tangshan Qigong Sanatorium, which Otehode and Penny call the first Qigong organisation in China [2]. Patients came from Beijing, Tianjin and other cities. In September 1954 the Tangshan health bureau invited Western-trained doctors to study Qigong there, and in May 1955 it ran a three-month course for them; they took the method back to their own clinics [2]. Liu Duzhou joined the Tangshan sanatorium in 1955, where his patients practised neiyanggong for seven hours a day [2].

National recognition, 1955. In two articles of July and September 1955, Lu Zhijun, writing on the study of Chinese medicine, praised the Tangshan work and called the Tangshan group a model of cooperation between Chinese and Western medicine [2]. In December 1955 the Tangshan Small Group on Qigong Therapy received an award at the founding ceremony of the national Research Institute for Chinese Medicine. According to Otehode and Penny, the names “Qigong” and “Qigong therapy” became popular after this award [2].

Beidaihe, 1956: the flagship. From 1956, with central and local government support, several Qigong sanatoriums opened; Beidaihe and Shanghai were two of the largest [2]. The Beidaihe Qigong Sanatorium (北戴河气功疗养院) in Hebei had three new buildings, two apple orchards and 100 beds. The Central Health Bureau, responsible for the health care of the national leadership, reserved 30 of them; the other 70 were open to officials, intellectuals and leaders of the democratic parties, but not to workers or farmers [2]. Liu Guizhen was its first head. Its three main methods were neiyanggong, qiangzhuanggong and baojiangong (保健功, “health-care work”), and it also employed taijiquan instructors and experts in acupuncture, massage and hypnosis [2]. Most of its staff had trained in Western medicine and knew little about Qigong when they arrived; one of them, the young army-trained doctor Zhang Tiange, recalled those years in 2005 [2].

A network spreads. Beidaihe ran the First National Training Course for Qigong Therapy in 1956, and from then on held a course every year for 40 to 60 medical workers sent by their health bureaus [2]. Some graduates founded their own institutions: Chen Tao (1922–1968) opened the Shanghai Qigong Sanatorium in 1957, with up to 50 beds [2]. In March 1959 Beidaihe launched a journal called Qigong (氣功); six issues appeared until April 1960 [2]. In 1959 the Ministry of Health funded a ten-day national exchange meeting at Beidaihe with 80 representatives from 64 institutions, plus doctors of Chinese medicine and Buddhist, Daoist and martial arts representatives as guests [2]. Soviet medical and acupuncture delegations visited each year from 1956 to 1959 [2]. Leading health officials called Qigong therapy one of the great achievements of the new China’s medicine [2].

What was reworked. Label: Tradition only (historians’ interpretation). Otehode and Penny stress that this was not simply a revival. Practices from Chinese medicine, martial arts, Buddhism and Daoism were absorbed, but changed: terms seen as “feudal”, “superstitious” or “religious” were dropped and replaced by medical theory [2]. Liu Duzhou’s neiyanggong had included traditional beliefs that were now unacceptable; Liu Guizhen reinterpreted it for the state medical system [2]. Qigong also received a new history. To fit the idea that “the labouring people are the masters of history”, its links to Buddhist and Daoist cultivation were played down, and its origin was placed in the Huangdi neijing, the classic of Chinese medicine, giving it a record of more than two thousand years [2]. Liu Guizhen and the Daoist scholar Chen Yingning both called Qigong therapy something new [2].

The fall. In 1964 Zhou Qianchuan, who taught a method called Emeigong, was accused of espionage and later sentenced to fifteen years in prison, where he died in 1971. Liu Guizhen had invited him to teach at Beidaihe. In 1965 Liu was detained, expelled from the Party, removed as head of the sanatorium and sent to labour reform; in the same year the Shanghai sanatorium was closed, and Chen Tao died in 1968 after persecution [2]. During the Cultural Revolution, from 1966, Qigong was denounced as “feudal superstition” [1]. The Tangshan sanatorium closed in 1969, and a rebel faction occupied Beidaihe and burned Qigong books. Otehode and Penny write that Qigong therapy disappeared from the medical system for more than a decade [2].

Afterwards. Liu Guizhen was rehabilitated in 1980 and reappointed at Beidaihe. In 1981 he was elected to lead the Qigong section of the Hebei association of Chinese medicine, and he republished his book Qigong liaofa shijian (气功疗法实践, The Practice of Qigong Therapy, first published 1957). He died in Beijing in December 1983, just before the “Qigong boom” [2]. That boom, and the state’s later “Health Qigong” forms, are covered in our Qigong introduction.

Note on dates. Palmer places the founding of modern Qigong and the choice of the name in the late 1940s [1]; Otehode and Penny focus on how the name and characters were settled in the early to mid 1950s, and note that one account puts the decision on the characters in 1953 [2]. The founding years differ as well: Palmer’s 2003 article dates the Tangshan clinic to 1953 and the Beidaihe sanatorium to “two years later” [3]. We follow Otehode and Penny’s more detailed account (Tangshan 1954, Beidaihe from 1956) [2]; the Hebei hospital’s account has Liu’s research group formed in Tangshan in 1953 and the first national training course held at Beidaihe in May 1956 [4]. We say: the name was chosen around 1949 and became established in the 1950s.

