Gia-fu Feng (; January 10, 1919June 12, 1985) was a prominent translator of classical Chinese Taoist philosophical texts, founder of an intentional community called Stillpoint, and leader of classes, workshops, and retreats in the United States and abroad based on his own unique synthesis of tai chi, Taoism, and other Asian contemplative and healing practices with the Human Potential Movement, Gestalt therapy, and encounter groups.
He was associated with Alan Watts, Claude Dalenberg, and the American Academy of Asian Studies; Jack Kerouac, Joanne Kyger, Gary Snyder, and the Beat Generation; and Abraham Maslow, Fritz Perls, Dick Price, Michael Murphy, and the Esalen Institute.
He is best known for his bestselling translations and calligraphy of the Tao Te Ching and the Zhuangzi Inner Chapters accompanied by black-and-white photographs by Jane English in the books Lao Tsu / Tao Te Ching, first published in 1972, and Chuang Tsu / Inner Chapters, first published in 1974.
Early life Gia-fu Feng, later known as "Jeff" to some of his American friends and family but "Gia-fu" to most, was born in China in 1919, the third of nine children in a wealthy and influential family. His father was a banker who rose to prominence with the Ta-Ching Government Bank, then co-founded and served as president of the Bank of China in Shanghai. His mother died when he was 16. He was educated at private boarding schools, and received tutoring at home in Chinese classics and English. One of his English tutors was the sister of the British commissioner of Shanghai Customs.
His family practiced traditional Chinese religion, observing all twenty-four annual festivals, for example traveling from Shanghai to visit their ancestors' tombs in Yuyao, Zhejiang Province, during the Qingming Festival. When he was twelve years-old his older siblings converted to Christianity, and at their recommendation during his first time living away from home as a young adult he was baptized and participated in a fervently puritanical church group, but he drifted away after a year.
University, banking, and Wall Street China Feng first left home in 1938 during the Japanese invasion, to complete a bachelor's degree in the liberal arts at Southwest Associated University in unoccupied western China, where he lived through Japanese bombing and persevered, enthusiastically studying under some of China's top scholars.
After graduation, despite his preference for poetry, literature, and philosophy, his father's connections led him to work in local banking in and around Kunming. He showed great aptitude and made a quite a lot of money from involvement in some of the murkier transactions, as was common in wartime China. He lived in and managed a villa that hosted many prominent Chinese and foreign visitors, where he met Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, General Claire Chennault, US Vice President Henry A. Wallace, and Lady Mountbatten, among others, and successfully navigated a difficult political environment. He was also in charge of arranging dance parties at the villa for American soldiers.
He once commented that he had become a millionaire three times in his life, giving his money away each time. The first time was when he worked as a banker in the Kunming area, as he freely lent his money to friends and generally treated himself and everyone he knew to a good time. Yet in his memoirs he noted that he was also profoundly affected by the extremes of wealth and poverty he encountered then, especially the grinding misery of laborers forced to work on construction of the Burma Road, and the horrors of war he witnessed in Kunming and Shanghai.
United States After the war he returned home to Shanghai in 1946, but left again in 1947 to go to the U.S. for a master's degree in international finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. While at Penn he frequently visited the Pendle Hill Quaker Center for Study and Contemplation. He found himself accepted and drawn to that community, and became interested in many aspects of Quaker thought.
After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, his father recommended that he remain abroad due to the uncertain political and economic situation, and then in 1950 when the Korean War broke out the United States prohibited Chinese students from returning to China. He enrolled in a Ph.D. program in statistics at New York University, worked for a Wall Street financial firm, lived in an international student hostel and then a Quaker-run cooperative house in New York, and continued to visit Pendle Hill on weekends.
But with his prospects for advancement limited by his visa status, and feeling alienated and unhappy in New York, he set out across the country driving his "jalopy", seeking a new way of life and a new understanding of his place in America.
Seeking the Way Journey to the South, and West His first destinations show his growing interest in intentional communities. He visited the Macedonia Cooperative Community of pacifists in Habersham County, Georgia, followed by a long stay doing farm work at Koinonia Farm, an interracial Christian community in Sumter County, Georgia focused on civil rights. There he experienced firsthand the surrounding white community's hostility towards Black people and Koinonia in reaction to the 1951 filing of Brown v. Board of Education.
He then travelled to Orcas Island near Seattle for seminars on civil rights and international harmony sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker organization, and briefly lived at a commune in Tuolumne County, California, before traveling on to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he soon found his way to the heart of the San Francisco Renaissance.
American Academy of Asian Studies In 1954 he stayed in Berkeley with a Quaker friend from Pendle Hill, Margaret Olney, and then began living, working, and attending classes at the American Academy of Asian Studies in San Francisco, after hearing a lecture by Alan Watts that he found life-changing.
