Tang jian vs. Qing jian

Jin Shi is good for quality, functional jian that are a good price and can even be rather ornamental.
Sinowswords has some beautiful pieces that, while no match for Jin Shi in quality, are not bad for the price.


From what I can tell, the differences between most dynasties are primarily the fittings. Tang, like Han, have more compact, often square-ish guards rather than the arrow-shaped cross-pieces. Half of the Han swords I have seen are bronze, others iron, others steel. Telling the difference between a steel Han and a Tang is beyond me. Unless, as ineffableone mentioned, Tang does have a greater tendency toward high decoration (does seem to be the case now that I am looking for it).

Tang swords do, historically, have a greater tendency to have fullers, multiple fullers, partial fullers, combinations of all of the above... I have not seen that on pretty much anything else. They also tend to have the same variety in blade cross-sections as the Han did with iron and bronze, which leads to some rather impressive blades. Those blades also tend to have somewhat greater weight, which explains the greater tendency to fullers.

Song and Ming and Qing swords have the arrow-shaped crosspieces, and Qing seem to almost all be diamond cross-sections. As for whether the crosspiece points toward the tip or toward the grip, I don't know how to differentiate between Song, Qing, and Ming.

I also have Not seen any examples of Yuan jians, though many Yuan dao.


I have been looking for information on, and asking for help with, identifying the different dynasties' jians and this is what I have come up with. Some others claim to know but have provided no more help than Thomas Chen's site...
thomaschen.freewebspace.com/

Good luck and share with me what you find, please. I will share what I find as well.

Unfortunately, I have only seen ancient bronze swords in the museums in Shanghai, never a steel sword. As I said, Shanghai is too cool and modern to have a sword collecting culture. This is not a reflection of the situation in China in general, retail sword shops selling high quality blades can be found in many Chinese cities, but the only one in in Shanghai that I found mention of on the internet closed many years ago. However, if the number of longquan forges and their distributors is anything to go by, there is a huge demand for reproduction swords here. After all, wuxia novel inspired themes probably make up about 50 percent or more of the domestically produced entertainment. There are tons of wuxia nerds and the extreme popularity of Japanese cartoons also makes the market for Japanese swords at least as big as the one for Chinese blades. Although China produces tons of western swords for western consumption, they are never listed on Chinese sword distributor websites except for hideous fantasy pieces. Only serious daoyou (knife friend, the Chinese word for people like us) know anything about western swords at all, whereas the average anime or wuxia nerd probably has basic knowledge about Chinese and Japanese swords.

Longquan forge distributor websites always list their swords as either "taiji and wushu" swords or "soft swords" and "hard swords" or "longquan swords", meaning you can at least easily distinguish whether or not a sword is a wushu sword. But, distinguishing the wallhangers from the usable weapons amongst the "hard swords" probably requires reading between the lines and some communication with the seller. Considering that most of their websites are eye-gouging and many have unbelievably bad customer service (even for China), this is easier said than done.

Song, Ming and Qing jian are rarely distinguished on these sites, and my lack of knowledge on the subject makes it even harder to know which is which. One thing you'll notice quickly while browsing is that basically all of the sites use the same designs for their fittings and even give the same name to certain styles of fittings. I suspect partly this is because they're copying historical examples and partly because they're copying each other. There are many posts on Chinese language sites suggesting that where these blades are actually coming from is extremely murky.

Jin-Shi and Sinosword, by the way, look exactly the same as the Chinese language longquan forge sites except that they're better designed and in English. I don't know whether they are producing their own blades or as shipping blades made by another forge. Sinosword is obviously a name for the western market, their website says they are Jkoo sword company, but I can't find anything about them from a quick search in Chinese. Jin-Shi has their name in Chinese on their website, it means "golden lion", but searching for their company in Chinese, 金狮刀剑, doesn't turn up anything, so if they are producing their own swords, they must also have a different name in China. The big names in Long quan swords that are always first mentioned seem to be Zhou family swords, Zhang family swords, the official Longquan sword company, Shi swords, Zheng wu and a few others. I don't know if Jin-Shi and Sinosword are forges that have a different name in Chinese or are in fact trading companies. If someone who does know could post about it, I would be quite curious. Anyway, the fact that they are well regarded here is one of the reasons I decided it might be safe to buy a sword on the internet in China.

So that is my big wall of text about buying swords online in China. As for Tang dynasty jian, even though I don't know about their real history, after looking at hundreds of reproductions on various websites (I looked at every single Tang jian with a money-back guarantee on Taobao as well as many, many swords on several dozen independent sites) I feel I can speak knowledgeably about modern reproductions being sold online. As far as their blade geometry, the length and width of the blades is the same as Qing jian. There seem to be more Tang jian reproductions that have a very wide double fuller. I have seen that on some Qing jian reproductions, but very few. Also, quite a number of the Tang jian online are the backswords I've mentioned in my previous post. These are always referred to as jian and not dao because of the false edge. I even saw one listing say "look closely, this is a jian, not a dao!" So the blade geometry of reproduction Qing jian and Tang jian seems to be the same in the majority of cases, although there are some geometries unique to the Tang swords.

Finally, I'll mention that I've bought a sword for myself that should arrive in a few days. It's a Tang jian (actually I want the Qing jian blade geometry, I just like the Tang fittings more) with simple style ebony and bronze fittings, pattern folded steel and a nice looking temper line on the edge. It's monosteel, not sanmei, which I would prefer, but I'm buying it because it's the closest thing to what I want in my price range that also comes with pay on delivery, a money back guarantee and lifetime repair service.