Art D Investigates Tanglang

[Tainan Mantis]

On my May visit to the states I had the chance to spend a couple of days training with my old shrfu Art D. I would like to talk about the inspiration I got from comparing of notes on those aspects of Mantis Boxing that fascinate us.

I understand Art's philosophy to be,"By investigating the similarites are we able to create links."

THE HISTORICAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MANTIS AND CHEN TAIJI

Art has trained in MA since before I was born(I'm 35) and has spent the last 15-20 years investigating the links between the body movement of several styles of Mantis and Chen Taiji. His conclusions have played a big part in the evolution of his understanding and application of Manttis.

My own brief research points to a likely historical relationship between Mantis and Taiji. I make this connection, in part, by relating both Mantis and Chen Taiji to Longfist of the Song dynasty's first emperor Song Taidzu.

The link to Mantis is in the "Eighteen Family Method." Purportedly written by Wanglang himself or one of his students, it starts,

"Taidzu's Longfist is first."

General Qi Jiguang(1528-1587) published a book late in the Ming dynasty entitled "New Book on Effective Training Methods" which includes the chapter "The Canons of Boxing." This chapter goes into some detail on the "Thirty-Two Postures of Taidzu's Longfist."

Twenty-nine of those thirty-two postures are included in the various sets of Taiji created by Chen Wangting. We can conclude that the link between Chen Taiji and the Longfist as detailed in General Qi's book is quite strong. Sadly, lack of verifiable historical records in Mantis make for a weaker link.

ABOUT CHEN WANGTING

For the last three years of the Ming dynasty, from 1641 to 1644, Chen Wangting was the chief of civil troops defending Wen county. It seems that the knowledge he gained from war at the end of the Ming led to his refinement of boxing in the Ching. Not long before his death he wrote,

"...Life consists in creating actions of boxing when feeling depressed, doing field work when the season comes, and spending leisure time teaching disciples and children so that they can be worthy members of society."

[Tainan Mantis]

EIGHT SHORT STRIKES OF MANTIS AND SILK REELING ENERGY

Another link, though not historically valid, is through common principles of motion and striking. An important aspect of Chen Taiji is their silk reeling energy.

Art said," It's all learning to connect the rotations of the extremeties with the rotations of the dantien."

He demonstrated several "enter the door" Mantis principles on me such as rolling, leaking, attaching, clinging etc. After entering he used different aspects of the eight shorts, knees, forearm, head, shoulder etc to strike me.

The key point he repeatedly emphasized was using the principles of motion embodied in silk reeling energy.

"I think silk reeling energy is the root of all movement," He explained, it makes the "raw power" available for short strikes.

You may have noticed that it is hard to hurt someone by hitting with your hips and ribs unless you can generate a great power in a short distance.

[Tainan Mantis]

LULU FANCHE

I watched Art as he played with the motion of silk reeling energy. He took it through slow, fast, small and large ranges of motion. As he performed it larger and faster I saw the subtlety of silk reeling energy transform into lulu and fanche, two essential motions of Mantis.

"Short Strikes of Eighteen Luohan" an important treatise on Mantis states the following,

"...You can use fanche together with collapsing, smashing, adhering, grasping, sticking to the door leaning on the wall, as well as using your fists, elbows, knees and feet(beng, zha, zhan, na, tie men kao bi).

Fanche isn't long range unless compared to Mantis(hence, Mantis is a type of short strikes).

If you use fanche your opponent has no place to hide, if you use Mantis your opponent has no way to defend. Adopt oneself to changing circumstances when using them, to revolve the body when hitting, this is the profoundness of short strikes(hence, the profoundness of Mantis), the highest extreme of technique..."

Art provided valuable insight on the meaning of the sentence at the end of the above quote when he said,

"It's all learning to connect the rotations of the extremeties with the rotations of the dantien."

When playing our techniques together no matter what position his body was in when it made contact with mine he could apply the explosive power needed to make the short strikes effective and painful weapons.

I think this relates directly to the above quote from" Short Strikes of Eighteen Luohan"

"Adopt oneself to changing circumstances when using them, to revolve the body when hitting, this is the profoundness of short strikes."

THE MERITS OF INVESTIGATION

In the years I have known my shrfu's, both Art D in the states and Shr Zhengzhong in Taiwan, I have noticed one aspect of their attitude that helps them to continuously improve.

That is the attitude to investigate and evolve!

[mantis108]

Hi Tainan,

This is absolutely one of the finest posts shared thus far on this board. I congratulate Art D and yourself both continue at earnest in the quest for excellence in Praying Mantis.

There are many points and concepts shared that are very good but could open doors to contending theories as well. For example:

"By investigating the similarites are we able to create links."