For the first time he encountered a Westerner presenting Taoism, Zen, and other ancient Eastern thought as an approach to modern everyday problems, and he declared the study of comparative religion his calling. Watts in turn found Feng fascinating, very much appreciated his classical Chinese education, and quickly put him to work translating Chinese religious and philosophical texts. Having found a home and a purpose, Feng decided to take advantage of a one-year window offered by the Refugee Relief Act and immigrate to the United States.
Over the next two years at the Academy he befriended fellow student Dick Price, future cofounder of Esalen Institute, and introduced Price to his first wife, Bonnie. He also shared much wine and many long philosophical conversations there with another fellow seeker, Jack Kerouac, who introduced him to many leading lights of the Beat Generation. And he enrolled in classes at the Academy offered by Watts, Gi-ming Shien, Frederic Spiegelberg, Haridas Chaudhuri, C. P. Ramaswamy Iyer, Judith Tyberg, Rom Landau, Saburo Hasegawa, and G. P. Malalasekhara. (Originally published by Addison-Wesley as The Upstart Spring: Esalen and the American Awakening)
East-West House In 1956 Feng co-founded East-West House, an intentional community in San Francisco, with a group from the Academy led by Ananda Claude Dalenberg, all moving on because Alan Watts was leaving the school. No longer doing translation for Watts, Feng studied banking at San Francisco State University and supported himself with a variety of odd jobs, including accounting, substitute teaching, and dog walking.
East-West House attracted members from many walks of life, including poets and writers like Feng's good friends Joanne Kyger and Gary Snyder, Asian Studies scholars like his teacher from the Academy, Gi-ming Shien, and artists like house leader Knute Stiles. Kerouac was a guest, and based several characters in his novels on House residents. Feng, in addition to his pursuit of philosophical and spiritual truths, was known there for his special Chinese pork recipe. Dalenberg later recalled that during this time Feng maintained his involvement with the local Quaker community and further developed his interest in "old Chinese religion".
Feng's news of East-West House drew Dick Price back to San Francisco after some time living back east, and his experience there was one influence on Price's interest in establishing a new community and learning space with Michael Murphy at a place called Slate's Hot Springs, which they first renamed Big Sur Hot Springs, and then Esalen Institute.
The Way of Esalen "I remember", someone once said about his early visits to Esalen, "that there was either a guy there named Gia Fu who taught Tai Chi, or a guy named Tai Chi who taught Gia Fu."
In 1962 Feng became one of the first staff members at Esalen Institute, as "the accountant (he brought his own abacus), keeper of the baths, and resident Chinese mystic". He led morning tai chi classes there, and those became the foundation for the bodywork portion of Esalen's three-part curriculum as it matured, the other two being Gestalt therapy and encounter groups. He later trained in shiatsu in Japan and begin offering that at Esalen as well.
With Esalen as his base, he was becoming more widely known in the region and nationwide for his tai chi classes focused on the transformation of body and spirit. A 1962 advertisement in New York's Village Voice for Emerson College of Pacific Grove was headlined with his name: "Gia Fu Feng is there, teaching culture east and west on the beach in Monterey".
But Esalen was also to be transformative for him. That same year he was staffing the front desk when he recognized a guest's name and enthusiastically welcomed Abraham Maslow, who had wandered in looking for a motel room. Maslow's book Towards a Psychology of Being was already a major influence at Esalen, closely read by Feng and others there, and Maslow became a regular visitor and influence himself. Humanistic psychology and the Human Potential Movement were to become central to Feng's path forward.
A new Gia-fu In 1963 at the first Gestalt therapy workshop there, Feng volunteered to be the first to take the "hot seat" in front of the group. He developed great respect for Gestalt therapy creator Fritz Perls, who became a fixture at Esalen beginning in 1964, and maintained that respect as well as a sympathetic tolerance regardless of how the always irascible Perls treated him and others. Feng was also there for the earliest encounter groups at Esalen, on leadership training in group dynamics. While doing his own work he studied and absorbed many new ideas, especially from Perls.
He now believed that psychotherapy was key to helping Westerners understand Eastern thought. He was particularly struck by Fritz Perls' statement at the start of every Gestalt therapy group that the goal of his fierce leadership was a "sudden awakening" for participants. Feng said that was in essence a Zen-like "satori" realization, and Feng developed his own techniques based on Gestalt therapy and encounter to help people get past their "hang-ups" and get on with natural living like the Taoist sages of old. Dick Price developed a similar synthesis with Eastern thought that he called Gestalt practice. But Price softened the "hot seat" experience, while Feng embraced the fierceness. In fact, Claude Dalenberg later said that he no longer recognized Feng's personality when he visited him at Esalen. As Feng's biographer states, gone was the well-bred polite persona of the 1950s, and in its place a new Gia-fu, a self-described "Taoist rogue", and a strong patriarchal figure who could lead a community, but the seeds of this fully realized Gia-fu were always there.