Wei De Lin
Praying Mantis Shifu
The information presented in this chart was collected from different sources -see Bibliography-, therefore the romanizations in Pinyin according to the Mandarin pronunciation of the characters sometimes is not available. If you find any mistakes or inaccuracies please contact me.
His name is also romanized as:
Wei San 
.
Shifu Wei De Lin lived between the early and mid 1800's.
He was invited by the prominent family "Lin" from Chuan Lin Cun village in Zhao Yuan of Shandong Province to teach them gong fu.
Shifu Wei De Lin was nicknamed "Duck Palm Wei San" because the little, ring, and middle fingers of his left hand were always stuck together. Wei De Lin's left hand had webbed fingers. A congenital anomaly caused when the membrane between the developing fingers fails to degenerate properly.
Shifu Wei De Lin was a quiet and private man, and said very little about his background and lineage. He only mentioned that he was from a direct lineage under Wang Lang, but never mentioned his teacher's name.
He was an eccentric character. When for some reason he was pleased during a teaching session, he would suddenly go into a lengthy monologue, and would become angry when interrupted. His comings and goings were quite secretive. He would go off without notice on a long journey and disappeared for days, sometimes for years.
Eventually in his old age he returned to the Lin family from the northeastern China, and showed shifu Lin Shi Chun a "cat-ear" spear-head. He told his student shifu Lin Shi Chun about an encounter in the mountains of the northeast with a spear-wielding young man who had sought him out to challenge him. They fought for three days and nights until shifu Wei De Lin finally killed the challenger. During the three days and nights shifu Wei De Lin learned the man's spear techniques, and taught them to shifu Lin Shi Chun. After his return, shifu Wei De Lin realized that he was becoming too old to travel, and settled down with shifu Lin Shi Chun's family to concentrate on his teaching. He died of old age.
Page Updated: 1st June 2006.
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Fernando Blanco Dopazo .