For the preceding article, Shaolin Ways Episode 2: Plum Flower Bodhidharma Cane, click here.

Depending upon how you reckon it, this article took me either a year or five years to write. That's excessive for me as I'm sometimes required to turn an article around in a few hours. However, my more personal reflections on Shaolin Kung Fu practice like this are at my leisure, and I don’t get much leisure so they get pushed aside by more pressing deadlines. After two decades in publishing, nothing motivates me like a deadline…except maybe my Shifu.

I say this took one year because this was inspired by my Shaolin master Shi Decheng’s visit in 2017. He's coming again – in a few days no less – hosted once more by his student, Shaolin Warrior Monk Shifu Andy Ye Xinglie. Getting this done now is a promotion of Decheng’s seminars; I hope local readers will attend. So there’s my motivating deadline. There’s nothing like your Shifu to light a fire under your butt that way.

The five-year development is a longer story about my Shaolin blogs. Initially, I told personal Shaolin experiences in my "Shaolin Trips" blogs, starting in 2004 and running to Episode 4 blogs (Episode 4 had 6 chapters). Those were precursors to my book, Shaolin Trips, published in 2010. Writing a book usurped all my leisure time. It was a collation of almost all of my Shaolin research, including those blogs and articles from Kung Fu Tai Chi, plus new material to stitch it all together. After my book came out, I was done "Tripping." I moved on with Shaolin Trips: Flashback, a piece ostensibly about Xiaohongquan, introducing my aspirations for a new Shaolin blog format.

That post-book blog took me three years. And when I wrote Shaolin Ways, it wasn’t at leisure. When writing Shaolin Trips, I intended to analyze some of the Shaolin forms in the same way I treated Xiaohongquan with "Flashback." But Shaolin Trips is 669 pages long and I just couldn't squeeze any more in there so I abandoned that.

"Shaolin Ways" began with a very dear Shaolin weapon, Bodhidharma Cane. I published that to coincide with the release of our Tiger Claw Bodhidharma Cane and instructional video. So once again, it wasn’t at my leisure; it was a deadline. The launch of "Shaolin Ways" went for two episodes, and when I introduced it, I warned readers about the infrequency of these blogs by saying "Don’t get too excited because it might be another three years until the next one."

Well, it's now 2018, so it took half a decade for Shaolin Ways: Episode 3. And never mind what I said about leisure. There’s no rest for the wicked or a Shaolin disciple.  I confess – my blogging is buggy, and this one is the buggiest of all. So here’s to the topic at hand – the Way of Shaolin Mantis.

When Decheng came last November, he taught Shaolin Praying Mantis, or Tanglang (螳螂) in Chinese. Tang means "mantis." Lang means "mantis" or "dung beetle" (shame that there isn't a dung beetle style because those little buggers are tough). Mantis is a popular style of Kung Fu, so much so that we have an online discussion sub-forum solely dedicated to Mantis. Mantis is one of Decheng’s specialties, but I hadn’t learned it from him before. Actually, my personal Mantis journey starts with my first Kung Fu master, the late Grandmaster Kwong Wing Lam.

 

Bung Bo at Lam Kwoon

Sifu Wing Lam had a few mantis forms up his sleeve. They weren't part of his regular curriculum, just some stray forms that he had learned in Hong Kong and kept. He had three Mantis forms. I don't know from whom he learned them. The first was Bung Bo (崩步) as he spelled it from the Cantonese, and he shared that with most of his advanced students. It’s a short form, and even if his students didn’t keep it, he firmly believed in the exposure and cross-training. The second was White Ape Steals the Peach (白猿偷桃), which he hardly ever taught. I begged and pleaded until he finally relented. And it was a favorite of mine, not just because it was a cool mantis form, but because I was among the few that managed to extract it from him. Of course now, embarrassingly, I’ve completely forgotten that. I still remember Bung Bo and still practice it occasionally. I don’t remember what Lam’s third mantis form was. I’m not sure I ever even saw that.

Bung Bo is pronounced Bengbu in Mandarin, and because this is Northern Mantis, that term is more prevalent (Note that there is also Southern Mantis Kung Fu, but that's a completely different species which I've never studied personally so won't engage here). Bengbu is the most common form for Northern Mantis Kung Fu. It’s the first form, the basic form, the form almost every Northern Mantis practitioner knows. Like with most common forms, Bengbu invariably opens the same way and then deviates later. It’s just a jump to the left (with a right punch) and then a step to the right (retreating back to a mantis posture with the left mantis pincer hand forward), followed by a charging attack. Beng means "to split"; this is the same term used for one of the Five Element fists of Xingyi. Bu means "step" and is the same term used for stances.

