Spring & Autumn Halberd (春秋大刀) — the Guandao capstone form

The Spring & Autumn Halberd (春秋大刀, Chūnqiū Dàdāo) is the great-weapon capstone of the Seven Star Praying Mantis curriculum — the guandao (大刀), the heavy crescent-bladed pole-saber of Guan Yu. Recorded by Wong Hon Fan (Hong Kong, 1958), whose preface frames it as "螳螂派所傳之春秋大刀" — the Spring-and-Autumn halberd as transmitted within the Mantis school — it runs to 97 postures, the longest of the mantis weapon forms.

Character

The name honours Guan Yu (關羽), the deified Three-Kingdoms general said to have read the Spring and Autumn Annals by lamplight, whose legendary guandao gives the whole class of weapon its name. A guandao is heavy and long; the form is a test of root, waist power, and whole-body strength, swung in great chopping and reaping arcs rather than the quick changes of the lighter weapons. Its martial-romance imagery is explicit — postures like "Slicing Through a Yellow-Turban Soldier" place the practitioner inside the world of the war epics.

Representative postures

A selection from the 97 (the full sequence is in Wong Hon Fan's manual, translated in full by Brennan — linked below):

The posture 白猿出洞 ("White Ape Leaves the Cave") shares its name and image with the empty-hand mantis form of the same title — one of the recurring animal motifs that thread through the whole system.

See also

White Ape Leaves the Cave (白猿出洞) — the empty-hand form that shares this posture's name

Mantis Liuhe Staff (螳螂六合棍) — the long-staff foundation for pole weapons

Seven Star Mantis (七星螳螂拳) — the parent branch

Mantis Canon — the full index of Wong Hon Fan forms in open English

Praying Mantis (螳螂拳) — the parent system

Sources

[1] 黃漢勛 (Wong Hon Fan), 春秋大刀 (Hong Kong, 1958), Mantis-school transmission — full open English translation by Paul Brennan: Spring & Autumn Halberd. Brennan's translation is in copyright; linked, not reproduced.

[2] Praying Mantis Master Wong Hon Fan Collection, Chinese University of Hong Kong Library (repository.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/en/collection/whf).