I recently got a question from a client about why militia jian tend to be heavier than literati jian. It is often explained by the fact that militia were not as well trained and therefore used more clumsy weapons.
Upon writing my reply I realised it would be an interesting matter for public discussion. Because I like to make my thoughts on this interesting subject publicly discussable, I paste what I have replied below:
-PeterI tend to attribute the difference in weight to other factors rather than a lower level of training by their users. I will attempt to explain why:
Martial arts traditions were widespread and those joining militia often came from martial arts groups that flourished throughout 19th century China due to the decline of the Qing dynasty. The Imperial army was underpaid, unmotivated and their weapons and methods proven to be obsolete in confrontations with the English and Japanese. Famine struck the country after a number of floods and other natural disasters and people that were not affected needed to protect their crops, shops and homes for the ones that came to take food by force. Bandit groups started to form as well as militia to fight them off. It was in this setting that the many rebellions emerged and roamed the country. In this context, it might be wrong to assume that most people were trained last-minute. Many have been born, lived their whole lives, and died in a village under constant threat of bandit raids, plunder of roaming Imperial army troops or rebels. Therefore I like to speculate that the difference in weight was more related to the stength of the user and the intended use of the weapon rather than anything else.
Strength
Hard working peasants that are used to work with tools day in day out will likely have more strength to handle heavier things than literati who, not unlike our officials nowadays, were often known for their round bellies from lack of physical movement and abundance of good food. A heavier jian, although more difficult to wield, has more power behind the cut. It is also hardly the case that beginners in any field are provided with heavier equipment than the more skilled people.
Intended use
These militia peasants were much more likely to end up at the vulnerable front lines in battle, while the literati commanded them from a distance. Battlefield weapons go through more rigorous use than self defense weapons and like any heavy duty tool in our time, are bound to be more massive and heavier to sustain repeated beating. Also, civilian self defense weapons probably needed to be lighter to be carried at all times and in order to make fast changes of direction possible as an individual fighter needed to ward off attackers coming from multiple directions. Militia groups probably stored their weapons in a central depot when not in use, so they did not have to be worn on their sides all the time. They also fought side by side and generally only moved forward or backward in their lines, with not much sudden changes of direction left or right as their allies would stand there. (You see this in civilian v.s. military forms as well where the public Yang form has much more changes in direction than the more military Michuan forms) While no armor was worn at the time, we know that layers of cloth often served as protection from cuts. So when a cut didn't come through all the layers of cotton and silk, they at least wanted enough percussive force from the cut to still do damage or affect the opponent's balance.