In our July+August 2003 issue, our copy editor (and my Kung Fu brother under Grandmaster Wing Lam who also learned Bengbu from him) Gary Shockley wrote a postulating piece about mantids and other bugs titled, “Excuse me, Master, but is that a Bug in My Style?” He explored the limitations of humans fighting like bugs given the fundamental differences in anatomy and hunted for other bug Kung Fu styles. He found several fanciful cinematic versions like butterflies, centipedes and crickets, and one that has been recently reinstated to the Shaolin curriculum, scorpion. Scorpion style became popular for Shaolin demonstrations over the last decade or so. It’s flamboyant and typically shown during a demo scene dedicated to animal or imitative styles, but not authentic traditional Shaolin. Mantis, both traditional and modern, is imported into Shaolin too.

 

The Shandong Connection

Shandong province in northeastern China is the cradle of Northern Mantis Kung Fu. The region has a rich martial history largely due to the classic novel Outlaws of the Marsh, which is set there. I'm not going to get into the origin myth. You can find that online in so many places, or even in the children's book, Little Monk and the Mantis: A Bug, A Boy And the Birth of a Kung Fu Legend, by John Fusco, screenwriter for Forbidden Kingdom, and illustrated by Kung Fu Tai Chi’s own graphic artist Patrick Lugo. The martial legacy of Shandong is a major pride point for locals so Kung Fu is very popular there, so much so that many of the present generation of Shaolin monks were born in Shandong if they aren’t local to Shaolin.

As fate would have it, Wing Lam’s team was selected to represent the United States at the 1992 Jinan International Traditional Wushu Competition and Demonstration Festival. Jinan is the capital of Shandong. That trip was life-changing, my first voyage to China, and I wouldn’t be where I am today had I not followed my master on that eventful journey.

As part of the festivities, we learned a mantis form from a noted master there. Gary and his wife Lori Ann White (also a Kung Fu sibling of mine under Wing Lam, as well as a copy editor for Kung Fu Tai Chi) took the lesson, along with Master Eric Ishii, a noted Mantis expert and pupil of Grandmaster Brendan Lai. Eric and I became good friends after that trip. We lived near each other at that time so we’d get together informally to work out sometimes, then go eat somewhere as he was quite the foodie. He told me he had collected some 50 different versions of Bengbu. He claimed he kept them all because he felt each one had some intrinsic value, and he was such an obsessive researcher, I believed him. He had insanely fast hands and taught me a lot in our little sessions. He was also part of our Grateful Dead Dragon Crew, also with Gary and Lori. Sadly, he passed away in 2000 after a prolonged battle with leukemia.

 

An odd souvenir from Jinan International Traditional Wushu Competition and Demonstration Festival – a commemorative logoed letter.

 

I’m first on the left, Lori is sixth from the left, and Grandmaster Lam is first on the right..

 

Gary made a friend in Jinan.

 

Starting 2nd from the left is Lori, Gary and me, and then our unknown Mantis master and Grandmaster Wing Lam.  On the far right is Eric Ishii.

 

From the left is me and Gary, the right is Eric and Lori.

 

 

I wish I could say more about that Shandong Mantis master that we all learned from together. I didn’t even get his name. He was tall and long as many Shandongers are, and wore these thick glasses that gave him the physical appearance of a bug-eyed mantis. Of course, he taught us Bengbu. You’d think I’d have kept that form. It was mantis from the source. But I didn’t. In my journey journal, all I wrote was “I dogged it.” Prior to that Mantis lesson, I had already taken lessons from the renowned Grandmaster Li Enjiu in Two-Handed Sword (Shuangshoujian as well as Cha Quan #5, which Sifu Lam set me up with because I’d also learned Cha Quan #4 as another of his extracurricular forms – all within a few days while also competing. I carefully documented both Shuangshoujian and Cha Quan #5 in line drawings in my journal. In ’91, I didn’t have the luxury of a video camera on my smart phone. Heck, I shot that maiden voyage with a film camera. So I let that Shandong Bengbu go. Actually, I’ve forgotten all three of those forms now, plus a few more I picked up later on that trip, so it’s really a moot point.

 

Mantids at Shaolin Temple

There are two prevailing Mantis forms currently practiced at Shaolin Temple, although Shaolin is so vast, there are plenty of other unique secular Mantis forms like Plum Blossom Mantis and Six Harmony Mantis. The most common is a Shaolin interpretation of Bengbu. The second common form was created by another famous Shandong Mantis Grandmaster, Yu Hai. Grandmaster Yu Hai is best known for his role as the senior monk in the groundbreaking 1982 film The Shaolin Temple. He was also our JAN+FEB 2007 Cover Story, “The Big Monk of Shaolin Temple: Mantis Grandmaster Yu Hai," which details the Yu Hai Mantis form and its creation.

 

 

 

The Shaolin Temple was one of three Shaolin-themed films that introduced a stable of martial arts masters into acting, including Yu Hai, Ji Chunhua, Yu Chenghui, and foremost, Jet Li. They all stayed on location during filming and Grandmaster Yu Hai left his Mantis form there. It’s distinctive and appears in several of his fight scenes within those films. Some more traditional Mantis practitioners disdain Yu Hai’s form for being too modern and theatrical, but like a lot of Shaolin Kung Fu, it can be played for spectacle or for self-defense. Grandmaster Yu Hai was a pioneer of Modern Wushu, but he was well-rooted in traditional Kung Fu as were most of that first generation of athletes. His form is long with four distinct sections but most performers will only recite the first section for demonstrations.