By applying this concept, we could also develop an alternate theory of origin on Mantis as we know it. Case in point - Huaquan (flower fist). I will further explain on a seperate post.

I have to emphasize the point that I am in no way trying to undermind the great effort and findings of Art D. In fact, I admire his work. I am just cautioning that the door is too wide openned with the above mentioned concept.

The following statement is of course excellent:

Art said," It's all learning to connect the rotations of the extremeties with the rotations of the dantien."

But we would need to also bear in mind that silk reeling energy permiates a vast varieties of CMA in gerenal. It might not be called silk reeling though as you have pointed out that such similar description can be found on works that cover style other than Chen Taiji.

Finally, I also agreed with this statement:

"THE MERITS OF INVESTIGATION

In the years I have known my shrfu's, both Art D in the states and Shr Zhengzhong in Taiwan, I have noticed one aspect of their attitude that helps them to continuously improve.

That is the attitude to investigate and evolve!"

Thank you once again for sharing such great expirence.

Warmest regards

Mantis108

[mantis108]

First we have to establish a time line, places, and people/styles that are of interest and then develope a route or a possible link between styles.

The period that is of special interest is late Ming dynasty to late-mid Qing dynasty. That is to said 1500s to 1800s

The places of interest are four provinces Shandong, Henan, Jiangsu and Fujian. Note that excepts Henan province the other three provinces were infested by Japanese pirate during 1500s.

It is believed that Henan Shaolin temple warrior monks offered help in battling the priates in and arround Fujian province. Later Fujian Shaolin temple, as affiliate to Henan Shaolin, was build to accomodate those monks who suffered from serious injuries and could not make it back to the Henan Shaolin. One of the more prominant styles that was taught at Fujian Shaolin's Wing Chun Tang (Wing Chun Hall) was Huaquan, which was also a specialty of Gan Fengchi (about CE 1723-1735), a lay disciple of the temple. Huaquan was said to be Short Range oriented and was supposed to be one of the 5 major styles taught in the Henan Shaolin temple. Gan Fengchi was a native of Jiangsu province which is consider "Mid-south" of China. He could have taught outside of the temple as a lay disciple.

Huaquan is believed to be the root style of a few different styles:

Northern Shaolin (Ku Yu Cheong lineages)

Wing Chun (Abott Gi Seen lineages) - subsequantly, Hung Ga and Wing Chun (Yip Man's lineages) are derived

Lung Ying (Lum Yui Kwai lineages)

Note that even in Northern Shaolin there is a short strike form while the other styles listed above are mostly short range oriented.

Around 1700s, it is a very sensitive time for Huaquan and its practictioners due to the affiliation with Fujian Shaolin. So of its practitioners could be deemed as "outlaws" because of their anti-government activities.

According to Taiji Mantis records both oral and documented, it is believe that GM Li BingXiao, progenator of Taiji/Meihwa lineages, was born in Fujian and his family moved to Shandong due to government offical appointment. GM Li once travelled to "Mid-South" and helped an outlaw fallen ill.

It would seem that at GM Li's time (CE 1735?) Taijiquan being a "relatively new" style was not yet in the "Tanglangquan" system. Some seemed to suggest that it was GM Liang Xue Xiang (CE 1810 - ?), the Grandstudent of GM Li, who "incorporated" Taijiquan principles [re: not drills or forms] into Taiji/Meihwa Tanglangquan. There is no mentioning or suggested theory of how GM Liang come accross Taijiquan, which was originated in the Henan region.

Now come to a brief list of similarities between the styles that are "derived" from Huaquan:

1) In Norther Shaolin forms such as Plum Flowers and Short strikes are available. This as least suggest certain similar attributes to mantis. It does however has the 4 strikes, Da, Ti, Na and Shuai, just as Mantis.

2) In Wing Chun, short range and sticking to opponent is very similar to mantis as well. Having said that there is acctually longer range in Wing Chun as well(other than Yip Man's lineage).

3)It is most interesting because of the triangle stance that is highly reminiscent of Xiao Shi (minor stance). It is right (power) side forward. Hands are both close to each other and ready for action similar to the concept of "bang" in mantis. Also the highest forms are known as Plum Flowers as well. Last but not least, there is "coiling" energy found in this style as well.

One common concept that links these three with mantis is perhaps that of Lai Jiao Shun Song (lai lau hui song in Wing Chun).

Having said all that I have to put a serious disclaimer that, these thoughts are solely my opinion based on various sources of information and personal experiences with the styles especially with CCK TCPM and Lung Ying. It's only meant to be food for thoughts and not to be taken as definitive work since I am still researching on the subject. Personally, I think there are enough materials to build a case for Huaquan (flower fist) as the contending alternate theory of origin of Mantis.

