2. A Closer Look at Praying Mantis:

   What are Chinese Martial Arts? What is the specific style called “Praying Mantis”? What are their bases?
   What is their point of view? What reasons are there behind these 5,000 years of development?
   What allowed them to climb to the highest peaks of artistry, technique and philosophy?
   From the beginning of our Praying Mantis studies, we need to first establish the right concepts.

   The ceaseless flow of 5,000 years of history has functioned like a precise carving knife that has,
   step-by-step carved out the shape of Chinese martial arts. Through the baptism of hundreds
   and thousands of years of battle experience, the special requirements of various situations and terrains
   have filled out and refined the techniques of Chinese martial arts. At the same time, Chinese martial arts
   have received the influence and spirit of the various Chinese schools of thought, including Buddhism,
   Daoism, Legalism and Confucianism, thereby deepening and enriching their content and spirit.
   The techniques developing and the theoretical side flourishing, Chinese martial arts continued to
   grow and improve, becoming widespread and diverse, up to this day.

   History marches on and repeats itself again and again. People always want to cull experiences from
   history but often aren’t willing to face its true lessons. One of the reasons Chinese martial arts is
   different from other martial arts lies in “forms.” On this point, it has already greatly exceeded
   the martial arts of many other countries. Forms are the crystallization of Chinese martial arts.
   These kinds of dense move collections also display artistic quality. Looking at the martial arts of the world,
   it is safe to say that no other nation has merged art with its martial arts to this extent.
   However, precisely because of this reason, performance arts calling themselves martial arts
   have become mixed into and exist alongside Chinese martial arts. This phenomenon of the
   performance-oriented martial art which uses colorful flourishes to deceive the viewer started to become
   widespread during the Ming Dynasty. However, out of such chaos a ray of hope emerged.
   Our Kung Fu ancestors, by means of correcting these ideas or mixing the elements and techniques
   of various styles, were able to create arts based on both principle and technique,
   such that Chinese martial arts not only didn’t fall backwards, but actually became all the stronger.

   Praying Mantis is an art that belongs to that new era of creation. This is true to the extent that
   we could even consider Praying Mantis to be a kind of “New Wushu.” Nonetheless, though it is
   “New Wushu,” it does now have nearly five-hundred years of history. People often complain,
   “martial arts are not what they used to be in ancient times.” Look at the modern “New Wushu”
   and compare it to the Praying Mantis of five-hundred years ago—it’s enough to make people blush in
   embarrassment. Pre-modern people stressed utility, modern people stress empty floweriness;
   pre-modern people increased the practical spectrum of martial arts technique, modern people seem more
   interested in pretty packaging. The ancients were busy at the task of causing the bud of martial arts to bloom,
   while modern people focus on developing better competition performance forms. Look at how people used to
   practice and then look at this generation of Mantis practitioners. What you need to look at is whether
   they’re searching for the depth hidden within the art or if they’re just trying to speed up their form to look
   as nice as possible. We often jokingly say that when first beginning to practice Mantis, the feet go stomp,
   stomp, the arms slap like thunder; after you’ve practiced a long time, though; you reach the level of
   “beautiful silence.”

   When many people hear the name “Praying Mantis,” their eyes light up, and they say “I’ve heard
   you can really use it to fight!” When may people begin to practice Praying Mantis, they only want
   to learn forms such that they can enjoy creating the effect of “speed like lighting and gale.”
   They puff up their chests, raise their heads proudly and can say to themselves with confidence,
   “this is a martial art I can use to fight!” However, when these people actually try their art against
   an opponent; once they enter the ring, they find that their arms seem heavy, their feet clumsy,
   their brains drawing a blank in the face of fists flying back and forth. In other words, their martial arts
   go right back to the Stone Age. They think, “what good is this Praying Mantis that I’ve worked
   so hard to learn but can’t use?” Resentful and disappointed, they give up the martial and pick up their pens,
   doing their best to inform the world how useless Chinese martial arts are. They point out Chinese Martial arts’
   flower fists and embroidery legs as if this were the only way to ease their wounded spirits.
   Since this phenomena began Chinese martial arts have been subject to such a ceaseless debate for
   the past one-hundred years.

