---
title: Luo Guangyu (羅光玉, 1888–1944)
---

**Luo Guangyu** (**羅光玉 / Luó Guāngyù**, 1888–1944) was the **6th-generation Seven Star Praying Mantis** master who taught at the Shanghai Chin Woo (上海精武體育會) and trained **Wong Hon Fan**, through whom the art reached the world. Luo himself inherited the system from **Fan Xudong (范旭東)** along with the **screen-and-frame manuscript transmission** that descends from the legendary 升霄道人 (Shengxiao Daoren). His Shanghai teaching, from the 1910s through the 1930s, made the **Chin Woo network** the primary diffusion channel of Seven Star.

## Life

Born in **Penglai, Shandong** in 1888 — in the same Shandong mantis heartland that produced most of the senior lineage holders. From his late teens he trained Seven Star with **Fan Xudong (范旭東)** — a major lineage holder who himself inherited from **李之箭 (Li Zhijian)** in the descent from 升霄道人. Luo became Fan's principal disciple and the inheritor of the **范旭東 source manuscript** (subsequently passed to Wong Hon Fan and now preserved in the CUHK special collection).

Luo's teaching career was centered at the **Shanghai Chin Woo Athletic Association (上海精武體育會)**, which from its founding in 1910 became the principal urban node for cross-style northern martial-arts dissemination in China. Through Chin Woo, Luo taught Seven Star Praying Mantis to many students — most consequentially the young Hong Kong native **Wong Hon Fan** in the 1930s, who would carry the art onward to Hong Kong and the worldwide diaspora.

Luo died in **1944**, during the Japanese occupation.

## Place in the lineage

**升霄道人 (Shengxiao Daoren, legendary)** → **李之箭 (Li Zhijian)** → **范旭東 (Fan Xudong)** → **羅光玉 (Luo Guangyu, 1888–1944)** → **黃漢勛 (Wong Hon Fan)** → world

## See also

<PageRef space="notes" slug="praying-mantis" text="Praying Mantis (螳螂拳) — the full style overview" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="seven-star-mantis" text="七星螳螂 Seven Star Mantis — branch deep-dive" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="wong-hon-fan" text="Wong Hon Fan — Luo's foremost student, the disseminator" />

## Sources

**[1]** *羅光玉*, Chinese Wikipedia ([zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/羅光玉](https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%BE%85%E5%85%89%E7%8E%89)) — biography.

**[2]** *Wong Hon Fan Praying Mantis Special Collection*, CUHK ([repository.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/en/collection/whf](https://repository.lib.cuhk.edu.hk/en/collection/whf)) — institutional records of the lineage manuscripts Luo preserved and transmitted.