Lang ya bang has always been a favorite polearm of mine. So hard to find a good one. Tiger fork is really great for catching weapons, I think that's why there are so many twists in their forms. The newer inward arc of the outside tines seems optimized for the purpose. Great video!
1. Dai-Quiang for Stabbing (Big Spear) 2. Gwan Dao for Chopping (Glaive) 3. Langyabang for Smashing (Wolf Tooth Club) 4. Dai Pa for Spiking and Catching (Trident) 5. Shíqiang for Armour Weak Spots (Snake Spear) 6. Alternate for Smashing - Monk's Spade. Great video, Brother! I think the trident is highly underrated as is the concept of catching/trapping other weapons. Most people imagine them trying to catch swords and sabers, but from my experience/education, the trident is really an anti-spear. Catching spear hafts and poles between the tines is fairly simple. A hard twist of the hands locks the two weapons together, and you can move the spear away, or in some cases completely disarm the spearman. Of course, the shorter the weapon, the more difficult this is to achieve. There are also variants where the center tine extends many inches longer than the outer tines, thus they dont distribute the force between the three tines, until you've got 5" - 6" of steel already buried. I'm ABSOLUTELY a supporter of the Tiger Fork/Dai Pa/Trident and it's the flagship weapon of my Gong Fu style, Lam Hung Pak Mei! 🔱 Awesome video, man!!
Good to have a native English speaker on the scene of talking Chinese arms. I see arms and armour as study development of a civilization. Chinese pole arms are classified as personal and military. Personal arms are for duels and military arms are for outfitting a force, there are special unit arms and general use arms.
A hook that does not pierce too deep makes sense for a hooked pole that began life as a way to move cargo bales. Sailors probably spend a lot more time loading and unloading cargo than repelling boarders.
@@thescholar-general5975 In modern off shore boat license training, you have to use a boat hook to retrieve lines and attach to buoys. Hooking onto other boats could be used to rescue people from a sinking ship just as easily as boarding. And even as a dedicated weapon it works exactly the same as a standard sailing tool. Even if a war axe and a wood axe are different, a lumberjack isn't going to need much training. A hooking weapon is going to be very easy for sailors to use.
There were Ge (dagger-axe) and Ji (dagger-axe with spear head). These pole arms were used during Warring States period and earlier, and Han Dynasty. I'm fascinated by Ji. It's a magnificent pole arm.
One point I think you missed about the “trident” style polearm is that it prevents or limits over penetration. In a big battlefield melee, stabbing someone and accidentally over penetrating to the point where you can’t get your weapon back out can get you killed. So with a trident, getting ENOUGH penetration but still being able to get your weapon back out and into use would have a lot of advantage over some other spearing type weapons. Also, I think the European equivalent to the Chinese trident would be a “winged” spear that can do basically the same thing though in a different way.
Yeah you are right that the trident does help prevent over penetration. The main difference I see between the winged spear and the trident is that the winged spear is primarily designed to prevent over penetration while the trident is primarily designed to catch opposing weapons in the prongs, though they both certainly overlap in terms of function.
I don't know much about European pole arms, but I have noticed a couple of things about the usage of Asian pole arms. The first thing I've noticed is that in Northern styles of Chinese Martial Arts and in Japanese styles, the spear is used with the left hand in front, while in Southern Chinese styles, the right hand is in front. This may be because Northern styles are from the military and Southern styles are civilian? I'm not sure. And then, as for Glaive type weapons, with Chinese Guan Dao, the hands rarely switch position, but with Japanese Naginata the hands often switch. Perhaps that is probably because the Guan Dao is more massive and has more inertia, whereas the Naginata is lighter and more maneuverable.
Thanks for watching! While there are some stylistic differences I would say that the difference in hand placement really boils down to spear vs other polearms. In general the spear is used with the left hand forward while other polearms are used with the right hand forward. We can see a difference in staff manuals about this because Cheng Zongyou treats the staff more like a spear while Yudayou treats it more like a trident or glaive. As for differences between the guandao and the naginata. Yes the top hand of the guandao does not move too far away from the blade. I will discuss this in a different future video.
@@thescholar-general5975 There is a RU-vidr called Are You Full? who is re-creating the staff techniques from Cheng Zongyou's manual (and other manuals), and it does resemble spear techniques.
From what I was told, Southern China is full of lakes and rivers and most civilians had to ride a boat of some kind to get anywhere using either an oar for a dingy or a long stick to push a raft across a shallow river or lake. So manipulating heavy pole arms came naturally to them.
It is quite interesting to see the similarities and differences with Japanese ones. Having seen many different types of yari, I can tell that a lot of these polearms serves similar functions! Nice video, keep it up!