   Before discussing the question of “can Praying Mantis really be used to fight?” let’s first make a clear
   distinction about what precisely we mean by “fight.” Let’s imagine for a moment that you find yourself
   in a completion or a street confrontation. When a person comes throwing an angry fist in your face
   and you do your best to dodge or block the blow, what comes next will be your instinctive reactions.
   What happens next is a very familiar scene. Fists come and fists go, legs fly, kick and stomp.
   Is this “fighting”? Of course this is fighting; ever since there have been human beings there has been
   this kind. But this kind of fighting isn’t a competition of technique, but of who gets hurt the least.
   Although you see this kind of fighting in various kinds of martial art competition, this isn’t the
   Chinese martial art way of fighting. “Can you really use Praying Mantis to fight?” If your way of
   thinking is still caught up in the issue of “forms” and “sparring,” then you’re going to be disappointed.
   Because Chinese martial arts doesn’t have this kind of fighting—not in Shaolin, not in Wudang,
   not in the Northern styles nor the Southern styles; so Praying Mantis will naturally not have it either.
   When fighting in forms or in sparring, you’re fighting to determine win and loss and sometimes just to
   relieve anger and resentment. The result of this kind of attitude towards fighting is often to cause small
   quarrels to develop into full-blown, unavoidable altercations. This kind of “fighing” is really fighting
   away your health and your future; it could even cause you to lose your future—your life.
   Therefore, Praying Mantis isn’t used for this kind of shallow fighting.

   Praying Mantis doesn’t fight for win and loss—it fights for life and death. As regards life,
   we have to approach it with the most serious possible attitude—not only for our own life but for those
   of others, even our enemies. Praying Mantis isn’t concerned with “fighting,” it’s concerned with “combat.”
   Fighting is a surface-level show; combat is a serious approach to the struggle for life.
   Fighting is only about a temporary struggle to win rather than lose. Combat is about achieving victory
   in the long-term analysis. Do you know how to fight? Can you fight? This isn’t what we are concerned
   with in Chinese martial arts. As a part of Chinese martial arts, Praying Mantis naturally won’t include such
   considerations either. Ask yourself: regardless of whether you’ve had any martial arts experience,
   who can’t fight? Who doesn’t feel the urge to fight? After all, this is an instinct buried deep within our
   human nature—in fact, you could even say it’s a latent animal nature. When one day your patience runs
   out—when you’re angry and can’t control your impulses, or even if you’re just looking for an outlet for
   frustration—you’ll be able to fight. When you fight like this you won’t be adequately concerned with the
   consequences. Unfortunately this kind of fighting is the most common type of fighting. Can you say
   this kind of fighting “can or can’t be used”? If you still think that this kind of fighting is the only type
   of fighting then I don’t recommend you study martial arts—and especially not Chinese martial arts.

   “When you encounter resistance, trap it with know-how; when you encounter weakness,
    control it with liveliness.” Ever since its founding, to simply charge ahead and attack blindly
   has never been the philosophy of Praying Mantis. The nature of “combat” is to consider the overall
   terrain and deployment    of techniques. Further, combat must include consideration of degrees.
   The depth of factors to be considered varies with the situation. There is no absolute necessity to fight until
   a death or severe injury. When taking “combat” as your central concept, it requires a give-and-take
   understanding of the total situation. When you have the ability to lead the combat situation, what you get is
   absolute freedom of choice. You will have the choice of whether to deal with the enemy more gently
   or more severely. It’s not the same as just charging ahead blindly to let your fists fly. This is what
   we mean by, “if you only want to fight,” you may as well not even bring your eyes along.
   If you only think of trying to damage the opponent as much as possible as quickly as possible to the point
   of putting yourself in danger or leaving openings, This isn’t fighting, it’s nothing more than playing
   with your life. Combat, however, is a completely different manner. In combat, each step is like setting up
   camp and each battle is fought hard. When faced with a life-or-death struggle, one has to be concerned
   not only with the element of one person against one person. Rather, you must be able to carefully analyze
   the situation—the opponent’s strengths and weakness, such as to avoid the brunt of the attack.
   You use combat strategy to force the opponent into a position where he is sure to lose.
   Of course, amongst the tools needed to carry these out, practical fighting techniques are the most important.
   Adding good strategy to good technique is like adding wings to a tiger. Even if you understand good strategy,
   if you don’t have good fighting technique to make use of it with, your chances of victory will be slim.
   Further, we should keep in mind that there are three levels in combat strategy: the lowest level is to
   “savage the enemy,” the middle level is to “conquer the enemy” and the highest level is to
   “subjugate the enemy” with fear. In Praying Mantis, we do our best to pursue the highest level of strategy,
   which is to frustrate the enemy such that he feels he has no chance of winning, to push him into a position in
   which he will retreat with fear, to avoid hurting or killing unless absolutely necessary. Many people who
   have just begun to learn about Praying Mantis first notice its surface-level rapid, connected hand techniques
   and level the following criticism: “Praying Mantis is fast but ineffective; you hit the enemy but you don’t hit
   hard.” There is some element of truth to this if you look at Praying Mantis only from the perspective of
   “fighting.” After all, if you don’t hit hard, then your hits have no value. However, if you look at it from the
   perspective of combat, why then do all of your strikes need to be “heavy”? In Praying Mantis we aren’t so
   considered with the issue of hitting heavy or light as with “to kill or not to kill”—because to have superior
   combat technique means to gain control over the opponent’s life and death. When a warrior has the ability to
   decide someone else’s fate, he will cherish the value of life more. Generally speaking, most of the opponent’s
   we’ll encounter in real life will not be horrible villains of great combat skill, so what need is there to kill them?
   So long as we have decided not to kill them, why even need we injure them severely?

