Info on Chinese swords

I am new to this forum. However I am not new to swords. I am so happy to see someone who is lacking in knowledge of chinese swords, yet is willing to admit it. So many people try to appear to have knowledge, yet actually are totally uninformed. As soon as I get the hang of this forum, I will be starting a thread on true knowledge of the Gim/ Jian.

This is a pretty good website on chinese swords:

thomaschen.freewebspace.com/

Call Scott Rodell at Seven Stars Trading and/or visit his forum at Great River Taoist Center.

Another option is to search the archived material on Chinese Swords on Sword forum where Scott Rodell used to post a LOT of info.

That was my understanding also, but given the tone of the post I was replying to I had to comment.

Actually my own reference to Jian as the Aristocrat or Scholar's sword was in comparison to the dao not to imply that either blade was not fit for combat. Modern Wushu weapons are exactly that MODERN Wushu weapons, and not fit to grace a classical battlefield.

Sirtre, you are correct every country has their own martial art, therefore when someone claims to know the absolute "truth" about martial practice, it is normally a statement best taken with a small Siberian salt mine. Hence why I took your original statement with said grain of salt.

Even in the realm of Chinese Martial Practice there is a great range of variation from the Various types of external Gong Fu, to the internal arts of Taijiquan, Hsing-I, and Bagua. Even within Taiji there is a remarkable difference between the schools, some of which do eschew the Wushu blades in favor of more traditional blades.

On another note, I knew Gim was the Cantonese term for a straight sword, but wasn't Jian derived from the Mandarian? I thought I remembered hearing that somewhere but am not certain.

With all due respect, but your statements sound very over-confident, much too much generalized, be it concerning Chinese swords or culture and language.
You are not the 1st person ever to study stuff like this, and to make Cantonese so important is just not right.
Having been in Hongkong lately (and hr from my home in Taiwan), they complain that Cantonese and English go down the drain, as Mandarin is omni-present.
And, of course, lots of traditional schools work with real sharp weapons, do you only know Wushu clubs? taiwandeutscher

China is way larger than just Taiwan, or Hong Kong alone. Ancient China was a very large empire. Should we be angry for not mentioning the Mongolians, Singapore, etc. No one here is an expert of an exhaustive nature. I have been in Singapore. My teacher has lived in Hong Kong and the text that I am fixing to quote is from a book that we use for curriculum in our martial arts class. As for studying "wushu", no. Todays wushu is a government controlled performance art.

TAIJIQUAN; TWO-FOLD PURPOSE

Tai Chi Chuan has two main purposes... the original motivation behind tai chi is two-fold; self-defense, and meditaton.

To learn tai chi you must practice it in a slow-moton, relaxed mediation. Trough doing your form this way you will calm your mind and circulate oxygen throughout your body, better than you ever have. When you do this you will find yourself more effective in every aspect of your life. When you breathe and concentrate without out a cluttered mind, you will be able to think clear and perform any task at a peak level.

The root of tai chi a martial art. Martial root and the relationship with qigong have been more or less lost in today’s society. This is due the suppression of the martial aspect during the communist revolution. The suppression began with the Boxer Rebellion in the beginning of the 1900's. Chinese traditionalist used martial skills and attacked the foreigners located in China. They did not want them, nor their teachings, influencing their way of life. During the Communist Revolution, the government didn’t want these skills used against them. Subsequently, the old masters were done away with. China wanted a martial arts skill to be in the olympics and founded wushu as the national art. Wushu became a performance art, not a martial art, losing the essence of the wholeness.

The word for “martial” in chinese is wu. It is constructed of two chinese words... zhi, meaning to stop, cease, or end... and the word ge, which is for general weapons. From this you can see that it is to stop the use of weapons. The common word today for martial arts is wuyi. In actual combat, individual figting techniques are called “wushu” which means martial technique. The implication of these words together is that martial arts are to stop a fight, not start one.... defense, rather than offense. Westerners today have a concept that the name of chinese martial arts is kung fu. Kung is energy, and fu is time. Kung fu implies the time and energy one spends in learning a skill.this tem was popularized in the 1960's movies. “Your kung fu is good” was a common phrase, but meant that “your skill is good”. Westerners adopted the term kung fu to mean chinese martial arts.