Mantis108

[WanderingMonk]

Originally posted by Tainan Mantis

"...Life consists in creating actions of boxing when feeling depressed, doing field work when the season comes, and spending leisure time teaching disciples and children so that they can be worthy members of society."

If memory serve me right, it is speculated these verses were coined in the early republic day. It was falsely attributed to the "founder" of the Chen taiji system. It was also falsely used to justified that Chen Wang Ting as the creator of Chen taiji. There was a brief discussion about this on in the article "links between yiquan and crane boxing" published in the TW wulin magazine.

In particular, the original poetry verses had an extremely anti-qing dynasty tone. Also, the original verse "becoming dragons and tigers" can be viewed as subversion. Unless Chen Wang Ting was ready to start a rebellion, these verses would best be kept very quiet. I know your translation was a quick draft, so it didn't contain any of the subtlties.

I posted the links to the "link between yiquan and crane boxing" article in TJPM forum a while back if you are interested.

wm

[mantis108]

Hi Wandering Monk,

Thanks for the reminder. The link on my forum seems to lead to a Yiquan site and there would be a link of a Chinese article which I don't seem to be able to download that anymore. However, I found something interesting while trying to dig up the article. This would be of interest to Tainan as well.

Shaolin Quanpu

On this page there is a mentioning of Fuju (Northen Song dynasty Shaolin monk), who was the supposed compiler of the 18 styles to become Shaolin boxing. There is a text similar to the 18 styles poem in PM (AKA Discourse of Short Strikes) but seems to have quite a bit of typo as well. Also the Tanglang of Wang Long (listed as 17 instead of being the last one) is said to subdue the enemy not summing up nor including/above all techniques.

It seems like there is a rather serious problem concerning the acuracy and integrity of the Discourse of Short Strikes. Case in point:

Liu Xing's Go-lu-Tan (seeking)-shou (in the link provided) is found in as Liu Xing's Go-lu-Cai (plucking)-shou (see Ilya Profatilov's article).

Note that Tan and Cai in Chinese characters are very similar. But the meaning are very far apart. Is this a case of copying error or something else?

Coming form a Tanglang perspective the Go-Lu-Tsai Shou would be considered as the "correct" one. But how can one disprove the other version of a supposed "authentic Shaolin" view? We simply can't or we will be deemed as baised.

and so on so forth.

Anyway, I suppose it is like swimming against the current when investigating the perceived truth(s).

Warm regards

Mantis108

[Tainan Mantis]

Robert,
I don't know much about Hua Chuen.
Doesn't it look like Cha Chuen?

About TAN seeking.
In Plumflower zhai yao is the seeking punch, which is just a backfist.
But I think the point is that it is a fast punch done unexpectedly.

WM,
Thanks for the bubble burst.
In fact, it doesn't surprise me that I included phony documents in my research.
They are all over the place and hard to avoid.

The other quotes should be good though.

I don't have access to any original stuff for the Taiji that I have put here, I am still looking for it.

I have all the Wulin mags, do you remember which issue mentions it?

[WanderingMonk]

Mantis 108,

Too bad, the chinese article was a great read. I guess I shouldn't have posted the link to the HK kungfuboard. Haha. They have a way of using up too much bandwidth and causing web site to take things off.

Tainan mantis,

I am not "sure" which one it is since I don't have access to the hardcopy. But, after digging through wulin's website, the site "claim" it is in issue 11. The yiquan and crane boxing article. Happy reading. It was a great read. Highly recommended.

wm

[WanderingMonk]

Hi Tainan Mantis,

Since you are doing some research on the relations between mantis and other northern arts, I got something you might find interesting.

A southern mantis guy posted this link in the Hua shan kungfu forum a while back.

http://www.wushu-health.com/wushudianji/

Of course, it is all in chinese. But, there's a catch. It is all in simplified chinese. Then, there's the special terminologies used by each system. You might pull all your hairs all trying to figure it all out.

wm

[yu shan]

Good to here Shrfu Art doing so well! The man changed my life, once a Shrfu always your Shrfu...

[ironfenix]

i can personally say, that his mantis is explosive! No posture is wasted! a gem indeed if there ever was one in tanglang.

[woliveri]

Just curious but where the He77 is Art...? Crap, I haven't seen him since Li En Jiu seminars at the temple...

[yu shan]

You can find him on Facebook if you do that sort of thing Woli.

[woliveri]

After some searches I found him here:

http://eternaltaoma.com/

and here

http://www.zenonthegreen.com/