Weapons very similar to some Chinese tridents & such appear in Europe. The spetum or spiedo comes to mind immediately. They're not identical but pretty close: a spear with side protrusions to parry & catch opposing implements. Pietro Monte wrote that folks focused on defending with these protrusions or wings. & you see other winged spears across European history. The spiedo came up regularly in Renaissance fencing manuals. There were also tridents proper, military forks, & so on. Such short spear-type weapons do appear to have been more popular for warfare in Ming China than they were in Europe during the same period. The partizan, spiedo, glaive, & kin did see use in skirmishes & pitched battles in Europe, but halberds, bills, & other more axe-type weapons generally predominated. According to the Great Ming Military blog, Xu Guangqi wanted a variety of short staff weapons for his ideal force of heavily armored dual-role troops: glaives, hook spears, bladed staves, tridents, & tiger forks. Xu was familiar with & influenced by Europe warfare, which had mostly become a matter of pike & shot by the time Xu wrote in the early 17th century. So in that case, while the army he envisioned did differ notably from European practice in various ways, such as including some bows & having universal comprehensive armor & giving all soldiers both a ranged weapon & close weapon, the short (not pike length) staff weapons he wanted weren't that different from partizans, thrust-only halberds, & such of the early 17th century.
Thanks for watching! You are correct that “catching” type polearms existed in Europe, and I hope that I did not imply otherwise. I am also aware that some weapons like the trident are discussed in HEMA treatises. However, I do think that there was a greater inclination towards these forked polearms in China given the focus they receive in the manuals. Aside from the spear, the trident is the most common polearm featured. And the wolf brush, another catching type weapon is usually close in the manuals as well. As you mention, Chinese military texts boost the ratios of forked polearm troops in military units to a pretty high degree. Qi Jiguang’s famous mandarin duck formation relies just as much on tridents and the wolf brush as it does on spears. But yes, you are correct that over the course of the 16-17th centuries both Chinese and European militaries were converging towards pike and shot. And Dutch occupation in Formosa accelerated this trend.
The Great Ming Military blog says soldiers often used the trident (鎲鈀) to launch rockets. Europeans had rocket technology, but I can't recall coming across any of mention of rockets in 16th-century European military manuals. I've never heard of them being used as personal weapons in Europe as they were in Ming China. I wonder if that was contributing factor in the trident's popularity.
What's kind of interesting is that halberds are a very universal weapon. Every culture has one, whatever their materials. It's a combination of the three primal weapons: club, ax, spear.
Awesome presentation and comparison, hope to see each one in more detail. My favorite one is the wolf brush, I think that's the most unique polearm that the Chinese ever came up with.
Thanks for watching! I will do more polearm content in the nearish future. It will have to wait just a little though, as I am currently in the middle of a big channel related project.
@@thescholar-general5975 No problem I'm waiting for your update. I'd also like to see some videos about armors, particularly the various organic armors (paper/rattan/leather) that were used in South China.
A couple years back I used museum photos to mock up a hybrid of a 15th century knightly poleaxe, and a Spring and Autumn Period ge (which kind of became a ji with the introduction of the top spike), and commissioned White Well Arms (out of the UK) to make it for me. It's one of my favorite custom pieces, and is a truly terrifying thing to image facing in combat (the ge dagger-axe face has a scalloped/serrated section of blade that would just mangle textiles and human tissue).
This is an awesome overview! Love your categories as I think they make sense and are easily understood. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen an identified historical war-iron staff, but I could see that even if they were not repurposed they could easily be misinterpreted as another object if they don’t have any other features on them. Very neat.
I appreciate learning about more obscure weapons, I've never heard of the zhao dao and the tsuruhashi, I'd love to see more videos about obscure weapons!
This painting is known as the "Departure Return". You can view it online here: theme.npm.edu.tw/exh105/npm_anime/DepartureReturn/en/index.html#section_1
I've heard in another video that the battle axe was a revered weapon in China and the presenter showed some very ornate, ceremonial examples that were excavated. Just the axe heads remained, and they were bronze, but the one I remember looked like something I'd almost expect to see in Central America, like from the Inca or Aztecs. It was green with corrosion, but it was intricately cast.
@@thescholar-general5975 I'm thinking you're correct. I believe he used the word "yue" as well. I wish I could remember who it was and go watch it again. However I can remember neither having handles or never having accommodations for one.
@@jeffreyshover9327 I figured they were too important for common folks to have, and being bronze, the metal of the gods, would be for royalty to use in ceremonies or other official functions.
