---
title: 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](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/eight-step-mantis) 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)**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/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](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/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](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/zhai-yao-quan).

## The forms

Liang Xuexiang's manual preserved **three root forms** of the Wang-Lang mantis tradition, which remain the branch's technical foundation:

| Form 中文 | English | Script |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 分身八肘 | Splitting-Body Eight Elbows (69, 四段) | ✅ [page](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/taiji-mantis-eight-elbows) |
| 亂接 (亂截) | Random Interception | documented; no clean open posture list verified |
| 秘手 | Secret Hands | documented; transmission largely oral / closed |

Beyond the roots, the branch's crown form is the **摘要 (Zhaiyao, "Picked Essentials")** — a multi-section (多段) distillation whose open posture lists survive for only some sections, chiefly in modern Laiyang editions (王玉山 / 李飛林 line); the **崩補 (Beng Bu)** set is the third of the often-cited core forms.

<Callout type="note">
  **A lineage caution.** Forms named **崩步 / 攔截 / 連環 / 大架式 / 小架式** that circulate with clean open bilingual scripts are from the [**Seven Star**](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/seven-star-mantis) (羅光玉 → 黃漢勛) line — *not* this Laiyang Taiji transmission. They are documented on their own Seven Star pages and should not be read as the Taiji-Mantis versions.
</Callout>

## 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](https://wulin.openmindspace.org/plum-blossom-fists).)

## Video

<PageRef space="notes" slug="mantis-video" text="Praying Mantis on Film — incl. 王國典 1995 (archival), 張炳鬥, and 危鳳池 (Hao family)" />

## See also

<PageRef space="notes" slug="praying-mantis" text="Praying Mantis (螳螂拳) — the parent system &amp; branch tree" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="jiang-hualong" text="Jiang Hualong (姜化龍) — the great transmitter at the root of this branch" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="eight-step-mantis" text="Eight Step Mantis — the sibling branch, also from Jiang Hualong" />

<PageRef space="notes" slug="seven-star-mantis" text="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](https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E6%A2%85%E8%8A%B1%E8%9E%B3%E8%9E%82%E6%8B%B3)) — 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.