Wu Mei Quan
Wu Mei Quan,
Xiao Bagua Quan & Luo Jia Qiang
Wu Mei Boxing style,
Small Eight Diagrams Boxing form & Luo Family Spear
The older name of this system is Wu Mei Hua Zhuang Ba Fa Quan “Five Plum Blossom Posts Eight Methods Boxing”
This style comes from Shanghang county which is located in Longyuan prefecture in Fujian province, right along the border with Guangdong province. It is only practiced within a few mountain villages.
The original name of this system is Wu Mei Zhuang Ba Fa Quan “Five Plum Poles Eight Methods Boxing”
Today the practitioners claim lineage from nun Wu Mei (Ng Mui in Cantonese) of Southern Shaolin mythology.
The standard story used today is that it was brought to the area by a nun from Eastern Guangdong who was a martial descendant of the nun Wu Mei. The system she practiced was taught by Wu Mei to the nuns of a monastery in eastern Guangdong and was only allowed to be practiced by women, and before she taught the local women the art had never been passed outside the women of the monastic community.
After that it became a special martial art practiced by the women of the community.
However lineage listings as well as evidence collected previously from older practitioners shows that this was not the case and that this system was practiced by men and women alike.
It’s possible that this story was an alternate tradition, or maybe it was simply created in last few decades to help popularize the system.
The oral tradition I am about to recount was passed on by older practitioners during the 1980’s national martial arts survey.
According to the oral mythology of this system, during the late 1700’s-early 1800’s in Shanghang county Lufeng* township’s Fu Yang village there was a young man named Qiu Zhengyuan. He began to travel looking for work, and at some point he met up with and opera group from Anhui province.
He Followed them to Hangzhou working as a performer for the troop while studying martial arts with the master of the opera. After a time he married one of the opera performers named Wang Xiuying.
From Hangzhou they traveled north where at some point he and his wife broke off from the opera troop to travel to Henan province to learn the Shaolin martial arts.
While there they met and began to study under a master who had been a student of the nun Wu Mei. They settled there and studied the arts of Wu Mei for ten years.
Finally becoming homesick Qiu Zhengyuan asked his master if he and his wife could travel back to Fujian to visit his hometown. His master said he could return home for a time only if he would grant him one final request. He was to go into the mountains and find him a stalk of strong bamboo to use as a cane. He had to test each stalk he found growing by pinching it between his fingers as hard as he could.
After a long period of wandering in the mountains he finally gave up. He returned to his master and told him that no matter where he looked every stalk he tried snapped between his fingers. His master told him that he achieved true skill in the martial arts and was free to return to his hometown to live out his life and to pass on the system to those who he found fit.
After returning home Qiu Zhengyuan and his wife Wang Xiuying began to teach the local villagers the arts of Wu Mei. Not only was he highly skilled, but his wife was too. In recognition of this the local people of Shanghang county began to refer to her as Wu Mei.
It should be noted however that early records of this system uses the original name of Wu Mei Hua Zhuang Ba Fa Quan “Five Plum Blossom Poles Eight Methods Boxing” and does not contain mentions of the character Wu Mei. It is likely that the traditions relating to the character Wu Mei were added during the mid to late Republican era.
The character Wu Mei herself is almost certainly fictional. She first appears as a villain in a martial arts fantasy novel from the 1890’s. Later she is featured in a Republican era novel as a heroine and becomes a popular character in period works of fiction. It is during this period that she is adopted as the founder of many martial arts.
*Lufeng township in Shanghang county is inhabited by the She people. They are an ancient southern Chinese group. Remnants of this once large ethnic group can be found in small pockets of widely scattered isolated mountain villages in Fujian, Zhejiang, Guangdong, and Jiangxi provinces. In certain areas such as southern Fujian and Guangdong many of the local Hakka people have She ancestry. They were mutually outcast by the majority of people living in those areas and pushed far into the rural areas. because of this there was a lot of association between the Hakka and She peoples. With their small numbers eventually many of the She were absorbed into the Hakka communities.