Chinese Arms Through the Dynasties: From the Dagger-Axe to the Two-Handed Saber

The ge was a dagger-shaped blade set at a right angle to a wooden shaft, in use from the Longshan culture until the Han dynasty. It was swung rather than thrust because it had no point, so it needed open ground, and the ji gradually replaced it.

The ji joined a spear point to the dagger-axe blade and stayed in military use for roughly three thousand years from the Zhou dynasty. Infantry, cavalry and chariot forces carried it, and its hooking side blades suited unhorsing mounted opponents.

The single-edged dao became militarily significant under the Han, when its durability as a chopping weapon made it popular with cavalry. It replaced the double-edged jian as the standard battlefield sword partly because a soldier could become competent with it in about a week rather than a year.

The qiang, the leaf-bladed spear, was one of the most common weapons on the pre-modern Chinese battlefield. Ming military writers sorted shorter spears for close combat from longer ones, from roughly eight to twenty feet, for reach against infantry and cavalry.

The podao set a broadsword-shaped single-edged blade on a long haft. It is thought to have been used by Song dynasty infantry to cut the legs from under cavalry horses, and today it survives mainly as a training form in Chinese martial arts.

The chui is a large solid metal sphere on a medium-long handle, generally wielded in pairs, and the Song military compendium Wujing Zongyao of 1044 records it. The strength it demands kept it from being widely practiced.

The bian is a rigid iron or steel rod of about ninety centimeters, weighing seven to eight kilograms, with bamboo-like ridges along its length. Documented in the Wujing Zongyao and in Ming and Qing sources, it gave a rider better reach and balance than top-heavy maces.

The jian, or tie tian, is a quad-edged straight mace or club with sharp corners meant to damage an opponent's bladed weapon on impact. Surviving examples, including a truncheon attributed to the Song chancellor Li Gang, confirm its use in medieval China.

The changdao is a two-handed single-edged sword that first appeared under the Tang for elite front-line infantry and resurfaced in the Ming at around 1.95 meters. After studying Japanese swordsmanship around 1560, Qi Jiguang promoted it, and it equipped as much as forty percent of the commando forces he raised.