I learned the form in one day at a seminar at Lam Kwoon. I don’t remember when exactly that was. Lori and Gary participated too. I imagine it was recorded in the Lam Kwoon newsletters, but those were never digitized and I don’t have the bandwidth to backtrack for that right now. Lam Kwoon hosted seminars for some Beijing Wushu Team members when they came through town. I don’t remember who our instructor was, apart from remembering her as a tiny woman with a gymnast body. I remember recognizing the form as Yu Hai’s (this was long before I wrote his cover story); it's so distinctive as to be easily recognizable. It was always demonstrated for Wushu tours as one of the animal or imitative styles back when Beijing Wushu demo tours were still marketable in the San Francisco Bay Area (today, locals can just go train with former Beijing Wushu Team members because several have schools in the area). I also remember thinking how ridiculous it was to try to learn this complicated form in a few hours. I don’t remember that form at all. That seminar was really just a tough workout, but there’s plenty of value in that. It’s challenging to learn a form in a seminar. At best, I might glean a new concept or two, or polish a form I already know. However, I still love to do seminars for those reasons alone. Sifu Lam instilled that quest for researching outside my style and of his many lessons that one has served me very well.

 

A Shaolin Mantis at O-Mei

For several years, during much of my stint here at Kung Fu Tai Chi, I was training at the O-Mei Kung Fu Academy under Master Tony Chen. He propounded a curriculum from O-Mei Mountain in Sichuan Province. O-Mei Mountain, or Emeishan in Mandarin, is another bastion of martial arts like Shandong, but in western China. Shifu Tony brought in many coaches and instructors, expanding O-Mei to five large schools in the already-saturated Bay Area martial arts market. One of his instructors was a former Shaolin monk who I consequently studied under for several years after Shifu Tony moved on.

 

 

Shifu Yan Fei was also from Shandong and taught Bengbu. Like the master in Jinan, Shifu Yan was tall and long, with an explosive lunging reach just like a mantis. He referred to his lineage of Mantis as Seven Star (qixing) and believed it was far more prevalent at Shaolin Temple than the Yu Hai form at Shaolin. Shifu Yan also knew the first two sections of that Yu Hai form, and taught those to a few students too. Of course, I wrote an article on Yan Fei’s Mantis – "Seven Star Praying Mantis: A Holy Bug in the Temple" in our MAY+JUN 2013 issue. In the conclusion of that piece, Shifu Yan said, “In Shandong, you can go to any park and see Mantis Grandmasters, teaching, day and night. Shaolin Seven Star Mantis is still from Shandong.”

We even made a video.

After O-Mei changed owners, Yan Fei moved on and I shelved his version of Qixing Bengbu. Now the only one I retain is Grandmaster Lam’s version. In my youth, I often thought I should switch from my foundation style of Bak Sil Lum to Mantis because it felt like a better fit physically. I was quick and precise, and after years of Fencing, I had a decent lunge. Even now when I do partner hand drills, I often default to Mantis techniques. Maybe that was Master Ishii’s influence because while all of my previous Mantis teachers showed me applications, Eric exposed me to hand drills. Far be it from me to profess any mastery of Mantis, but that unique Mantis pincer hand is a powerful technique if you can get a handle on it.

 

Shi Decheng

So last year, Shi Decheng’s seminar at Shifu Ye’s school, Shaolin Kungfu Zen, was Mantis. Unfortunately, due to a scheduling conflict, I was only able to attend the first day of the weekend seminar, so I only learned the beginning of it. It was great fun. It was wonderful to be under my master again, and to once again feel that Shaolin Temple qi flow through me. I don’t always get there with my own practice, but like I said earlier, there’s nothing like your Shifu to light a fire under your butt that way. It was a great workout.

When it was over, we were all asked to recite what we had learned, and Master Ye put me last for dramatic effect. As the Publisher of Kung Fu Tai Chi, I was a notable attendee for his students. And despite feeling confident about what I had learned, I totally blanked during that recital. There’s video somewhere, but hopefully that remains off the web. This is why I seldom demonstrate anymore. Given my position, people expect me to be some kind of grandmaster myself, but I really just want to enjoy my practice.

Decheng photos courtesy of Scott Jeffrey.

 

I’ve kept that fragment in my regimen, watching it decay over the last year. My disciple brother, Master Scott Jeffery, photo-documented the entire form for our JUL+AUG 2010 issue in an article titled “Shaolin Seven Praying Mantis,” so I could piece together the rest of it if I was so inclined. But I’m not. I have plenty of other forms to remember and practice. Nevertheless, I hope that readers are inspired to train with my master as he’s on the road.

 

And I hope that my next Shaolin Ways won’t be so tardy. Amitoufo.

To read Shaolin Ways Episode 4: The Big Worthy One, click here.