Taiji Plum-Blossom Mantis (太極梅花螳螂拳) — the rounded, continuous branch

Taiji Plum-Blossom Mantis (**太極梅花螳螂拳, **Tàijí Méihuā Tánglángquán) is the rounder, more continuous of the great mantis branches — its techniques link one into the next "like plum blossoms strung along a branch," infused with a taiji-like softness, sticking, and continuity. It is the main Laiyang (萊陽) transmission of the art, and the trunk from which much of modern Northern Mantis — including the Eight Step branch — grew.

Lineage

• 梁學香 (Liang Xuexiang) — the Daoguang-era master who wrote the manual 《可使有勇》, preserving Wang Lang's Splitting-the-Body Eight Elbows (分身八肘), Random Linking (亂接), and Secret Hands (秘手).

• → 姜化龍 (Jiang Hualong) (1855–1924) — "Hard-Hitting Jiang Hualong" (打得硬姜化龍), the great transmitter (and, separately, a root of Eight Step Mantis).

• → 宋子德 (Song Zide) (b. 1855), of Laiyang — Jiang's disciple and sworn brother (with Jiang and 李丹伯), who fully inherited the art and crystallised the "Taiji Mantis" (太極螳螂) style.

• → the "Three Mountains of Laiyang" (萊陽三山): 王玉山 (Wang Yushan), 崔壽山 (Cui Shoushan), 李昆山 (Li Kunshan) — the line through which the Liang-Xuexiang mantis is called Taiji Mantis.

• → the Hao family school (郝家門): 郝恆祿 (Hao Henglu), who in 1926 revised the manual and published the 《太極梅花螳螂拳論》, giving the branch its full theoretical system; his son 郝斌 (Hao Bin) was a famous disciple.

Through Jiang Hualong, Song Zide, Cui Shoushan, and Wang Yushan, the art moved from Laiyang to Yantai and Qingdao in the late Qing and early Republic, forming what the tradition calls the "three limbs and four schools of the Yantai Mantis gate" (煙台螳螂門三枝四派).

Character

• Continuous "plum-blossom linking" — each strike flows into the next without break, the signature roundness that gives the branch its name.

• Taiji softness woven through — sticking, listening, and soft-then-sudden issuing, closer in feel to the internal arts than the harder Seven-Star.

• The 摘要 (Zhaiyao, "Picked Essentials") is the crown form of the branch — see the Zhai Yao page.

A note on the names

"梅花螳螂 (Plum-Blossom)," "太極螳螂 (Taiji Mantis)," and "太極梅花螳螂" all name this same Liang-Xuexiang → Jiang-Hualong trunk; the Hao family's 1926 codification fused the labels. (Distinguish the branch from the empty-hand form Plum Blossom Fists.)

Video

Praying Mantis on Film — incl. 王國典 1995 (archival), 張炳鬥, and 危鳳池 (Hao family)

See also

Praying Mantis (螳螂拳) — the parent system & branch tree

Jiang Hualong (姜化龍) — the great transmitter at the root of this branch

Eight Step Mantis — the sibling branch, also from Jiang Hualong

Seven Star Mantis — the harder contrast branch

Sources

[1] 梅花螳螂拳 and 太極螳螂拳, Baidu Baike (baike.baidu.com/item/梅花螳螂拳) — the Liang Xuexiang → Jiang Hualong → Song Zide → "Three Mountains" lineage and the Yantai transmission.

[2] 郝恆祿, 太極梅花螳螂拳論 (1926) — the Hao-family theoretical treatise that named and systematised the branch.

[3] 梁學香, 可使有勇 (Daoguang era) — the foundational manual preserving the Wang Lang material.