Feng Gong was born Feng Mingguang () in
Tianjin,
China, on December 6, 1957, the son of Feng Haigang (; 1920–1993), a local government official, and Liu Yisu (; born 1921), a daughter of an eminent family. His great-grandfather is
Feng Guozhang, an early
Republic-era
warlord and the founder of the
Zhili Clique, who once served as the
President of the Republic of China between 1917 and 1918. He has an elder sister Feng Xingyun (; born 1947) and two elder brothers Feng Xin () and Feng Chuanshu (). Feng graduated from
Central China Normal University with a master's degree in Chinese Literature. In 1973, he performed a famous
xiangsheng named
Zunshi ai tudi () in
Tianjin. Then he started to learn the arts of xiangsheng from the xiangsheng master
Ma Ji. He also worked in a textiles machine factory. Feng was considered more talented than many other students of Ma Ji, and eventually emerged as a new star, performing progressively to bigger venues.
Niu Qun () and Liu Wei () were his partners when performing
xiangsheng. Feng appeared in the first
CCTV New Year's Gala in 1986; he has appeared at almost every
Chunwan performance for the next thirty years, variably in skits and
xiangsheng. Feng is usually one of the first acts of the show; it is said he appears earlier in the program so that he can drive home to Tianjin to spend midnight on new year with his mother. In 1988, he won the championship at the competition of xiangsheng performances in
Dalian held by
China Central Television. ==Political career==