Weapons of the Chinese Green Standard Army

[Peter Dekker]

Hi guys,

I just finished an infographic on edged weapons used by the Qing danasty Green Standard Army that will accompany an article in my site.

It is based on the information from the 1766 woodblock edition of the Huanchao Liqi Tushi, a work commissioned by the Qianlong emperor. The book covers court regulations on all sorts of items, including weapons. It was based on a manuscript of 1759.

In my drawing I kept true to the original sizes, including shaft diameters and blade widths mentioned in the text. I also reproduced the colors, as mentioned in the original text.

To the left a silhouette of a man I made 175cm (5 foot 7) for size comparison. Next to him is a standard pattern military saber or yaodao / peidao, of the same period, also for comparison.

I hope you like it. Any comments / questions welcome!

[Oliver Pinchot]

Well done, Peter!
Nice meeting you in Baltimore

[Ibrahiim al Balooshi]

Salaams Peter Dekker This is an excellent work and perfect for library....as well as for beginners on these weapons like me!

Regards,
Ibrahiim al Balooshi.

[Philip]

A much-needed ID and classification scheme, having it illustrated to scale makes it that much more useful. Looking forward to the addition of some descriptive details as your study progresses. For instance, I'm curious as to the essential characteristics of the BEIDAO or "back" saber. Does it refer to the thickness or particular profile of its spine (we're familiar with the term ZHIBEIDAO or "straight-back saber" which refers to a straight single-edged blade as seen on the familiar Tibetan sword). Or was its sheath meant to be worn at the belt, across the small of the user's back so that the hilt could be drawn from behind with the right hand? I've seen some late 18th/early 19th cent. graphics by Western artists in China, showing just such an arrangement with a somewhat short, cutlass-like weapon.

[Peter Dekker]

Thanks for the encouragements!

I had wondered the same about the beidao. It could well refer to the way it was carried because names like yaodao, peidao "waist sabers" and daidao "belt sabers" all refer to the way they are carried.

I've checked more in-depth regulations for these arms and it seems the beidao's blade is fairly substantial for it's size: 10mm thick at the base.

Both the standard yaodao the wodao (better known as "miaodao") and the changren dadao are only 7mm thick. All the other weapons in the diagram are also 10mm thick at the base of their blades.

Interestingly, the yanyuedao is not covered in these minutely detailed regulations but they are on lists of equipment ordered and maintained periodically. This means units had considerable freedom in the execution of this weapon, which may help explain why they tend to vary so much in size and shape.

[Philip]

From empirical observation, I note that most blades from the late Ming to mid-Qing seem to hover between 6 - 7 mm thickness at the forte (not counting the tunkou or sleeve at the base of some of them). This is assuming that they haven't been polished or ground down to remove deep pitting sometime in the past as is the case with a lot of stuff coming onto the market.

Forte thicknesses in this range seem to be prevalent in a large number of other types of cut-and-thrust blades as well. We could chalk up this surprising consistency to functional parameters -- given a specific material (steel), a set of functional parameters (such as point of balance, rigidity, resilience and the need to absorb lateral stresses especially near the hilt), one could expect an optimum in terms of distal dimensions at the forte which different cultures.

Thicknesses would tend to increase if more rigidity and stability were needed for longer weapons, or if there were other requirements for weight distribution in shorter ones. Re the latter, we've both observed a particular pattern of later (early 19th) Qing military sabers which are around 9-10 mm thick at the forte, as are some civilian "ox-tail" sabers. There are some shorter Indian talwars which have similar distal dimensions. This would call out for a deeper look at the fencing techniques and deployment situations for these particular weapons to explain their design characteristics since their distal profile .

[mariusgmioc]

Excellent illustration! Very useful!

But would't 175 cm be rather too tall for a Qing Chinese?

[Peter Dekker]

Thanks!

And good question. I had pondered a while over the size of this man. I ended up choosing 175cm for two reasons:

1. It's a common size for a person in most of the English speaking world, which is the target audience for the infographic. Otherwise one can think: The changren dadao isn't that big, it's depicted next to a small Chinese man!

2. Second, the common perception on the size of Chinese is not necessarily correct. The Chinese that travelled the most and settled all over the world are predominantly from the south, where people indeed tend to be on the short side. This gave most people in western countries the impression that all Chinese were and are short. We have this difference in Europe, too: Nordic people tend to be really tall, people around the Mediterranean tend to be short.

Northern Chinese can be huge, 7 ft 6 inch basketballer Yao Ming is an extreme example. I'm just under 5 ft 6 and when I was living in Beijing, most guys were taller than me. People in Beijing are about as tall on average as people in the United States.

I haven't found sources on the actual size of people in Beijing by the time this text was written, though. Looking at the bows and arrows they used, and extant clothing, I tend to think they averaged around 170 cm and 175 cm. The emperor, a Manchu from further north, was quite tall. He was probably closer to 180 cm or 190 cm.

Peter

[mariusgmioc]

Thank you Peter for the explanations!

[Timo Nieminen]

Originally Posted by Peter Dekker

I haven't found sources on the actual size of people in Beijing by the time this text was written, though. Looking at the bows and arrows they used, and extant clothing, I tend to think they averaged around 170 cm and 175 cm. The emperor, a Manchu from further north, was quite tall. He was probably closer to 180 cm or 190 cm.

