Seven Star Praying Mantis
七星螳螂拳The most widely practised branch of northern praying mantis. It joins hard and soft methods and long attacks with short; its founder is not documented.
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About Seven Star Praying Mantis
Seven Star praying mantis is the most widely practised branch of the northern Chinese style tanglangquan. This page names no founder, and does so deliberately. Tradition credits the creation of mantis as a whole to a man called Wang Lang, but many scholars doubt his existence and regard the style rather as a merging of local Shandong methods. Nor do the dates agree: one legend places the origin in the Song dynasty with the abbot Fu Ju, while most sources speak of the late Ming or early Qing, roughly around 1650. The year 1700 that previously stood here rests on nothing. Only the modern figures can be documented. Li Sanjian is regarded as the foundation of the Seven Star teaching; decisive for its spread was Luo Guangyu, who carried the style through the Jingwu Athletic Association to Shanghai, Hong Kong and beyond. From there it reached overseas through students such as Chiu Chi Man and Wong Hon Fun. Technically the Seven Star branch is marked by refusing to hold a single position: it combines hard and soft methods, long and short attacks, internal and external principles. Its characteristic element is the mantis hook of the hand, with which the opponent's arm is caught and drawn off its line while the other hand attacks. Tradition derives the footwork from the monkey step, which is one reason mantis is taught together with rapid displacement rather than from a fixed stance.
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