What science says

Label for this section: Tradition only (documented history) for the 1950s reports; Early evidence for modern Qigong research.

The 1950s sanatoriums reported encouraging results. Lu Zhijun, for example, wrote in 1955, as quoted by Otehode and Penny, that Tangshan had used Qigong therapy with more than 70 patients and that “preliminary results are all very good” [2]. Reports like this were part of the case for state recognition, but they are not the kind of controlled trial used today to judge whether a practice works. For what modern systematic reviews say about Qigong and tai chi, see our article “Qigong and tai chi: what systematic reviews say“. If you have a health condition, start with Breathing practices: who should be careful.

Where popular claims go beyond the evidence

Label for this section: Speculative.

• “Qigong has been practised under that name for thousands of years.” The practices are old, but the name and the medical field date from around 1949 and the 1950s [1, 2]. The long medical pedigree was partly written in the 1950s [2].
• “The 1950s clinics showed that Qigong works.” They produced reports of good results from their own patients [2]. That is how the clinics described their work, not evidence by today’s standards.
• “Modern Qigong is just an invention of the state.” Also too simple. The methods came from real traditions, such as Liu Duzhou’s neiyanggong, and from practitioners of many kinds; what the state did was select, rename and rework them [2].

How this relates to the Six Healing Sounds, Qigong and neigong

Label for this section: Tradition only (documented history).

Liu Zi Jue was not one of the three main methods named for Beidaihe [2]. Its own history is older and runs separately, from the earliest surviving description in the Yangxing yanming lu, first written down between the 6th and 8th centuries, to the 2003 standard form, as our article on the history of Liu Zi Jue explains. But the 2003 form grew out of the same framework that Tangshan and Beidaihe started: breath practice taught in a health setting, described in medical language, and compiled as a standard set within the state system. The 2003 sets were compiled by the Health Qigong Management Center, founded in 2001; the Chinese Health Qigong Association was founded in 2004, and many English-language sources credit the form to it, as our Qigong introduction explains.

The 1950s also left the word “Qigong” with a medical, secular sound, while “neigong” kept its older links to the martial arts and Daoist practice; our neigong introduction explains the difference.

How I practise the sounds. In my practice, all six sounds are breathed out through the mouth. They are “voiced through the breath”, not sung. I share xi as the sound of the triple burner and of the whole body, as the 2003 standard form does. The classical texts give the triple burner no emotion. I work with xi as a movement “from fragmented to harmony”, which is my own reading from practice (🔵 Tradition only · 🟣 Lived experience). Over time, my sessions work towards a silent exhalation. This describes how I share the sounds, not a rule of the tradition.

Resonance Heritage Qi is a personal, music-assisted practice inspired by Liu Zi Jue: connected to it, not a replacement for the traditional form or for study with a teacher of that tradition.

Where this journey goes next

This is part 1 of our Qigong series. Planned next articles:

• Qigong fever: the boom of the 1980s and 1990s and how it ended
• Health Qigong: how China’s standard forms were made
• Baduanjin, the Eight-Section Brocade: the history of a form
• Wuqinxi, the Five Animals’ Play: from legend to the 2003 form
• Yijinjing, the Sinew-Changing Classic: texts, legends and the modern set
• The Six Roots of Qigong
• Learning Qigong today: how to choose a form, a teacher and trustworthy information

Sources

1. Palmer DA, 2005. Qigong. In Davis E (ed.), Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture. London: Routledge. Pre-publication version: https://hub.hku.hk/bitstream/10722/194528/2/Content.pdf ; see also Palmer DA, 2007, Qigong Fever: Body, Science, and Utopia in China, New York: Columbia University Press.
2. Otehode U, Penny B, 2016. Qigong therapy in 1950s China. East Asian History 40. https://eah.anu.edu.au/40/Otehode-and-Penny/index.html
3. Palmer DA, 2003. Modernity and millenialism in China: qigong and the birth of Falun Gong. Asian Anthropology 2: 79–110. Pre-publication version: https://hub.hku.hk/bitstream/10722/194525/2/Content.pdf
4. Xue Bing 薛冰, 2021. 河北省医疗气功医院之内养功传承 (The transmission of neiyanggong at the Hebei Medical Qigong Hospital). Online reprint, 15 March 2021. https://m.fx361.com/news/2021/0315/7767157.html

Source quality note: [1] and [2] are scholarly sources by historians of modern Qigong; [1] and [3] were read in the author’s pre-publication versions. [2] is the main source for this article; it draws on Liu Guizhen’s own writings, 1950s articles and the recollections of Zhang Tiange, who worked at Beidaihe, so some details rest on participants’ own accounts. [4] is the hospital’s own account of its lineage, used only for Liu Duzhou’s relationship to Liu Guizhen and for dates, and not for any claim about effects. The 1950s Chinese publications, including Liu Guizhen’s Qigong liaofa shijian (1957) and Lu Zhijun’s articles, are cited as quoted in [2]; we have not read them ourselves.