Great River Taoist Center Forums

That's an interesting theory... However, the quillons on this sword indeed look strong enough for this job but might not be long enough to enable a good grip on the duifang's sword. If designed for this purpose, I would expect them to make them a bit bigger, especially longer. Perhaps they didn't be...

The idea of the accelerated evolution of the jian system in Yang's time would certainly be the best way to test and perfect the system that I can think of. The choice of jian in the first place was then probably initiated by the officials that used to carry it. Is there anything known about their sc...

Thanks for your very interesting post, Josh. You have a good point there. I try to illustrate a difference between forward and backward swept guard quillons in these two pictures: http://www.mandarinmansion.com/reference/guard1.JPG http://www.mandarinmansion.com/reference/guard2.JPG Another differen...

Though oficially absent from the battlefield since it got replaced by dao as the standard army weapon in I believe the Ming, it has made at least one comeback in the late Qing where officials trained militia's with them to protect the people from rebels. Ever since I was told about this comeback by ...

I have recently purchased this jian from a friend in China, where I temporarily live. As it is pretty much undecorated, I suspect it to be a late Qing militia type jian and not the kind of weapon carried by the literati as a status symbol. One prominent and some lesser nicks in the upper section of ...