   We can’t deny that martial arts is a field in which “the big defeat the small and the strong bully the weak.”
   This is a reality that we can’t change. However, what exactly is “big” and what is “strong”?
   The biggest people will always run into someone bigger and the strongest person will eventually find
   a time when he is weak. All types of world martial arts focus on self-defense. Many people believe
   that if they just train themselves to be strong enough then that will provide them lasting insurance against
   being bullied or hurt. People don’t realize that eventually their muscular strength will escape them.
   However, people are often bad at facing reality; think of others and even think of yourself:
   what young person is really able to face the fact that he’ll one day be old? And what strong man will
   believe that one day he won’t be so strong? The inability to face reality is itself a cruel reality.
   After all, people inevitably do get old and their strength leaves them; People rarely try to bully people
   who look strong, but the sad reality is that they will prey on the old and weak. When you are old
   and weak can you still rely on all that muscle you built up? Many people ask, “how exactly are
   Chinese martial arts different from other martial arts?” The answer is that while most other martial arts
   relentless pursue strength, Chinese martial arts do not rely only on muscular strength.

   What is size and what is strength? If we look at things from a purely “fighting” perspective,
   then I can tell you clearly, Chinese martial arts aren’t always the strongest. Within the realm of “fighting,”
   two people compete with their “strength” and their “guts.” The stronger one wins and the braver
   one charges forward, though not always to victory. Though you defeat 10,000 enemies, your own losses
   may be 8,000…but so long as you win, that’s all that matters, isn’t it? It’s a shame that when you get old
   you’ll be riddled with injuries, hurting and aching all over—but that’s something to worry about after
   you’re old, right? Young people often don’t care about this and sometimes can’t even conceive of the
   possibility of admitting defeat. After all, if you have muscle and guts then you can win most of the
   time—on the off chance you lose it was only bad luck and you can think of a good excuse why
   you’ll win next time. “First guts, then strength, then gongfu”—Chinese martial arts focuses on the third
   level—gongfu, which means not only hard work, but developing a keen eye and a clear head.
   “Gongfu” is not only to be found in martial techniques, but requires combat skill and strategy.
   Can Praying Mantis really be used to fight? Of course it can, and quite well at that.
   The reason Praying Mantis can be use to fight is because it doesn’t talk about “hitting,”
   it talks about “leaks.” “Finding leaks” and “filling leaks” are the subject of the “Twelve Treatises on
   Leak-finding Method.” By “leak” we mean simply a leak in defense. Simply speaking, to look for your
   own leaks and fill them up constitutes “defense” while finding the opponent’s leaks and filling them
   for him constitutes “attack.” Because we base everything on this concept of “leaks,” in order to “find” leaks,
   we need a keen eye, and in order to fill leaks we need a clear mind. In Praying Mantis, we aren’t concerned
   with “how to fight” with and “how to use” our moves so much as “how to go and how to come.”
   This is an issue of “following” or “going against” and is never as simple as just charging ahead headless.
   The idea that “entering” equals “attack” and “retreat” equals “defense, though in some ways is the most
   obvious of basics, in other ways lacks the most basic conception of combat tactics. In entering we can
   easily fall into a trap and in retreating we can back ourselves into a dangerous corner.

   Where are the combat techniques of Praying Mantis? Where is its combat strategy to be found?
   In fact, they are hidden in plain sight—right within the forms of the style. The key factor is what your
   attitude in practicing forms is. Do you just begin a new form as soon as you’re done learning one?
   Or do you practice each form until you penetrate its essence? You can’t consider that as soon as you’ve
   finished learning a form that you’ve mastered it. The form must also go through a process of refinement.
   We often describe a form as “lively” or having “life,” but if a form is just an empty string of moves,
   it will be nothing but dead. Even if you practice a so-called “famous form” until it looks formidable and
   the moves are thoroughly familiar, but a dead form is always a dead form and it not only won’t help you,
   it can become a burden that you have to shake. A dead form will never mature.

   “The Praying Mantis ‘Eighteen Elders’ are elders and not just hands.
               You throw one fist as you take one step, so that the practice looks like an old man;”
   “The Praying Mantis ‘Eighteen Elders’ are elders and also hands.
              One hand connects to another to make eighteen hand techniques.”
   “The Praying Mantis ‘Eighteen Elders’ are sticky and not just hands.
              You adhere and stick, hands connecting one after the other.”

