In many people' eyes, the people who can play Chinese martial arts are handsome, for they can handle various kinds of martial arts weapons and their action is also wonderful. If you are interested in Chinese martial arts too, you should never ignore the common martial weapons below.

 

Dagger
It is a weapon used by soldiers on the chariot in ancient times evolved from the sickle, and is also one of the weapons carried by the people. With a long shaft, the dagger is a flat-headed weapon with a blade on the lower side. It can be used for sweeping attacks and also for pulling-down killing. The history of such weapon can be traced back to the Yin Dynasty (1400-1100 B.C.) in ancient China.

 

Different forms of fighting used different daggers which are classified into three types of long, short and medium shafts.

 

The halberd, a weapon based on the spear, was developed by combining the merits of the spear and dagger in the Yin and Shang Dynasty (1600-1100 B.C.). It can be used to hook-cut, peck and pierce the opponent making it a more powerful weapon than the dagger and spear. The halberd, made of bronze, was used widely in the Western Zhou Dynasty (1100-771 B.C.) in China.

 

There are many kinds of halberd including the long-shaft single halberd and short-shaft twin halberds. The long-shaft halberd had two symmetrical crescents on the head, and was called the square-headed halberd.

 

The stick was evolved from a special dual-purpose weapon of hooked knife which appeared in the Qin and Han Dynasties. With hooks on both sides, the hooked knife had a short sharp head in the middle and a handle at the back. When you push the hooked knife forward, it can resist the attack from the enemy and if you hook, you can thrust.

While the sticks are made in different shapes, the playing methods are almost the same during fighting and hitting directions change from time to time. For the single stick, the movements include chopping, pounding, rolling and so on. 

 

There are single and twin jointed iron staffs, soft and hard. The nine-joint staff is one of soft weapons in Chinese martial arts. This staff consists of a dart head, a handle, and iron joints connected by rings. The length of the staff is usually below the head of the user.

 

In the book of Weapon History in China it says that "The iron staff has many joints and originated in the Jin Dynasty (265-420)." The soft staff was a powerful hidden weapon, which "can inflict serious wounds and which you can hardly resist in the ancient battlefields."

 

The soft staffs include single staff and double staffs. They can be used together with the saber. In paired practice the nine-section staff is used against the spear.

 

The mace, known as Jian, is one of the short weapons and originated in the Jin and Tang Dynasties. In the Ming and Qing Dynasties, many people used to carry the mace. Made of iron, it looks like the hard whip, but with no joints and no tip at the head. The cross section of the mace is a diamond formation with a grove on it so it was also called the concave mace. The size and length of maces differ in accordance with the height of the users; the length is usually between 65 and 80 cm. There are single and twin maces; the latter are more used. The playing methods include grinding in the air, sweeping below, cutting in the middle, chopping, lifting on the two sides, and pressing. The movements include three in horizontal and four in vertical directions, jumping and leaping, pounding, rolling, poking, cutting, fending and hanging. Mace play requires fierce and quick actions. In paired practice twin maces are used against the spear.