---
title: Mantis Tantui (螳螂彈腿) — Seven Star Mantis
---

**螳螂彈腿 (Tángláng Tántuǐ, "Mantis Spring-Leg")** is the **foundational leg-and-line drill** of [**Seven Star Praying Mantis**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/seven-star-mantis) in the canon of [**Wong Hon Fan (黃漢勛)**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/wong-hon-fan), Luo Guangyu line. *Tantui* ("spring-leg / snapping leg") is a foundation set shared across much of Northern boxing; the Mantis version recasts it in the branch's own vocabulary. It is organised not as one long routine but as **14 short "roads" (路)** — each a there-and-back line repeated over a fixed number of **sections (節)** — that install the kicks, hooking hands, and stepping the empty-hand forms later recombine.

## The form — the fourteen roads (拳譜)

The road sequence as set down in Wong Hon Fan's manual (第一路 … ), each Chinese name with a plain English gloss and its section-count:

| # | 路 (中文) | 節 | English |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | 軋腳 | 四節 | Crushing Kick |
| 2 | 掛腿 | 三節 | Hanging Leg |
| 3 | 掛劈 | 四節 | Hanging Chop |
| 4 | 抅摟採手 | 四節 | Hook-Scoop-Pluck Hands |
| 5 | 黑虎偷心 | 四節 | Black Tiger Steals the Heart |
| 6 | 圈腿 | 二節 | Circling Leg |
| 7 | 偷手 | 四節 | Stealing Hand |
| 8 | 四面番車 | 四節 | Wheeling to the Four Directions |
| 9 | 棍手 | 兩節 | Pole Hands |
| 10 | 左右圈捶 | 四節 | Circling Punches, Left and Right |
| 11 | 金鷄鎖喉 | 四節 | Golden Rooster Locks the Throat |
| 12 | 採手取眼 | 四節 | Plucking Hand Seizes the Eyes |
| 13 | 左右低牽 | 四節 | Low Pull, Left and Right |
| 14 | 磨盤三手 | 四節 | Three Millstone Hands |

<Callout type="info">
  **Script and full text.** The road list above is the drill's skeleton, from Wong Hon Fan's manual. For the **complete move-by-move text** — Wong's explanation (說明) of each section, with the original photographs — see Paul Brennan's open translation, which the wiki links rather than reproduces:
  - **Script:** Paul Brennan, [*Mantis Tantui*](https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2025/04/28/mantis-tantui/)
  - **Video:** none lineage-credible located yet (see the [Mantis Video index](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/mantis-video)).
</Callout>

## See also

<PageRef space="notes" slug="seven-star-mantis" text="Seven Star Mantis (七星螳螂) — the branch this drill belongs to" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="mantis-forms" text="Mantis Forms — the script-and-video map of every form" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="bung-bu-quan" text="Bung Bu (崩步拳) — the foundation form" />

## Sources

**[1]** **Wong Hon Fan (黃漢勛)**, *螳螂彈腿* (Seven Star Praying Mantis, Luo Guangyu line) — the source manual for the road sequence and its numbering.

**[2]** Paul Brennan, [*Mantis Tantui*](https://brennantranslation.wordpress.com/2025/04/28/mantis-tantui/) — the open English translation of Wong's full text (in copyright; linked, not reproduced). The road-name list here is given under fair-use citation with the wiki's own glosses.