Southern praying mantis

By Yossi Sheriff

Overview

Southern Praying Mantis is a close range fighting system. As a later development of Chinese martial arts (early 19th century) it was created as a pure fighting art. It thus lacks any aesthetic value and differs in appearance from what is known as “Shaolin Kung Fu”.

This system was probably created for close range empty handed conflict in closed quarters or any other spaces with limited mobility. It is not focused on using weapons for fighting nor is it adjusted to fighting using battle armor.

Characteristics

(These charecteristics are used widely by a number of sister systems from the south-eastern provinces of China):

  1. Almost all techniques, forms and fighting “scenarios” are based on the assumption that an opponent is set to hurt the practitioner and not vice versa; Techniques where the practitioner himself initiates an attack himself are a development of later decades. Hence, there is a vast use of “traps” aimed at luring the opponent into delivering a blow, thus reducing the need for “closing the distance”. Accordingly, most techniques are counter-attacks aimed to “absorb” the first blow and react.
  2. There are almost no forms practicing joint locks: all contact with the opponent’s limbs is usually used as a “bridge” for hitting the loins, upper body or head, the head being the main target for most blows. Any locks aren’t made on joints but rather get the opponent's limbs tangled for better striking positions.
  3. A unique form of “Sticky Limbs”, or “Chi Sao”, aimed to help the practitioner gain close range sensitivity for the opponent’s actions without seeing them, and for control over their movement, relevant mostly to very close distances.
  4. Fast connecting blows (using circular movements and a “high-low” concept) intended to knock a close opponent unconscious in a short time without reacting to changes in range or timing (assuming that the practitioner sets the timing and the range remains close)
  5. Almost no drills include reference to footwork. Most moves are short ranged steps, used to protect the loins and lower body and to deliver low kicks while closing the distance.

Almost all techniques, forms and fighting “scenarios” are based on the assumption that an opponent is set to hurt the practitioner and not vice versa; Techniques where the practitioner himself initiates an attack himself are a development of later decades. Hence, there is a vast use of “traps” aimed at luring the opponent into delivering a blow, thus reducing the need for “closing the distance”. Accordingly, most techniques are counter-attacks aimed to “absorb” the first blow and react. There are almost no forms practicing joint locks: all contact with the opponent’s limbs is usually used as a “bridge” for hitting the loins, upper body or head, the head being the main target for most blows. Any locks aren’t made on joints but rather get the opponent’s limbs tangled for better striking positions. A unique form of “Sticky Limbs”, or “Chi Sao”, aimed to help the practitioner gain close range sensitivity for the opponent’s actions without seeing them, and for control over their movement, relevant mostly to very close distances. Fast connecting blows (using circular movements and a “high-low” concept) intended to knock a close opponent unconscious in a short time without reacting to changes in range or timing (assuming that the practitioner sets the timing and the range remains close) Almost no drills include reference to footwork. Most moves are short ranged steps, used to protect the loins and lower body and to deliver low kicks while closing the distance.


Fighting Concepts:

  • Guen-Hon-Dun:

This concept refers to the timing used in counter-attacking in SPM.

  1. Gu Sink, absorb the blow without deflecting it
  2. Hon: Shake the opponent, take him off balance
  3. Dun: Strike
  • High-Low:
  1. “Formless” movement (and its effect on bad methodology)
  2. Circular movement
  3. Creating momentum using circular movement
  4. Dip Guat and extending the limbs
  5. Sticky limbs (hands and feet)
  6. Conditioning the arms
  7. Striking with more than one limb
  8. Non symmetrical techniques
  9. Very limited footwork

Despite its name, the Southern Praying Mantis style of Chinese martial arts is unrelated to the Northern Praying Mantis style. Southern Praying Mantis is instead related most closely to fellow Hakka styles such as Dragon and more distantly to the Fujian family of styles that includes Fujian White Crane (Later influencing Shurei Riu Karate), Five Ancestors, and Wing Chun.

