Seven Star Praying Mantis
七星螳螂拳One of the main branches of Shandong mantis, which according to Wikipedia Luo Guangyu brought to Shanghai and Hong Kong.
Quick Facts
ChinaCharacter & Origin
Training
Who It Suits
Organisation & Competition
What the style is built from
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About Seven Star Praying Mantis
Qixing tanglangquan, the seven-star mantis, is one of the branches of the northern mantis from the Jiaodong peninsula in Shandong province. China's national list of intangible cultural heritage states in the Laiyang inscription of 2008 that the Laiyang mantis spread and formed four main branches on the peninsula, the seven-star among them. The inscriptions of 2011 and 2014 name five or other branches, and none of the four inscriptions describes the seven-star branch separately.
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The tradition cited in the Laiyang inscription regards Wang Lang, from the turn of the Ming and Qing dynasties, as the creator of the mantis. We have not found the founder of the seven-star branch or the year of its origin in sources of higher reliability. Chinese Wikipedia attributes the naming of the branch to Wang Yunsheng, who studied under Li Zhijian from 1856 and named the art after the hall of his family, because the first character of its name denotes the first of the seven stars of the Big Dipper. English Wikipedia states that today's seven-star lines derive from the teaching of Li Sanjian, whose name is written with various characters in the sources. According to Chinese Wikipedia, Luo Guangyu taught seven-star mantis from 1919 at the Jingwu association in Shanghai and later in Hong Kong, from where his students spread it further. Ben Judkins on the Kung Fu Tea website believes that Jingwu instructors first brought the northern mantis to Hong Kong in the nineteen-twenties. Today the seven-star mantis is contested as a separate discipline. The national open competition in 2025 and the first international competition in Laiyang in 2026, both organized by national sports bodies, featured it alongside meihua mantis and six-harmony mantis.
History
China's national list of intangible heritage carries the mantis under number VI-33. The Laiyang inscription of 2008 gives a tradition according to which the mantis was created by Wang Lang of Jiaodong at the turn of the Ming and Qing dynasties, and names Li Bingxiao, Liang Mengxiang and Song Zide as his continuers. According to the inscription, the Laiyang mantis spread and formed four main branches on the Jiaodong peninsula, taiji, meihua, seven-star and six-harmony mantis. The inscriptions from Qixia and from the Laoshan district of Qingdao of 2011 have identical text, name five branches including xiaojia mantis, and state that branches other than the seven-star are widespread in Qixia. Green in the encyclopedia Martial Arts of the World writes only in general terms that the mantis appeared in Shandong during the Qing dynasty.
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A detailed lineage of the seven-star branch is given only by Chinese Wikipedia. According to it, during the reign of Qianlong Shengxiao daoren wrote a treatise on fist art, which passed to Li Zhijian of Haiyang county, nicknamed Li Kuaishou, who ran an escort company in Jinan. From him Wang Yunsheng, also given as Wang Yongsheng, studied from 1856 and according to Wikipedia named the art seven-star mantis. The lineage then, according to Wikipedia, led to Fan Xudong of Jimo county and from him to Luo Guangyu of Penglai county. In 1919, according to Chinese Wikipedia, Luo Guangyu taught at the Jingwu association in Shanghai and later in Hong Kong, where his students included Zhao Zhimin and Huang Hanxun. English Wikipedia adds that thanks to them the style spread across the world among the Chinese diaspora. Ben Judkins on the Kung Fu Tea website believes that Jingwu instructors brought the northern mantis to Hong Kong in the nineteen-twenties, but does not give the name of Luo Guangyu.
How it differs
The national list ranks seven-star mantis among the main branches of the mantis from the Jiaodong peninsula, but does not describe the differences between them. According to Chinese Wikipedia, today's branches divide into hard mantis, which includes seven-star, meihua and taiji, and soft mantis, which is called six-harmony. English Wikipedia names as the three main styles of northern mantis six-harmony, eight-step and seven-star, whereas the national list names four and five branches respectively. According to Chinese Wikipedia, the name is explained by two traditions. According to one it is a stance in the shape of the Big Dipper, according to the other seven parts of the body that cooperate in delivering force.