18th century adult male height in southern China was about 5'4.5", 164cm. This is close to the 18th century English average of 165cm. The modern height difference between north and south is about 2"/5cm (or 1"/3cm, depending on source), so about 170cm is plausible for the average adult male height in Beijing at the time.

I don't know what the historical urban/rural differences in height were (it can go either way, largely depending on the nutrition of the urban poor compared to the rural poor). There will also be a difference between the poor and the better off, and those whose bows and clothes survive are more likely to have been in the better off, so 170cm-175cm is a fair estimate.

[DaveA]

Hello Peter,

Very nice! Will you please provide a link to your article and the site?

Here are a two related info graphics on Chinese weapons that you might find useful.

Best,

Dave A

[Peter Dekker]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for posting!

The article is not finished yet, but I will link to it once it is done. I do have an article up featuring some of these sabers:
http://www.mandarinmansion.com/chinese-long-sabers

As for the graphs you posted, the first one is from Thomas Chen's site and is accurate as far as I can tell, although my area is not the archaic period.

The second graph is terribly inaccurate, I'm afraid. Lists like these inspired me to make some better overviews, entirely based on period sources and not martial arts training hall hearsay.

In fact he got the majority of names wrong, and included many that do not reflect historical names. Some weapon names are switched, and lastly, the transliteration on many pieces is wrong.

Example: What is called a niumeidao is actually a piandao. From the characters I can see the compiler meant the niuWeidao, or oxtail saber.
Unfortunately with all its errors it misleads more than it informs. Something better needs to be made.

Peter

[josh stout]

Great job Peter!

There are so many vague names out there; it is nice to see names, illustrations, and specifications from a primary text. The piandao looking like a naganata, rather than a single-handed curved saber, was a surprise. Handle length does not matter nearly as much as blade shape.
Thanks

[Philip]

Good observation, Josh. In trying to classify Vietnamese hilt weapons, I come across the same thing. Arms historians who speak Vietnamese have pointed out that the names follow the blade types. In fact, they couldn't tell me any specific terms applicable to "guom" (sabers with narrow blades similar to the Chinese willow-leaf type) with enclosed knucklebow hilts vs those with open hilts utilizing a discoid hand-guard. But the distinction between a "guom" and a "dao" (pronounced "yao" in southern speech, "zao" in northern) is clear -- the later has a broad blade usually with a clipped point and a gradual widening outward from the hilt.

Unfortunately these guys all have a modern education in the language whose official written form has been romanized for many generations now; the Chinese characters have fallen out of use. It's clear what character corresponds to "dao", but no one could tell me what the ideograph for "guom" is. "Kiem" (double edged straight sword) is obviously the equivalent of "jian" (or Cantonese "gim", Japanese "ken"). I once owned a ceremonial ivory-hilted guom with a dedicatory inscription engraved in Chinese on the grip, and despite the thing being obviously a saber, the character "jian" was used in it to refer to the weapon!

Despite this bit of confusion, the logic of Vietnamese terminology is pretty easy to follow. Not so with Korean, which seems less consistent and straightforward, but let's save that for another thread.

[Peter Dekker]

Originally Posted by josh stout

Great job Peter!

There are so many vague names out there; it is nice to see names, illustrations, and specifications from a primary text. The piandao looking like a naganata, rather than a single-handed curved saber, was a surprise. Handle length does not matter nearly as much as blade shape.
Thanks

Thanks!

And yes, a lot of vagueness is involved. Sometimes even in official texts! For one it seems that the Huangchao Liqi Tushi, a standard work on ceremonial regalia and arms, used some nonstandard language that you don't see in the operational texts.

The piandao for example indeed comes in several forms. There is mention of a saber shaped piandao (㓲刀) in the 1759 Huangchao Liqi Tushi that is used by rattan shield troops.

Regulations on manufacture and repair of military equipment for the provinces consistently mention rattan shields in conjunction with paidao or shield-saber. A look into the instructions for craftsmen to produce these, we find that at least in 1770, these were just another name for the piandao in the Huangchao Liqi Tushi.

And then of course my above list shows two more piandao, one quite like a large dadao and another of a naginata-type. They use a different character for pian but both with the same meaning.


As for the jian (劍) / dao (刀) classification, interesting how countries near China were not as strict. Kendo also comes to mind, which is clearly focused around the practice of the Japanese katana (刀) yet calls itself the way of the 剣, which is a Japanese simplification of 劍 (jian).

[josh stout]

The piandao seems to have substantial documentation but very few examples. I once owned one of utilitarian manufacture with a medium length blade (60-62cm), very thick at the guard (~1cm) that was clearly meant to be used one handed. It was a smooth curve to an acute point with a typical village made disk guard and Chinese elm handle. The blade was excellent steel but had a crack in the edge from heavy use. It seemed appropriate for the “tiger men” who supposedly used such things.

There is also a rare giant two-handed version that I suppose would also be called a piandao (shuangshu piandao?). I have an example of somewhat rustic manufacture but very heavily built. I have a feeling the front lines didn’t spend too much on weapon decoration. There is supposedly a much nicer version in a Russian museum listed as a “Chinese Cavalry saber”, but I think these were exclusively the weapons of foot soldiers. As a mutual friend said, “these were used under horses, not on top of them.”

[josh stout]

It's interesting to see where the words go. I think "ken" in Japanese is a sort of generic word for sword, despite it still being understood as a double edged temple sword. My teacher, speaking Hakka Chinese pronounces dadao like the Japanese daito. Double sabers are “shangto”. A sword is, of course, a “gim”.