Northern Praying Mantis is an external northern Chinese boxing style known for its Qinna joint-locking and distinctive Tángláng Gōu ( - "praying mantis hook") hand formation. There are many legends surrounding the creation of Northern Praying Mantis boxing. One attributes the creation of Mantis fist to the Song Dynasty when Abbot "Fu Ju" (), a legendary persona of the historical Abbot "Fu Yu" () (1203–1275), invited "Wang Lang" (), the style’s founder, and seventeen other masters to come and improve the martial arts of Shaolin. The Abbot recorded all of the techniques in a manual called the "Mishou" ( – “Secret Hands”) and later passed it onto the Taoist priest "Shen Xiao". This manual supposedly disappeared until the Qianlong reign era when it was published under the name "Luohan Xing Gong Duan Da Tuo Pu" ( - Arhat exercising merit short strike illustrated manuscripts). Some sources place the folk manuscript's publication on the “sixteenth day of the third month of the spring of 1794”.