Any historians out there?

[BeiTangLang]

I ran across a statement & I thought it was interesting.
Any comments or style revisions?
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The Traditional Praying Mantis system consists of 5 sub-styles, Meihua, Chishing, Pimen, Liohoe and Papu Tanglang Chuan
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(Also, any mandarin/cantonese/english help here would be appreciated.)
Best wishes,
BTL

[mantis108]

The Traditional Praying Mantis system consists of 5 sub-styles, Meihua, Chishing, Pimen, Liohoe and Papu Tanglang Chuan

This statement seems to be from a Taiwan PM community perspective.

As far as my research goes, the full name of the praying mantis (the system) used to be called Meihwa Taiji Quan (non relatived to Taijiquan) or Tanglang Quan for short. Many older generation masters (even in Taiwan) perferred to just call it Tanglangquan without the lineage designations. As evolution chain goes individual lineages developed because of identity issues. As far as sub style goes there are more than 5 (including spin offs) but there are 3 main lineages/categories - Meihwa (hard & soft), Qixing (hard), and Liuhe (soft). Hard and soft styles are relative. Incidently, I believe that 7 Stars (Qixing) and 6 Harmonies (Liuhe) are kind of spin off of the Meihwa. Since Qixing has a better start in promoting their lineage thanks to the effort of GM Luo Guangyu, who affiliated with the Jingwu school. it gets more recognitions than Meihwa and Liuhe.

Mantis108

[Tainan Mantis]

pimen-
You must be talking about mimen or secret door. A great name for a kung fu style. Ilya Profatilov has made a very good connection between that style and his Taiji PM.

GM Zhang himself never used the term mimen PM, just PM. Although 3 of his famous students are still alive;
-Zhou Gaoshan
-Su Yuzhang
-Shr Zhengzhong
... none of them have taught this style. GM Zhang only taught 12 forms 2 of which were just sections of each other, but nowadays you will find mimen forms like beng bu and chachuei that GM Zhang himself never taught or knew, while his most basic form Lan Jie is only preserved in his old out of print book. The form is much simpler than the modernized version that is done for shows or seminars.
And his 8 elbows is not being taught by any of those 3 students. I could be wrong though, I would love to hear who has learned his 4 Ba Zhou forms.

Papu-
We usually write as Babu PM or 8 Steps PM. This style and its forms originally can only be found in Taiwan.

A lot of confusion was created when a Babu book was published that included info and manuscripts from 7*, mimen, Shuai sho, and meihwa. The different sections are mixed together making it difficult to discern what info goes to what style(unless you learned them all).

Liu He or 6 Harmony is different from the 6H in China. Again, Ilya Profatilov has done the most research on this branch. The version in Taiwan has only one Dzai Yao form(there should be 6-7) which Jiang Hsiangsan, the Taiwan lineage holder of this style, attributes to 7*.

That is strange as these forms were created by a famous Meihwa PM master.