Technique
The Laiyang inscription on the national list sums up the hand techniques of the mantis in general in twelve characters and a rule: no strike without a catch, and after a catch strike at once and several times. It describes the mantis as an art combining long and short techniques and hardness with softness. Only Wikipedia describes what is special about the seven-star branch. Chinese Wikipedia states that it mainly combines the qixing bu step from the changquan style with the monkey step and is also called hard mantis. English Wikipedia writes that seven-star mantis combines hard and soft methods, long and short attacks and internal and external principles. Many, it says, regard it as the hardest of the mantis styles, but it calls this association misleading.
Training
Only Chinese Wikipedia describes the training of the seven-star branch. It gives over forty names of hand forms, including fourteen series of tantui, the white monkey forms and six series of zhaiyao. Among weapons it names the saber, staff, three-section staff, spear, sword, large saber and a pair of clubs, and among partner drills staff against staff, large saber against spear and bare hands against large saber. For the mantis in general, the Laiyang inscription on the national list gives tiesha zhang as the external and luohan gong as the internal exercise.
Competition
The national open competition in traditional martial arts, in the part devoted to the mantis, was held from 26 to 30 June 2025 on the grounds of the Shandong Physical Education Academy in Rizhao. According to the daily Renmin ribao it was the first national competition solely in the mantis, with 65 teams and 913 competitors, and it was contested in the main branches, among them the seven-star, and with weapons. It was organized, among others, by the martial arts administration of the General Administration of Sport and the Chinese Wushu Association. The agency China News Service wrote that the first international mantis competition in Laiyang, which lasted until 3 August 2026, brought together 118 teams and over 1800 participants from China and abroad. Among the bare-hand disciplines, seven-star mantis stood alongside meihua, taiji and six-harmony mantis.
Today
In 2026 the agency China News Service stated that over more than three hundred years the mantis developed into main branches, among them the seven-star, and that the first Chinese mantis museum opened in Laiyang during the international competition. According to the paper Qilu wanbao, the museum displays an old spear used by the seven-star mantis master Lin Jingshan and donated by his grandson. English Wikipedia states that in China seven-star mantis is widespread in the provinces of Liaoning and Shandong. Ben Judkins on the Kung Fu Tea website cites the Hong Kong inventory of intangible heritage of 2014, in which the mantis has item 391 and its variants items 392 to 395. Judkins does not say which variants these are. Chinese Wikipedia refers to a listing of seven-star mantis in the Hong Kong database of intangible heritage.
Did you know
According to Chinese Wikipedia, the name comes from the hall name of Wang Yunsheng's family, as the first character of that name denotes the first of the seven stars of the Big Dipper. According to the same Wikipedia, Luo Guangyu claimed that his teacher Fan Xudong left a handwritten copy of the five-volume work Shaolin zhenchuan. China News Service wrote about a British participant in the 2026 competition in Laiyang who planned to write a book about seven-star mantis and had come to China to learn its history.
Frequently asked questions
Who founded the seven-star mantis?
We have not found the founder of the branch in sources of higher reliability. Chinese Wikipedia attributes the naming of the branch to Wang Yunsheng, who studied under Li Zhijian from 1856.
Why is it called seven-star?
Chinese Wikipedia gives two explanations, a stance in the shape of the Big Dipper and seven parts of the body that cooperate in delivering force. According to the same Wikipedia, the branch is named after the hall of Wang Yunsheng's family.
Is seven-star mantis contested in competition?
Yes. The national mantis competition in 2025 included the seven-star branch, and the international competition in Laiyang in 2026 featured it as a separate discipline.
Similar styles
Selected by overlap in the style profile, not by historical lineage.