Six-Harmony Mantis (六合螳螂拳) — the soft, "hidden-hard" branch

Six-Harmony Mantis (**六合螳螂拳, **Liùhé Tánglángquán) is the softest and most internal of the major praying-mantis branches — so much so that it is sometimes called "hidden-hard" (暗剛): enter soft, and temper the hardness within the softness. It uses markedly fewer of the mantis hooks that define Seven-Star and Plum-Blossom, and feels closer to an internal art than to the other, harder mantis styles. The "six harmonies" (六合) of the name are the internal–external coordinations (heart–intent, intent–qi, qi–force; hand–foot, elbow–knee, shoulder–hip).

Origin & lineage

The branch is a late-Qing Shandong art with an unusually traceable, separate pedigree:

• 魏德林 (Wei Delin), "Wei San" (魏三) — a wandering knight-errant (江湖大俠) of robber-of-the-rich repute, born with a webbed hand (the five fingers joined), hence his nickname "Duck-Palm Wei San" (鴨子巴掌魏三).

• → 林世春 (Lin Shichun) — received Wei's Luohan short-striking together with his own family art. (Note: he is sometimes confused with the Seven-Star master Lin Jingshan 林景山 — a different man.)

• → Lin's heirs in Huangxian, especially 王吉臣 (Wang Jichen) and 丁子成 (Ding Zicheng) (with 趙同書 in Zhaoyuan).

• → 丁子成 (Ding Zicheng, d. 1956, aged 76) — famed for iron-palm conditioning (鐵沙掌, the "Iron Arm" 鐵胳臂); the great early-20th-century transmitter who carried the art toward the coast and Taiwan.

• → 張詳三 (Zhang Xiangsan, given name 張習易, 1900–1982) — Ding's direct disciple, the 6th-generation holder, who took Six-Harmony Mantis to Taiwan.

The Baji master Liu Yunqiao also studied Six-Harmony Mantis (alongside his Bagua) — one reason his Wutan transmission carries a mantis thread.

Character

• Soft entry, hidden hardness: "以柔入手，柔裡調剛" — soft on contact, the power concealed and released from within; hard and soft completing each other (剛柔並濟).

• Few hooks: where the other branches are built around the mantis hook, Six-Harmony minimises it — a defining contrast.

• Internal coordination (the six harmonies) over external shape; sticking, absorbing, and short, sudden issuing.

The forms — the six core sequences (六趟)

The 張詳三 (Zhang Xiangsan) Taiwan line teaches its empty-hand art as six core sequences (六趟), plus the Short Hammer and a compact Six-Harmony Fist. Each now has a full move-by-move script page here; the lists are the lineage's own 拳譜 (6h-mantis.org):

All six core sequences share the same closing run — 進步跺腳 → 破膝 → 掛耳圈.

The branch's technical heart is the 《六合螳螂拳手法真傳秘訣》— the Zhaiyao "93 hands" (摘要九十三手); no clean open posture-list of it has surfaced (it survives chiefly in Zhang Xiangsan's printed book). The 照面燈 (Lamp-to-the-Face) named in older inventories belongs to the mainland 招遠 (趙春合) line and likewise has no open script.

Video

Praying Mantis on Film — incl. the 蔡永煌 and 張道錦 Six-Harmony lineage series

See also

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

Seven Star Mantis — the harder, hook-centred contrast branch

Liu Yunqiao (劉雲樵) — studied Six-Harmony Mantis alongside Baji

Eight Step Mantis — the other modern-synthesis branch

Sources

[1] 六合螳螂拳, Chinese Wikipedia (zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/六合螳螂拳) — the Wei Delin → Lin Shichun → Ding Zicheng lineage, the forms, and the soft "hidden-hard" character.

[2] 丁子成：跨越兩岸的六合螳螂拳, HK01 (hk01.com) and the 6h-mantis.org lineage site — Ding Zicheng's iron-palm reputation and the Zhang Xiangsan transmission to Taiwan.

[3] 徐紀 (Adam Hsu), 六合螳螂拳法述略 — a practitioner's overview of the branch's method.