Southern Praying Mantis is a close range fighting system that places much emphasis on short power and has aspects of both internal and external techniques. As in other southern styles, the arms are the main weapon, with kicks usually limited to the hip and under. Emphasis is placed on strengthening and lengthening the arms. The four main branches of Southern Praying Mantis are:

  1. Chow Gar (周家; Chow family)
  2. Chu Gar (朱家; Chu family)
  3. Kwong Sai Jook Lum (江西竹林; Jiangxi Bamboo Forest)
  4. Iron Ox (鐵牛)

A common antecedent can be surmised not only from their similarities but also from the fact that they all share a common routine (AKA Form, Or Kata in Japanese), Sarm (Som) Bo Jin.[1] However, the genealogies of these branches are not complete enough to trace them to a single common ancestor.

Lau Shui 劉瑞/劉水

Only the kinship between the Chow and Chu family branches can be verified as their most recent common ancestor, Lau Shui (劉瑞, 劉水﹞, died in 1942, comparatively recently.

Chow Gar 周家

The Chow family branch traces its art to c. 1800 to Chow Ah-Nam (周亞南), a Hakka who as a boy left his home in Guangdong Province for medical treatment at the Southern Shaolin Monastery in Fujian Province where, in addition to being treated for his stomach ailment, he was trained in the martial arts and eventually created Southern Praying Mantis.

Chu Gar 朱家

The Chu family branch attributes its art to Chu Fook-To, who created Southern Praying Mantis as a fighting style for opponents of the Manchu Qing Dynasty (1644–1912) that overthrew the Han Chinese Ming royal family (1368–1644) of which he was a member. According to the Chu family branch, because Chu took refuge there, the Qing destroyed the original Shaolin Monastery in Henan, forcing Chu to flee to the Southern Shaolin Monastery in Fujian.

Kwong Sai Jook Lum 江西竹林

The Kwong Sai Jook Lum style traces its origins to the temple Jook Lum Gee[2] on Mt. Longhu (龍虎山) in Kwong Sai,[3] where it was created in the early 19th century by one of the monks, Som Dot.In the mid-19th century, Som Dot passed the art on to fellow monk Lee Siem, who would visit Guangdong to the south and teach the art to lay practitioners there. One of Lee's students from Guangdong, Chung Yu-Chang, would return with him to Kwong Sai to complete his training at Jook Lum Gee. C. 1900, Chung opened his first martial arts school in a traditional Chinese medicine clinic in Bao'an County in Píngshān (坪山) Town, which his eventual successors Wong Yook-Kong and Lum Wing-Fay were natives of. Wong would be responsible for the preservation of Kwong Sai Jook Lum Praying Mantis within China and Lum (also referred to as "Lum Sang" 林生, literally "Mister Lum," out of respect by his successors) responsible for its dissemination without.

Iron Ox 鐵牛

The Iron Ox branch is named after its founder, Iron Ox Choi (Choi Dit-Ngau; 蔡鐵牛), who fought in the Boxer Rebellion (1900).

"Hakka Kuen"