Are there any historical sources or studies of European mixed unit tactics or formations from the Middle Ages or Renaissance? It seems like a lot of the specialized Chinese polearms exist to do a certain job, like neutralizing spears, so your own spear guys can be safe and kill the enemy. And we have Chinese manuals showing how mixed weapons can work in tandem or in squads. Is there anything comparable in European historical works?
That is an excellent question, but unfortunately not one that ai can answer! Almost all of the martial arts manuals that we have from China are found in broader military treatises while the same does not appear to be true for European fencing treatises. This difference in the context of martial text production has made the European manuals very intricate with detailed images and descriptions, but they lack the battlefield fixation and unit tactics that are found in the Chinese texts.
In Qi Jiguang's fighting against Wokou (a mix of Japanese and Chinese pirates), each squad had its two strongest men wield wolf brushes. Apparently, besides catching katanas, another function of theirs was to simply sweep people off their feet so that the spearmen could kill them. Qi Jiguang specified that it was a weapon of strength, not technique, and it was possible that the earliest iterations of wolf brushes were literally just large trees of fresh bamboo.
Chinese catching pole arm was invented to catch the Japanese katana during the Ming dynasty when the Chinese coast was ravaged by Japanese pirates. Chinese soldiers were mostly local villagers, who needed a weapon to protect themselves from katanas without a lot of training.
The Ji is more of a combination weapon than what I featured in this video. Later I will talk more about it. Also, even though it is common in art related to literature. It is much more rare when looking at depictions of imperial armies or battles.
I hope you can do a detailed treatise of the tiger fork. This weapons center tine can vary in length and width to act as a spear point. The outer tines will serve to catch, parry or block attacks. To me this would be my personal ideal pole arm weapon. The actual tiger fork i have trained with previously was quite heavy. Cold Steel had designed on with light er tines and a bit lighter. Im thinking to purchase one and pra tice with it. 😮😮😮
Why do you think the ji disappeared after the Han dynasty? Ji is basically a halberd/poleaxe, a design that you see nearly everywhere in the world in some form. But I seems to have more or less disappeared in China by the end of the Three Kingdoms period.
Oh boy! that is a great question. To be honest, I would need to do more research before I can give you a proper answer, but the question is definitely on my radar now!
@@thescholar-general5975 My guess is that the crossbar pieces of the Ji were deemed unnecessary as armies evolved towards close order formations. You need a lot of space between soldiers in order to properly use a halberd, which is also why they fell out of favor in Europe as Pike and Shot took over. In China, the combination of crossbows and pikes was effectively their version of Pike and Shot. This is just me armchair generaling.
@@theredbar-cross8515 I disagree. Close order formations were commonly used during the Warring States, Qin, and Han Dynasty era when Jis and Dagger Axes were used at their height. The pike and crossbow formations (similar to pike and shot) originated in the Warring States era and used throughout the Qin and Han. Dagger axes and Jis were used in confunction with pike and crossbow infantry. Even in European Pike and Shot, Ji-equivalents in the form of halberds were often used. They were used to support pike infantry - so they didn't really fall out of favor. If Wikipedia is any indication, halberds compliment and support infantry with pikes: "The armies of the Catholic League in 1625, for example, had halberdiers comprising 7% of infantry units, with musketeers comprising 58% and armored pikemen 35%. By 1627 this had changed to 65% muskets, 20% pikes, and 15% halberds.[14] A near-contemporary depiction of the 1665 Battle of Montes Claros at Palace of the Marquises of Fronteira depicts a minority of the Portuguese and Spanish soldiers as armed with halberds"
@theredbar-cross8515 I disagree. Close order formations were commonly used during the Warring States, Qin, and Han Dynasty era when Jis and Dagger Axes were used at their height. The pike and crossbow formations (similar to pike and shot) originated in the Warring States era and used throughout the Qin and Han. Dagger axes and Jis were used in confunction with pike and crossbow infantry. Even in European Pike and Shot, Ji-equivalents in the form of halberds were often used. They were used to support pike infantry - so they didn't really fall out of favor. If Wikipedia is any indication, halberds compliment and support infantry with pikes: "The armies of the Catholic League in 1625, for example, had halberdiers comprising 7% of infantry units, with musketeers comprising 58% and armored pikemen 35%. By 1627 this had changed to 65% muskets, 20% pikes, and 15% halberds.[14] A near-contemporary depiction of the 1665 Battle of Montes Claros at Palace of the Marquises of Fronteira depicts a minority of the Portuguese and Spanish soldiers as armed with halberds"
In my research, the ge (dagger-axe) and it's evolution into the ji is a very important and prominent over a broad swathe of regional history. The ji seemed to be favored, and promoted as an optimal anti-spearman weapon that could be used both on foot and from horseback.
