Zhou Tong (Chinese: 周同 and 周侗; pinyin: Zhōu Tóng) (died late 1121 CE) was the archery teacher and second military arts tutor of famous Song dynasty general Yue Fei.

Originally a local hero from Henan, he was hired to continue Yue Fei's military training in archery after the boy had rapidly mastered spearplay under his first teacher.

Not only was he now from Shaanxi, but he was Yue's adopted father, a learned scholar with knowledge of the eighteen weapons of war, and his personal name was spelled with a different, yet related, Chinese character.

[5] The novel's author portrayed him as an elderly widower and military arts tutor who counted Lin Chong and Lu Junyi, two of the fictional 108 outlaws on which the Water Margin is based, among his former pupils.

[6] A later republican era folktale by noted Yangzhou storyteller Wang Shaotang not only adds Wu Song to this list, but represents Zhou as a knight-errant with supreme swordsmanship.

[12] Veteran martial arts actor Yu Chenghui, who played the sword-wielding antagonist in Jet Li's Shaolin Temple,[13] stated in a 2005 interview that he has always wanted to portray Zhou in a film.

Despite being literate, giving him a chance to become a scholar, young Yue Fei chose the military path because there had never been any tradition of full-fledged Confucian civil service in his family history.

[25] However, the Yue family was much too poor to afford military lessons for their son, so, Yao Dewang, the boy's maternal grandfather, hired Chen Guang (陳廣) to teach the eleven-year-old how to wield the Chinese spear.

It follows his life as a young martial arts instructor in the Song army's Imperial guard, his struggles against the Xixia and Liao Tartar barbarian tribes and his tutelage of Water Margin outlaws.

His superiors take note of his great skill after he helps his classmate General Jin battle Liao Tartars in northern China and install him as a teacher in the Capital Imperial Martial Arts School.

He then devotes himself wholeheartedly to his martial arts practice and creates several official and authoritative techniques including the "five step, thirteen lance piercing kick", which is a development of Shaolin Fanzi boxing, and the "Zhou Tong cudgel."

The county magistrate Sun Guoqin later sends Wu on a mission to Kaifeng with precious tiger bone balm in order to curry favor with influential personages.

Meanwhile, he learns his elderly classmate Jin Tai is close to death and hurries to Shaolin (where the general had become a Buddhist monk after the murder of his family) to pay his last respects.

After three years of practice, Zhou enters them into a preliminary military examination in Tangyin in which sixteen-year-old Yue wins first place by shooting a succession of nine arrows through the bullseye of a target two hundred and forty paces away.

After his display of marksmanship, Yue is asked to marry the daughter of Li Chun (李春), an old friend of Zhou's and the county magistrate who presided over the military exams.

[46] Yue lives in a shed by his grave through the winter and in the second lunar month of the following year, his martial brothers come and pull the building down, forcing him to return home and take care of his mother.

[70] Zhou's portrayal as their teacher is connected to a recurring element in Chinese fiction where Tang and Song dynasty heroes train under a "celestial master", usually a Taoist immortal, prior to their military exploits.

[71] C. T. Hsia suggests the mold from which all other similar teachers are cast is Guiguzi, master of the feuding strategists Sun Bin and Pang Juan,[72] from the Yuan dynasty tale Latter Volume of the Spring and Autumn Annals of the Seven Kingdoms (七國春秋後集).

[3] While the tale fails to explain the reason for the moniker, it does mention Zhou's ability to direct his qi to any part of his body to make it hard enough to overpower the "Iron shirt" technique of another martial artist.

[7] In the Water Margin, this Zhou Tong is a bandit chief of Mount Peach Blossom whom Lu Zhishen beats for trying to forcibly marry the daughter of the Liu family.

For instance, internalist Yang Jwing-Ming says Zhou was a scholar who studied martial arts in the Shaolin Monastery and later took Yue as his student after the young man worked as a tenant farmer for the official-general Han Qi (韓琦, 1008–1075).

[90] Yue historically worked as a tenant farmer and bodyguard for descendants of Han Qi in 1124 after leaving the military upon the death of his father in late 1122,[91] but he learned from Zhou well before this time.

[93][94] Liang Shouyu states practitioners of Emei Dapeng Qigong believe Yue trained under Zhou as a child and competed to become China's top fighter at an early age.

[8] In the Shaolin Temple of Henan province at the end of the Ming dynasty, the warrior monks were practicing leg techniques exercises and jumps that they attributed to Zhou Tong.

[102] This combination of various schools refers to an eighteenth-century martial arts manual that describes the gathering of eighteen masters at the Shaolin Monastery that supposedly took place during the early years of the Song dynasty.

[103] Lin Chong and Yan Qing are listed as two of the eighteen masters invited, which means their skills of Mandarin Duck Leg and ground fighting are treated as two separate schools, instead of one.

However, when he arrives in Kaifeng, he sees the empire is wasting money on the construction of large imperial gardens, the court officials Cai Jing and Wang Pu have extravagant residencies, and hears that even eunuchs are rich because they are given high government posts.

Like the original, Zhou becomes the tutor of the Wang estate, but, when news of his arrival prompts rich families to send their sons to learn from him, he is forced to accept droves of these students on a trial basis.

Zhou is first featured in chapter eight during a conversation between the main character John "Hutch" Hutchinson, a journalist bent on stopping the maniacal plans of a billionaire madman, and his friend's young son Dillon, an archery enthusiast.

[12] Veteran martial arts actor Yu Chenghui, who played the sword-wielding antagonist in Jet Li's Shaolin Temple,[13] stated in a 2005 newspaper interview that he never shaved his trademark beard, even at the request of movie producers, because he wanted to portray Zhou in a future film.