Buying a taiji sword, pt. 2

The first post on this subject is here.

After a lot of shopping around I finally bought the Adam Hsu jian. (The blade distortion above is due to me resizing the pic. Click on the pic to see the original.) It was a big decision for me and I looked just about everywhere in Taipei. Getting a quality sword for a decent price here is difficult, as you know if you have read the first entry I wrote on this topic.

I finally settled on this jian for several reasons. Number one, the construction looked really solid. It obviously wasn’t just thrown together quickly. There is no give between any of the parts, everything fits together solidly. That’s a major consideration if you want something to practice with instead of just look at.

Second, the price was right for the quality. I did find a nice hand-made sword from China that is either this sword or a similar one.

However, this sword above was a bit more expensive. Just a little over US$1000. I was a little unsure about buying it, but a quick mention of the price to my wife was all I needed to be nudged in the direction of the Adam Hsu jian. I was reminded that junior would like to go to college one day.

I didn’t know that my long fist teacher actually helped Adam Hsu with the design. They studied long fist from the same teacher at the same time. So me buying the sword actually helped make my relationship with my teacher a little closer. Although, he told me that he could have gotten it cheaper for me. Sigh. Oh, well.

So some things that he told me about the Adam Hsu jian that I didn’t know:

1. The blade is actually designed to make a sound when you swing it with sufficient force through the air. The blade is actually shaped a certain way to facilitate that. The reason is that you can tell where your force reaches its peak by where the sound peaks at. I tried it and he’s right. If you swing it with force but your focus in the swing is too far to the left or right, then the sound will let you know that. If the opponent is directly to the front, then you would want the sound to peak directly in front of you. I thought that was pretty smart. He swung a cheap Chinese reproduction for me and it didn’t have the sound even though he swung it pretty hard. He said this would hurt sword training.

2. One thing that worried me about the sword was the downward hilt design. The day I brought it in, my teacher gave me some simple drills to practice at home. One of them was to stand with the sword out at a 45 degree angle and practice circling forward and back from the wrist. I noticed that when I did the back circle, the hilt hit my wrist and I immediately thought of all the people that said “do not buy this sword!” for that reason. Since my teacher helped with the design, I asked him about that and he said the sword was letting me know that my form was off. He said that I needed to loosen my grip a little and not grab so tightly. He’s told me many times that jian is about finesse not brute strength and when I made the correction he suggested, the techinique worked great.

3. The blade does lock into the scabbard a bit, but it’s not an actual lock. It’s more like a tight fit. He said to be gentle with the final push of the blade back into the hilt. Another bit of finesse.

4. The sword bag that comes with it was designed so that the blade will not slide around, damaging the scabbard. So if you get the sword, be sure to get the bag as well. It was especailly made for the sword and fits perfectly. Much better than the other sword bags that I have.

Training with the sword is great. I really like the grooves in the handle that let you know where the blade is in your hand when you hold it. That was another improvement over the Practical Taiji Jian, which is the predecessor of this model. My teacher’s sword technique uses lots of small movements and requires pretty sensitive fingers. In fact, some of the movements are similar to using the baoding balls in the same way that the balls roll around in your hand. The grooves let you know if the edges are up and down or facing left to right when you manipulate the handle.

I’m really happy with the sword so far. The only thing I don’t like is the fact that it’s unsharpened and judging from the bluntness, it would take a lot of work to put an edge on it. The tip, however, is sharp. My teacher told me that he and Adam Hsu spent a lot of time with Han Wei using sharp models to cut bamboo in an effort to get the blade design right. If only they sold the sharp models instead! Too much to ask, I guess. But then they were trying to make a really good practice sword, not a blade for cutting.

I should say something about my teacher’s sword style. He competed in Western sword fencing a long time ago with his jian techniques. He is really tight and precise when he cuts. His own sword is quite light to reflect that style of sword play. I mention this because people wanting a heavier sword for lots of big swinging motions may want to look elsewhere.

Since I bought the sword, my teacher told me he would start me on the san cai jian next week. This form is basic to the long fist style but is also used as the taiji jian form by the Sun family. So I’m really excited to be learning sword finally. I’ll post my thought on the training as I progress.