Three thousand years of Chinese sword-making produced a small handful of canonical forms — and around each of them, an enormous body of martial tradition, mythology, and cultural meaning. The blades themselves are simple enough. What surrounds them is what makes the Chinese sword tradition distinctive.
Chinese Jian
The straight, double-edged sword of ancient and imperial China — the scholar's weapon, the swordsman's ideal, and one of the longest-lived sword designs in human history.
Chinese Dao
The curved single-edged saber that displaced the jian as the standard infantry sword of imperial China — and seeded the entire family of Asian sabers that followed.
Chinese Zhanmadao
The two-handed Song-dynasty "horse-cutter" — a massive infantry blade developed to do exactly one thing: stop a heavy cavalry charge before it broke the line.