ORIGINS OF THE PRAYING MANTIS SYSTEM

The Praying Mantis styles of Kung Fu originally started in the Shaolin Monastery over 350 years ago, between the Ming and Ching dynasties.

Wong Long, who studied at the Shaolin Temple, created the Praying Mantis style after watching a praying mantis and a much larger cicada fight. He was fascinated to see the aggressive speed and strength demonstrated by the apparently over matched mantis. No matter how valiantly the cicada fought, the mantis was able to defend and counter attack eventually winning the battle. Thus the birth of the strong and rapid movements of the praying mantis style of Kung Fu.

It is unclear how the Praying Mantis style was passed on in the early generations. Eventually after several generations of practitioners, one of the students of Li San Jin (lightning hands), taught this style to Ching Yueng, who later became the abbot of the Wah Lum Temple. It was here at the Wah Lum Temple that Grand Master Lee Kwan Shan studied the Praying Mantis system and became a fifth generation member of the style. Prior to studying at the monastery, he had traveled the country as and escort, practicing the Tam Tui system of Kung Fu, his family style of four generations.

After leaving the temple he resumed his work as an escort, conveying goods safely to their destination. After several close encounters with bandits Grand Master Lee Kwan Shan decided to retire because he decided that fighting for one's life working as an escort did not hold appealing odds.

He decided to devote the remainder of his career to teaching and demonstrating Kung Fu. His travels took him to Canton where he took on many disciples. Grand Master P. Chan was made his last disciple.

Grand Master Chan eventually immigrated to the United States and began teaching the Wah Lum system. Under Master P. Chan' s leadership, the Wah Lum systm has become a very highly respected Kung Fu system around the World.

WAH LUM — THE LOST EPISODES
By Mimi Chan

In the early years of the 20th century Chinese merchants still plied the ancient silk-road with camel caravans, and sword-wielding bandits still extracted tribute to allow the caravans to pass unmolested. Throughout history these caravan owners employed bodyguards to insure the safe arrival of their goods and some families trained their offspring to be hard and skilled warriors for generations just to provide this service. Lee Kwan Shan was such a man.

In his last great fight he came out of retirement to guard a caravan against the Black tiger gang, a particularly vicious and unsavory lot. He fought the three leaders alone and killed all three of them to see this last caravan through safely.

This battle was but one in a very long list of fights won and bandits dispatched, but Master Lee was not getting any younger. The list of enemies was getting long even for the formidable talents of Master Lee, so a hiatus from the escort field was determined to be the answer. Master Lee traveled south, out of the areas where his enemies were sure to be looking for him and he ended up taking refuge in a small Buddhist monastery in the town of Jijan. The abbot was a man named Ching Yeung, fourth generation disciple of the praying mantis system from Shaolin.

The Abbot took Lee as a disciple and for the next ten years he undertook the rigorous training imposed upon him to master the difficult system. After completing his training in the mantis system he felt that there was something missing. The system lacked the lightening kicks and flashing footwork of his family style, the Tam Tui system, so he blended the best points of both systems to create one that was a better balance of hand and foot techniques. He developed a footwork that was more adaptable yet maintained the style of motion that makes the mantis system so effective. When he was done he named the system after the temple which gave him shelter from the world for ten years. The temple was called Forest Garden, or in Chinese, Wah Lum.

Master Lee moved to a small village named Sha Cheng where he settled down and devoted the rest of his life to developing his new style and training disciples in its complexities and rigorous methods. Although fairly advanced in years he was to train quite a few students and face quite a few challenges, even into his eighties.

Living in the south of China as a northern master those challenges were sure to come and in sufficient number. In the village of Sha Cheng there were a predominant number of southern schools, and this alone led to a great many conflicts. There was one particular southern master named Yun who had been friendly with Master Lee for many years. But as hostilities between the southern systems and Wah Lum increased this relationship became strained as well. Master Yun was almost 40 years younger than master Lee and a much larger man. There were also two brothers involved. One was a disciple of Master Lee the other of Master Yun.

A feast had been arranged to help end the hostilities, and on the night of the feast Yun tried to get Master Lee drunk; when Lee refused to drink Yun grew angry. Finally Yun became belligerent to the point of grabbing master Lee's arm in challenge. Lee immediately scraped the arm free and struck a quick blow to Yun's back with his fingertips. Yun fell to the floor unable to rise; his arms would not respond and his legs refused to move. He was taken from the banquet hall to be attended by his students. Among the shocked onlookers was a small boy of seven years old and the last, and perhaps most brilliant, disciple to be taken by Master Lee. That young disciple's name was Chan Poi. The boy, who at the time didn't know what the Master had done later discovered from the acupuncturist who treated Master Yun that Master Lee had used the Dim Mak (death touch) to disable his younger rival.

Master Lee had always liked Master Yun and for years they had gotten on very well. It was only during recent times that there was trouble between them, and it was in honor of their years of friendship that he only crippled him rather than conclude the duel with his usual finality. Yun was told to leave town with all his students and to never return. One of Master Lee's students begged him to relent and let his brother, a disciple of Yun's, stay in the village. Master Lee finally gave in and the young brother not only studied with Master Lee but became his senior disciple and inherited the system on Master Lee's demise in 1948. The man was Chan Wan Ching and he headed up the Wah Lum System until his own death in 1975 when the reigns were taken up by the Grandmaster's youngest disciple, Chan Poi. Master Chan, several years prior to the death of his Sihing Chan Wan Ching, traveled to America and settled in the port city of Boston. And it is there, under his leadership that the system has come to America and earned the reputation it enjoys today.

Mimi Chan is a martial artist from Orlando, FL. She was the body-double for Disney's animated film Mulan