snake similar to mantis? we mean shaolin here, yeah?
from what i have seen, much of the shaolin animals bear a great resemblence in basic technique.
dimeth...
yeah, that is along the same lineage u spoke of with Luo btw. my eacher trained with hung and his senior students. he started training, i think, a year or 2 before luo did.
but luo also trained with many others. i am not sure all of whom my teach trained with, i know he did white crane some some taiji back then(1960's-70's taiwan.)
but, since my teach and luo and basically classmates in a sense, if not literally, i have met luo and one of the other more famous students now teaching such as su dong chen(love this guy!)
my teach, focused more on xingyi for the bulk of his first 2.5 or 3 years with hung. so that is what i focus on. but, bagua is simply awesome when done right. being thrown first hand by luo in one way, then the next, and having been thrown, elbowed, smacked, etc gives me easily a great impression of how a bagua infighting works well, not to even mention getting to the part where you can get slammed to the floor or thrown 7 feet backwards like a gust of wind just picked your @ss up. and i am no ragdoll if i say so myself.
perhaps, in the next year or so i will focus on bagua more. i have a few xingyi animal forms to complete and maybe another 2 person fighting set to work with. and at least one weapon form.
combine those with my chen hunyuan taiji and being back into college, i am a busy guy!