by Andy_S on Mon Sep 22, 2008 9:45 pm
A few comments.
There is some question about the vintage of the current Chen Dao form. Originally, it was (as noted in a post above) simply 13 separate techniques; Chen Zhaopei invented the form in the early- or mid-20th century (ie well after the dao had had its day on the battlefield, bar a few Chinese eccentrics who wielded them in the war against Japan and - in one case I know of - in Korea). Why would ZP have invented a dao form? Perhaps to compete with other MAs at the time that had long, convoluted weapon forms: The students of ZP's generation, like us today, took up Taiji largely for exercise and personal interest; they were not hard men, gangsters, bodyguards or soldiers who expected to use their arts in deadly/armed combat. The last use I have heard of any form of Taiji being applied in mortal combat was Chen Fake's despatching of a bandit with his staff at the gates of Wenxian in (I believe...?) around 1920.
I dispute Elliot's thesis that a kettlebell or barbell gives better exercie benefits than a dao (or other weapon) assuming it is appropriately weighted. You are not going to be doing ballastic, twisting, spinning movements with barbells...it is not a superior form of exercise to weights, but it is a different form of exercise. If you do not believe that a sword will give you strength in the arm, and will demand solidity of stance, I suggest you have not done much sword work, eastern or western. Medieval knights often had massively overdeveloped arm and shoulder muscles from their weapon workouts...some modern historians consider that they may have appeared (a la Richard III) deformed by this practice.
Personally, I find the Chen Dao form (which, franky, I do not practice that frequently) a good exercise IF done using a weighted blade. "Braking" a fast moving sword is an athletic challenge for the arm and wrist; there is also a strong element of flow around your own axes - are you guiding the sword, or is the sword guiding you?
I agree broadsword is misleading as a term, given the the term broadsword in the Western sense applies to completely different weapons. Falchion is not much better: The falchion was introduced in Europe after Crusaders' experience with curved blades in the Middle East, and soon mutated into something much bigger and heavier. Personally, I would favor the term scimitar, or possibly sabre (though the sabre, in Western armies, was a weapon most commonly used by light cavalrymen, from horseback). But as none of these European terms are exact, why not just use the Chinese term?
Finally, a good reason to practice the dao is that it is a sword. If you want to have some conception of what our martial ancestors experienced, there is not escaping the fact that the sword was the king of weapons in many, many cultures throughout the ages. IMHO, there is a certain martial mystique to a sword that a butcher's knife, an assault rifle or a baseball bat lacks. Yes, I like swords - be they on the wall, or in the hand.
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