   This is the “technique song” for the form “Praying Mantis 18 Elders” (Also known as “Eighteen Hands”).
   This song tells us quite clearly that the form must undergo a metamorphosis. Eighteen Elders sounds similar
   to eighteen hands, which represents a training process. What is the horse stance like when you first begin
   practicing? How do you stamp your foot in the seven star stance? How do you perform the entering
   ring stance? Each move requires a tight coordination of hand, eye, body, method and legs;
   Each move requires a careful harmony of shoulder, elbow, wrist, hips and knees. Paying such close
   attention to the various requirements means you must begin very slowly—so the form can hardly help
   but give the appearance of an old man’s leisurely movement. This is how all forms should begin their
   practice and is hardly limited to the “Eighteen Elders” form specifically. The Eighteen Elders is not just
   a simple form, but represents the method of Mantis form training. One fist following one step is a power
   generation habit to learn. What habit? Of course, coordinating the hands with the feet is a requirement of
   all types of martial arts! The fact that the human body has only two arms and two legs is unchanging.
   You certainly can’t grow seven arms and eight legs to use by means of martial arts practice.
   Human movements follow certain natural habits; the arms have their habits, the body has its habits;
   even the mind has its habits. However, the habits of the average person when called upon in a dangerous
   situation, sometimes are not only unhelpful, but sometimes actually put them in more danger. Imagine for
   a moment that you’re walking and you hear the sound of a car breaking suddenly near behind you.
   Do you look first and then move or do you move first and then look? These two instincts could produce
   radically different results, but which is safer? Which is more likely to put you in danger? When you practice
   a habit it naturally becomes stronger. The habits cultivate by martial arts practice are based on this logic.

   “When throwing out hands or blocking you only fear sluggishness. Dodging, rotating,
    jumping and twisting must be rapid and clever; the dodging can’t be just dodging but must be
    dodging combined with attack. Some strikes are real and some strikes are false.”

   The way you fight will depend on how you practice and the way you practice any form can be like
   the way you practice Eighteen Elders. You can practice any form until you’ve forgotten the individual
   moves and all that is left are the habits of body, foot and method. The hands are continuous and the legs
   naturally coordinate with them; defense and entering occur simultaneously and the transition between
   stances is smooth and natural. There’s a saying “fighting should be like walking; look at people
   as you’d look at blades of grass.” Fighting is just like walking and performing moves is just smoothly
   doing what comes naturally. When you can perform a form like this then it bursts out of its shell to blossom,
   revealing the nascent stage of the Eighteen Elders form. When performing a form you need to be able to fight
   with it, when watching a form you need to know what to look for. But what exactly are we looking for in Mantis?
   What you’re looking for is not how powerful and fierce each individual move looks, but rather for the real knack
   of Praying Mantis. And where exactly do we find this knack? It’s in the transitional phases
   of the moves! We call the way you get from one move to the next the “transitional phases.”
   When a ferry crosses a river, how many people can it carry at one time? When you cross from one move
   to the next, how moves can you carry along for the ride? These moves that are carried along for the ride
   become the key to success in Mantis training. The transitional phases are not something you can just pass
   over without thinking; rather you need to think of how many realistic, powerful moves you can insert between
   them. This is the real way to practice Eighteen Elders and, indeed, all of Praying Mantis.
   When you can carry along an effective move or hand technique for the ride, then you’re also carrying along
   a dense string of effective combat applications. You need to practice this kind of form until its concepts and
   moves are thoroughly ingrained, but not such that each move becomes set in stone. Rather, you must practice
   until you seem to forget the individual moves, leaving only the essential habits that form is designed to imbue.
   It should become a habit like driving a car or hopping and jumping, not a rigid pattern to follow.
   A habit means you do it without thinking, while a pattern can actually obstruct your natural flow.

   When you understand the proper method for practicing forms as well as the method you are supposed
   to take away, then you can say that your forms practice is complete. When you’ve completed a form
   you should forget it; you should throw it away. A form you can’t throw away will become a burden.
   There are over a hundred Praying Mantis forms in existence. If you don’t throw any away, how many
   can you learn? Many people ask me: Praying Mantis has so many forms—how do you remember them all?
   I answer, “there isn’t a single form in my brain.” Then people ask, “but I’ve obviously seen you perform
   many different forms, haven’t I?” My response is “that’s because my body remembers them all.”
   You must not practice a form from the perspective of rote memorization. Forms are something
   you need to play with, something you should enjoy. Enjoy its process, enjoy its development,
   enjoy its metamorphoses and most importantly, enjoy the overall change in body habits that it
   provides you: a total transformation akin to an insect emerging from an old shell—this is Praying Mantis.