Weapons of the Chinese Green Standard Army

[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