The correlation between self defense skills and moving meditation for health, are interlocking. You cannot have one without the other. If you don’t have health, you cannot defend yourself. If you don’t defend yourself, you obviously will not be healthy all broken up. As you will be learning from here on out, moving meditation techniques used to bring health, also have a martial application. You will be learning about yin, and yang. This concerns opposites; the empty, and the full; the positive, and the negative, the dark, and the light; the hard, and the soft. You will find this teaching concerning martial arts is contrary to everything that you have been taught. Stances, breathing, and movements will all be absorbed in this notion. As complicated as it will appear at first, you will find it most simple.

p.s. maybe i should have mentioned rgarding language of cantonese being popularized here. I currently live in USA. I forget sometimes that this is international forum, and things are not the same everywhere. They are teaching cantonese at a university near my home and i will be enrolling next year, as my language skills are distinctly lacking in that area. We have quite a few Chinese living around her. some do not speak english well, and being in EMS, it would be most valuable to learn.

With respect Sirtre, your comments in this thread are very arrogant, the comment;



Your "true" knowledge is subjective and probably only another aspect of the accumulated knowledge. When we start learning martial arts, especially something like taiji or kung fu (yin and yang, two sides of the same coin, internal and external is that we cultivate respect and humility.

Having said that, before there was kung fu or wushu there was martial arts, there are records 7,000 years old . Now you make the comment that wushu is a sport designed by the government. Sorry, again I am going to disagree. There is archaeological evidence that shows that during times of peace these men who practiced these arts did martial dances based on the movements of the arts.

During the metal age during the Hsia and Shang dynasties chinese martial arts was known as quanyong and shoupo. These evolved into philosophies such as bagua, yin yang and wu zing.

Swordsmanship was taken up by many scholars and were often performed as dances.

After this kung fu became institutionalised, it was only after the inception of Shaolin Kung Fu that names were used to distinguish different styles and schools. The Ming period saw even more schools of Kung Fu popping up. Kung Fu as we know it started in Shaolin Kung Fu. The taiji styles founded by the Song Emperor also came from Shaolin Kung Fu. These styles were originally only practiced in the military and then diffused to the public.

Kung fu and taiji come from these schools and they are both apart of each other, that when used together strengthen each other.

I will reflect Boyle's comments that you might want to do more research.

Your "true" knowledge is subjective and probably only another aspect of the accumulated knowledge. When we start learning martial arts, especially something like taiji or kung fu (yin and yang, two sides of the same coin, internal and external is that we cultivate respect and humility.

Having said that, before there was kung fu or wushu there was martial arts, there are records 7,000 years old . Now you make the comment that wushu is a sport designed by the government. Sorry, again I am going to disagree. There is archaeological evidence that shows that during times of peace these men who practiced these arts did martial dances based on the movements of the arts.

During the metal age during the Hsia and Shang dynasties chinese martial arts was known as quanyong and shoupo. These evolved into philosophies such as bagua, yin yang and wu zing.

Swordsmanship was taken up by many scholars and were often performed as dances.

After this kung fu became institutionalised, it was only after the inception of Shaolin Kung Fu that names were used to distinguish different styles and schools. The Ming period saw even more schools of Kung Fu popping up. Kung Fu as we know it started in Shaolin Kung Fu. The taiji styles founded by the Song Emperor also came from Shaolin Kung Fu. These styles were originally only practiced in the military and then diffused to the public.

Kung fu and taiji come from these schools and they are both apart of each other, that when used together strengthen each other.

I will reflect Boyle's comments that you might want to do more research. bloodwraith

IN TRUE LEARNING, ONE MUST FIRST LEARN THAT HE WILL NEVER CEASE LEARNING. however, the statement regarding the knowledge of jian is directed at the unlearned statements i have been reading that draw the conclusion that a jian is of no practical use for defense. the assumption that only a katana, or the such is the ultimate combat weapon. all sword style and martial arts styles have their beauty of performance and deadliness of use. and even in the end the one who has mastered the best of skills can be defeated by blind luck. we practice, not to fight, but to find peace. regarding your statement that i made a mistake about wushu... i quoted a knowledgeable master in taiwan. the quote was directed toward "mpdern versions of wushu." note the quote whereas stated the term wush means martial skills. i am not here to try to show that i know so much, i just want to remind some individuals that assume that they do, that we all will never stop learning.

concerning swords, you are right about the dance like moves... the are terrific for peaceful meditation. i enjoy it very much, to watch and am continuing in my learning to perform...

the statement that you are all looking at and quoting from me was directed toward an individual who scoffed to me that i must only study performance style wushu. before you take something personal, read the quotes. i dont lnow yet how to quote block as you do, so i copy and paste.