Are there specific styles of Chinese sword arts? Most of what I've seen are books on TaiChi sword, or part of existing systems.
Spear and Staff are considered easiest Chines weapons to use (I think 100 days to learn). The dao, or sometimes called the Chinese broadsword, is more difficult (Supposedly 1000 days to learn). The jian is the most difficult of the Chinese weapons to learn (10,000 days).
By "10,000 days", they just mean a VERY long time - probably a lifetime. In Chinese terminology (of the past), the phrase "ten thousand" wasn't necessarily meant to be taken literally.
10,000 is a popular number in Chinese for a lot (Like Americans would use million or billion), there is a special Chinese character for it. I believe they call the Great Wall the 10,000 mile wall while it is obviously not that long (Even using Chinese miles). Yes, it does mean a long time and not specifically that many days or years.
I think the theory behind saying it is that no one ever truly masters the straight sword.
Hi Jay,
I am not aware of anyone in LA who teaches the miao dao—but I am not really very familiar with my old home state anymore, having lived here in Taiwan for the past 14 years. The weapon is actually kind of rare in terms of finding training routines for it. What happens sometimes is teachers will just put a training routine together from stuff they see in Japanese sword books or modify a big knife or saber form and say it is a miao dao form.
In China, Prof. Ma Ming De ([FONT=新]馬明達[/FONT]) has done quite a bit of research on that weapon and published (in Chinese) two very good articles on it. His work on that weapon came out of his research on General Qi’s ([FONT=新]戚繼光[/FONT]) (1528-1587) book which has a section on that weapon.
A personal favorite of mine is the big knife. I do a Xin-I ([FONT=新]心意[/FONT] Mind Intent Boxing) big knife set and really enjoy it. The big knife has a special place in my heart because it was the last traditional Chinese martial arts weapon to be used on a regular basis in battle.
Take care,
Brian
interesting, i've only seen the giant bagua broadsword in demos, and its been used as a single handed weapon, from what i've heard mainly as a training tool and jokingly as compensation for the founder's err, umm, eunich-ism!Is the "big knife" you are talking about the same as the double handed broadsword? I've seen my teacher performing a ba gua form using this weapon which looks great!
Btw, anyone else here practice with deer hook knives? Might be a long bow to consider them "swords" i guess, but what the hey...
Jason Tsou teaches in Los Angeles. He has a good amount of material including Miao Dao. I prefer his Jian myself. His group is mixing it up fairly regularly in the park by Highlands School @ 400 Casuda Canyon Dr.Hello,
The first drawing with the Ming Dynasty sword is called a Miao Dao. There are some beautiful forms shown on YouTube of this sword. I wonder if anyone teaches this in Los Angeles.
Jay
interesting, i've only seen the giant bagua broadsword in demos, and its been used as a single handed weapon, from what i've heard mainly as a training tool and jokingly as compensation for the founder's err, umm, eunich-ism!
i've recently begun working a bit with the deer horn knives, and just trying to keep from gutting myself~ it's actually coming along, and the beauty of these weapons is that your empty handed bagua methods do not change to conform to the weapon, the weapon is supposed to fit within the style.
though not a traditional weapon of the style, i've been fortunate to learn the bagua straight sword, which is very interesting when you consider a straight weapon in a style where everything is a circle~