THE JIAN
Let us now consider what was considered the most subtle of Chinese martial arts weapons, the Jian, or double-edged sword. The character for sword sounds the same and is similar except for the radical for the character Jian, meaning to examine (with a view to avoiding possible danger). The spirit of the Jian is that of the dragon, being enigmatic and versatile, able to coil and uncoil, soar and plunge. It is important that we become one with the sword and that is then the dragon, not the sword alone.
In Chinese history there were three types of swordsmen. Firstly, there are the Sword Immortals, "Jian Xian", such as Lu Tong-pin , of Eight Immortals fame; Li Bai, the famous Tang dynasty poet and drinker; Xu Jing-ming and others whose swordsmanship was used for supernatural purposes such as exorcism. Then there are the Sword Knights or Paladin, "Jian Xia", men such as Jing Ke, who almost succeeded in his fatal attempt to assassinate the cruel and tyrannical Qin Shi Huang Di, but died from the seven thrusts he received from that bloody Emperor (3rd century B.C.); Nie Zheng and others who, were thought to exhibit the quality known, still considered important today in Chinese martial arts of "Yi Qi", which is a combination of righteousness and loyalty and whose swordsmanship was used to avenge wrongs; Li Bai also belongs here. He once wrote, "at 15 I loved the sword." and during his wanderings he behaved as a paladin and killed men with his sword. Finally there are the Sword Guests or "Jian Ke", such as Hong Quan, Nie Yin Liang and Gong Sun Da Liang (the latter two are female), whose sword practice was for fun.
Of course there are fabulous stories about the Sword Immortals' abilities, while the paladin used their swords in private quarrels, like the gunslingers, good and bad, in what was the Wild West, and the Sword Guests tended to use the sword in play. There were also, as with the other weapons and as we had in Europe, training manuals on the sword during the Ming dynasty, such as the "Chao Xian Double-handed Sword".
In ancient times there were many famous swordsmiths, such as Gan Jiang from the kingdom of Wu (c. 300 BC), whose steel swords were considered to be supernatural, because of their superiority in sharpness and flexibility when compared to the bronze weapons used by the military. Obviously such superior weapons were more expensive and therefore much rarer. Well-known makes of sword include Dragon Well (originally from Henan Province, but now made all over China) and Seven Stars swords. You can now buy Shaolin swords at the Northern Shaolin Temple, at vastly inflated prices, which are no better than those sold much more cheaply by the local townspeople.
The god of the Jian was Fei Yang, but I have been unable to find out much about this gentleman. There were male and female swords, as there were Dao, and often supernatural qualities were ascribed to it; thus some swords were thought to be able to transform themselves into dragons and there were cases of human sacrifice to honour certain prized swords. The length varied considerably from swords that could be hidden up the sleeve, to the relatively short bronze swords of the Zhou dynasty (c.1100-221 B.C.) to swords which, like the European long swords, could be as much as seven feet in length.
In Buddhism, the sword is the symbol of wisdom and penetrating insight and when wielded by a god is cuts away all doubts and perplexities to clear the way for knowledge of the truth. The Taoists viewed the sword as the symbol of victory over evil and it was wielded by deities, such as Zhong Kui, who uses it to slay ghosts, and Lu Tung-pin, who used it on his travels to subdue demonic forces.
The Tai Chi sword form contains the technique "God of Literature Raising the Wine Vessel" and indeed many swords are decorated with the Seven Star motif emblematic of Ursa Major (The Great Bear) also known as The Plough, and the abode of said God. He is often depicted as standing on a fish, as the carp in the Yellow River was said to swim upstream. Carps, which passed through the Dragon Gate (Long Men), were said to transform into dragons. Dragon Gate is the name of one of the main schools of Taoism and there are references to both fish and dragons in the sword and sabre forms that I teach.
There are dozens of different sword forms in Chinese martial arts; my Chinese martial arts encyclopaedia lists five forms from Wudang Mountain alone.