Though the origins of Southern Praying Mantis may be contested, what is indisputable is its association with the Hakka people of inland eastern Guangdong. The region that is home to Southern Praying Mantis begins in the very heart of Hakka territory at Xingning, where Chow Gar founder Chow Ah-Nam came from. From Xingning, the Dongjiang flows west out of the prefecture of Meizhou through Heyuan, where Iron Ox founder Choi Dit-Ngau came from. In the prefecture of Huizhou, the Dongjiang forms the northern border of Huìyáng (惠陽) County, where Kwong Sai Jook Lum master Chung Yu-Chang and Chow/Chu Gar master Lau Shui came from. From there, the Dongjiang flows into the Pearl River Delta at Bao'an County (present-day Shenzhen), where Kwong Sai Jook Lum masters Wong Yook-Gong and Lum Wing-Fay came from. These masters all belonged to the Hakka people, who kept Southern Praying Mantis to themselves until the generation of Lau Shui and Lum Wing-Fay. In fact, Kwong Sai Jook Lum tradition records that it was once nicknamed "Hakka Kuen" (literally "Hakka fist") by the general public of the Pearl River Delta. When Lum Wing-Fay first began teaching Southern Praying Mantis in the United States, he did so at Hakka fraternal organizations such the Hip Sing Tong. Lum would eventually accept students that were not Hakka, but they still had to be Chinese (with the rumored exception of a Caucasian taxi driver whose extraordinary kindness to Lum won the driver some basic instruction from one of Lum's disciples). It was the following generation of Kwong Sai Jook Lum masters who made the art available to non-Chinese. Lau Shui's acceptance of the non-Hakka Ip Shui as a disciple had much to do with the kindness that Ip and his wife showed Lau when he had fallen ill and was isolated from any relatives by the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. Each of Lau's four other disciples—Chu Kwong-Wha, Chu Yu-Hing, Lum Wha, and Wong Hong-Kwong—were all Hakka. Chu Gar Southern Praying Mantis tradition contends that the Hakka descend from loyalists of the Ming Dynasty who fled south when it was overthrown by the Qing Dynasty. However, according to mainstream Chinese historical scholarship, the term "Hakka" originally referred, not to refugees fleeing persecution by the Qing Dynasty, but to those whom the Qing Dynasty paid to settle in underpopulated regions of southern China. Among southern Chinese martial arts, the Chu family branch of Southern Praying Mantis is far from alone in claiming an anti-Qing heritage; that most do reflects the prominence of anti-Qing partisans in southern Chinese martial arts. Both Guangdong and Fujian are provinces that the Hakka call home, both are strongly associated with the southern Chinese martial arts, and both saw strong and persistent opposition to Qing rule, such as the Hakka-led Taiping Rebellion and the Heaven and Earth Society, whose founders were from the prefecture of Zhangzhou in Fujian Province, on its border with Guangdong. Societies like Heaven and Earth were noteworthy for how their membership transcended traditional Chinese social barriers like those separating Hakka from non-Hakka. In fact, a precursor to the Heaven and Earth Society was organized by Ti Xi, one of the Heaven and Earth founders, in Huizhou, part of the aforementioned "heartland" of Hakka Praying Mantis. The Heaven and Earth Society developed myths of Shaolin origins as part of a larger anti-Qing narrative. Perhaps Hakka opposed to the Qing Dynasty did something similar, redacting their own migration and the southward flight of Ming loyalist refugees into a single narrative. Praying Mantis? The traditions of the Chow Gar and Kwong Sai Jook Lum branches each maintain that their respective founders Chow Ah-Nam and Som Dot created their styles after witnessing a praying mantis fight and defeat a bird. Such inspiration is a recurring motif in the Chinese martial arts and can be found in the legends of Northern Praying Mantis, both White Crane styles, T'ai Chi Ch'üan, and Wing Chun. However, the traditions of the Chu family branch contend that the name "Southern Praying Mantis" was chosen to conceal from Qing forces its political affiliations by pretending that this esoteric style of Ming loyalists was in fact a regional variant of the popular and widespread Praying Mantis style from Shandong. Notes 

	Chinese

Pinyin Yale Cantonese Hakka pinjim

^ Sarm Bo Jin 三步箭 Sān Bù Jiàn Saam1 Bou6 Jin3 Sam1 Pu5 Zien5 literally "Three Step Arrow" ^ Jook Lum Gee 竹林寺 Zhú Lín Sì Juk1 Lam4 Ji6 Zuk7 Lim2 Sii5 literally "Bamboo Forest Temple" ^ Kwong Sai 江西 Jiāngxī Gong1 sai1 Gong1 si1 Jiangxi (江西; Yale Cantonese: Gongsai), not Guangxi (廣西, Yale Cantonese: Gwongsai)