There are the groups that slight anything that cannot have antiques to prove their existence. The strange Chinese weapons rarely have their antique in existence to show how long they have been around.
They likely used stronger single shot crossbows (not the multi-shot or semiauto versions), certain types of battleaxes, maces, warhammers, flails, and certain types of polearms resembling warpicks. The ancient variant of the Ji and dagger axe for example has a blade mounted perpendicular to the shaft and is swung at an enemy...it resembles a warpick or the sharp point of a warhammer.
@@thescholar-general5975 Awesome. Appreciate your work. Another question I would love to know the answer to is why there is very little focus on hand protection in Chinese armor. even armors like full multilayered brigandine that covers almost all gaps somehow leave the hands unprotected. other cultures with equivalent armor always focus on the hands as well.
@@efafe4972 The prevailing hypothesis is that Chinese doctrine was just incompatible with hand protection, or at least had no good reason to prioritize it. A couple common factors I've seen discussed were: 1) Mass production of similar armors for both infantry and cavalry necessitating simplicity 2) Emphasis on ranged weapons (bows, crossbows, guns) 3) Emphasis on infantry formations with thrusting polearms It's important to note that just because hand protection became more sophisticated elsewhere in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance does not mean it was always used even in those regions. There are plenty of instances in contemporary European artwork where soldiers are depicted with no gauntlets - most often they are infantry with otherwise solid chest and helmet protection.
@@perrytran9504 All fair points, yes agree that most troops around the world in that time period were far less heavily armored than we expect. we really only talk about the very elite few when we discuss knights and samurai. the majority of soldiers in most battles were using lower quality equipment. Im just wondering if heavily armored units that resemble fully kitted knights existed during the Ming and early Qing and how they would have been kitted. If they did exist, did they have more personalized armor or did they also have to deal with a lack of hand protection?
Thanks for watching! Perhaps I didn’t express myself clearly. I wasn’t saying that thin spikes didn’t exist in Europe, but more that reinforced spikes appear to be more common in Europe than in China.
I am learning Chinese. Could you recommend any popular mainland Chinese channels or sourses on such topics and martial/pop culture/video gaming topics in general please? Thank you!
To be honest, I do not watch Chinese content on youtube too much. There is a channel on bilibili called 减肥90斤的胖子. A somewhat silly name, but he brings up interesting points when talking about martial arts and chinese weapons. I do like to watch chinese tv series. My favorites would be nirvana in fire or three body problem. I hope that helps. Enjoy your journey!
I thought Qi Jiguang was trying to combat swords, specifically the big swords used by Japanese pirates, when he developed or employed the langxian. It does seem tied to the “mandarin duck” formation that was formed to help militiamen fight the pirates.
What do you think of the Chinese halberd popular in the warring states period ? I was always very interested in those almost like an axe sickle and a spear
It's called Ji in Chinese. It's a magnificent weapon; fit for a king. They were used as late as 200 AD - 300 AD. Then, they were not mentioned in books anymore. Or maybe called by other names.
Hello! I hope you are doing well! This is a good question but not necessarily an easy one to answer. If you want to know if a katana is an antique then there are a few things you can do. In general, the most accurate way to authenticate a sword is through metallurgical analysis with something like an XRF scanner. This can tell you the chemical composition of the steel, and modern steels tend to have less inclusions and may contain trace elements such as magnesium which are not present in preindustrial steels. However, the equipment and experience needed to conduct this kind of analysis makes it very difficult to access. A second way which is easier to do and still somewhat reliable is to take the handle off and inspect the metal core or tang inside the handle. The handle of a traditional katana is designed to be taken off easily by means of a bamboo peg in the handle. This peg has some taper to it kind of like a cork on a bottle. If you get a little pin and mallet, you can remove the peg and then take off the handle. The tang of an antique blade should have a deep dark patina almost black in color and should not be shiny or have active rust. Many katana also have the smith’s signature on the tang (usually on the left side if you hold the sword edge facing away from you). This method requires a little familiarity with the construction of the katana and the color of patinas, but it is much more accessible than the first way. The final way, is to simply analyze many details about the quality, materials, fit, and finish of the blade. Doing this accurately requires lots of experience, and even then it is the least reliable method to authenticate a sword. The big advantage of this method is that it can be very easy to do. My advice would be to first try this method by simply posting a few pictures of a given katana to an online group like reddit r/swords, and many of the experience people there can provide their insights and advise. I hope that long winded response was helpful or at least interesting! Take care! Mr. S