In Tai Chi Chuan there are many different sword forms. In the Wu style there is a double sword form, though I understand this is a modern (i.e. in the last fifty years) invention, while the Hao style has reputedly a form using a short sword. The sword form that I practice is very similar to the one shown in Wu Tu-nan's book on Tai Chi sword. Wu states that another name for this form is Heaven and Earth Sword (Qian Kun Jian - this can also be translated as Male & Female Sword). In the Yi Jing (Book of Changes), Qian is the hexagram for Heaven and therefore represents the supreme male principle or Yang, while Kun is the hexagram for Earth and therefore represents the supreme female principle or Yin. Indeed this is the essence of the Tai Chi sword form, combining the slow and the fast, the hard and the soft, expanding and contracting, soaring and plunging.
Wu's book often gives the sword applications as being against a spear rather than, as is more common, against another sword. In fact many of the techniques can be adapted equally well for either situation.
Let us consider now the different parts that make up the sword. Firstly and perhaps most importantly is the Jian's double-edged blade. It is both wider, thicker and therefore less sharp at the guard and it tapers to the point and often also to either edge, also the length and thickness are in proportion to one another. This means that the upper part of the blade is mainly used defensively to impact with the opponent's weapon, while the lower part is used to slice and stab the opponent.
The handle and scabbard could be plain and made of the same material as the sword, but often they were made of wood and covered with decorations such as snakeskin and precious and semi-precious stones such as jade. There were also famous Jian, which could take more than a hundred days to make There is a phrase in the Tai Chi Classic, "An Exposition of the use of the 13 Tactics", "Moving the Jin (elastic educated force used in Tai Chi Chuan) like 100 times refined steel". In the same way such swords were refined to remove impurities and thus make them more reliable.
Most Chinese martial arts (as opposed to purely military) swords have a tassel attached to the butt. There is some debate about what this is used for; Some people even practice the sword in such a way as to keep the tassel swinging freely. This may be interesting and fun, but it is fundamentally ridiculous; to use a famous analogy, we should be concentrating on the moon not the finger that points to it I believe the tassel was simply to wipe off sweat or blood from the hands or to wrap round the hand as a safety measure so you wouldn't lose the weapon when you impacted with something or someone.
It is difficult to write an article about even Chinese swordsmanship without mentioning Miyamoto Musashi (1584-1645), the famous Japanese swordsman. Japan like China was and is a Confucian and ordered society there is a certain way to do things. For example, in traditional Chinese and Japanese society, the concept of left-handedness does not exist. Chopsticks, writing brushes and swords are all controlled by the right hand. It is a matter of fitting in. Someone using chopsticks with his left hand would make the right -handed neighbour on his left feel uncomfortable. The strokes that make up Chinese characters are designed to be written in a certain order by a right-handed person and while drilling a class or a military unit it is highly divisive and troublesome to have someone using the "wrong" hand.
In the sword form that I practice, the sword is passed from left hand to right and back again 6 times; additionally there are some double-handed techniques. It was only recently, when reading a translation of Hans Talhoffer's swordfighting and close quarter combat manual of 1467 (see Medieval Combat, ISBN 1-85367-418-4) that I encountered such tactics in another sword tradition. This book clearly shows that European and Chinese martial arts were contemporaneously developing along similar lines more than 500 years ago. Other tactics include holding the long sword blade with the left hand thus turning it into almost a spear (often a bit of leather which could slide up and down was attached to the blade for this purpose) and, once you have closed with an armed opponent, dropping your own weapon to strike, stab with a dagger or grapple with him.
Yet even in all this order which pervaded Chinese and Japanese society, certain maverick, free spirits made their own order. Musashi was of this breed. He killed his first samurai at the age of 13 by throwing him to the ground and beating him on the head with a stick till he died. Later he was to defeat samurai with wooden swords, an oar and even with a bow. The use of wooden weapons is not strange, as good wood is better than bad metal. There was at least one incident where Musashi used a wooden sword to break his opponent's metal sword in two and I have witnessed a solid metal Chinese broadsword snap in two with the impact form a staff on its sharp edge.