The first post on this subject is here.
After a lot of shopping around I finally bought the Adam Hsu jian. (The blade distortion above is due to me resizing the pic. Click on the pic to see the original.) It was a big decision for me and I looked just about everywhere in Taipei. Getting a quality sword for a decent price here is difficult, as you know if you have read the first entry I wrote on this topic.
I finally settled on this jian for several reasons. Number one, the construction looked really solid. It obviously wasn’t just thrown together quickly. There is no give between any of the parts, everything fits together solidly. That’s a major consideration if you want something to practice with instead of just look at.
Second, the price was right for the quality. I did find a nice hand-made sword from China that is either this sword or a similar one.
However, this sword above was a bit more expensive. Just a little over US$1000. I was a little unsure about buying it, but a quick mention of the price to my wife was all I needed to be nudged in the direction of the Adam Hsu jian. I was reminded that junior would like to go to college one day. 
I didn’t know that my long fist teacher actually helped Adam Hsu with the design. They studied long fist from the same teacher at the same time. So me buying the sword actually helped make my relationship with my teacher a little closer. Although, he told me that he could have gotten it cheaper for me. Sigh. Oh, well.
So some things that he told me about the Adam Hsu jian that I didn’t know:
1. The blade is actually designed to make a sound when you swing it with sufficient force through the air. The blade is actually shaped a certain way to facilitate that. The reason is that you can tell where your force reaches its peak by where the sound peaks at. I tried it and he’s right. If you swing it with force but your focus in the swing is too far to the left or right, then the sound will let you know that. If the opponent is directly to the front, then you would want the sound to peak directly in front of you. I thought that was pretty smart. He swung a cheap Chinese reproduction for me and it didn’t have the sound even though he swung it pretty hard. He said this would hurt sword training.
2. One thing that worried me about the sword was the downward hilt design. The day I brought it in, my teacher gave me some simple drills to practice at home. One of them was to stand with the sword out at a 45 degree angle and practice circling forward and back from the wrist. I noticed that when I did the back circle, the hilt hit my wrist and I immediately thought of all the people that said “do not buy this sword!” for that reason. Since my teacher helped with the design, I asked him about that and he said the sword was letting me know that my form was off. He said that I needed to loosen my grip a little and not grab so tightly. He’s told me many times that jian is about finesse not brute strength and when I made the correction he suggested, the techinique worked great.
3. The blade does lock into the scabbard a bit, but it’s not an actual lock. It’s more like a tight fit. He said to be gentle with the final push of the blade back into the hilt. Another bit of finesse.
4. The sword bag that comes with it was designed so that the blade will not slide around, damaging the scabbard. So if you get the sword, be sure to get the bag as well. It was especailly made for the sword and fits perfectly. Much better than the other sword bags that I have.
Training with the sword is great. I really like the grooves in the handle that let you know where the blade is in your hand when you hold it. That was another improvement over the Practical Taiji Jian, which is the predecessor of this model. My teacher’s sword technique uses lots of small movements and requires pretty sensitive fingers. In fact, some of the movements are similar to using the baoding balls in the same way that the balls roll around in your hand. The grooves let you know if the edges are up and down or facing left to right when you manipulate the handle.
I’m really happy with the sword so far. The only thing I don’t like is the fact that it’s unsharpened and judging from the bluntness, it would take a lot of work to put an edge on it. The tip, however, is sharp. My teacher told me that he and Adam Hsu spent a lot of time with Han Wei using sharp models to cut bamboo in an effort to get the blade design right. If only they sold the sharp models instead! Too much to ask, I guess. But then they were trying to make a really good practice sword, not a blade for cutting.
I should say something about my teacher’s sword style. He competed in Western sword fencing a long time ago with his jian techniques. He is really tight and precise when he cuts. His own sword is quite light to reflect that style of sword play. I mention this because people wanting a heavier sword for lots of big swinging motions may want to look elsewhere.
Since I bought the sword, my teacher told me he would start me on the san cai jian next week. This form is basic to the long fist style but is also used as the taiji jian form by the Sun family. So I’m really excited to be learning sword finally. I’ll post my thought on the training as I progress.
8 responses so far ↓
1 Formosa Neijia - Exploring Taiwan’s Internal Martial Arts » New swords in the Adam Hsu series // Oct 16, 2006 at 8:36 am
[...] These are the new swords in the Adam Hsu line. I’m really excited that the rest of the series is coming along. For my review of the Adam Hsu jian, see here. I’m particularly excited about the first pic, the miao dao. I really want to learn that particular weapon, but I’m having a really difficult time finding anything but typical wushu junk here in Taipei. It seems the wushu tin foil version of the weapon is all I can find so far. Yuck! [...]
2 tim fong // Oct 17, 2006 at 2:20 am
Very cool that your teacher competed in fencing.
Do you guys do some two man free fighting drills, or does that come later?
3 chessman71 // Oct 17, 2006 at 7:36 am
Tim,
My teacher has a ton of two-man fighting drills. In fact, despite the mulitple forms that he has for jian, the bulk of his jian training is two-man drills. The only problem we have is finding a safe way to practice them.
We need swords that have an edge to practice controlling the opponent’s blade. Obviously the edge is an important consideration in that, but most practice swords are made of wood so the edge doesn’t hold up too well. He’s a bit tired of tearing up wooden swords. Also, shinai don’t work because they are round. And real swords are a bit unsafe.
So, unfortunately, we’ve stopped practicing the drills until he gets some better practice swords.
Do you have any recommendations on that?
Yeah, it is cool that he did Western fencing. He said that his jian skills came in very handy and he learned a lot about practical use doing that. Honestly, this guy has the best jian skills I’e ever seen.
4 tim fong // Oct 18, 2006 at 4:32 am
Hi,
Dude you have found a real gem of a teacher then. As far as practice weapons, have you looked at kingfisher woodworks? They can make custom weapons out of Arkansas impact hickory, the same stuff used for axe handles. One of my escrima brothers (more on that in a second) has a pair and they are awesome. Better than the ironwood that we would traditionally use–heavy and resilient where ironwood is brittle.
Quick aside– my serious kung fu/qigong experience is pretty recent (only dating back a year or so). My main thing (as in, if I had to choose one to fight a challenge…) is Cabales Serrada escrima, so that’s where I’m coming from. It is pretty different from taiji…more like white crane really in terms of the movement and the power, at least IMHO.
Back to the practice weapons–some of the guys I used to hang out with also made their own practice weapons out of aircraft aluminum. I think one of the guys in their style was an aircraft sheetmetal tech so that’s where they learned how to do it. I used their weapons a few times and it works well, because it has an edge (unsharpened of course) and a point (sharpened). Thus you can work the edge control drills. You really do pay attention when someone is pointing the thing at you…
Sparring is really huge. I can’t stress enough how important it is to developing range control and breath control under pressure.
I’ve always been tremendously impressed with the jian. I briefly learned a wushu straightsword form when I was on study abroad in Beijing and the weapon seems to have a lot of potential, albeit to be used in a finesse kind of way.
5 chessman71 // Oct 18, 2006 at 7:08 pm
Tim,
Thanks for the tip. I will check them out. If the shipping isn’t too much, I might order a couple of jian and sticks. The wood you mention sounds great!
Aluminum might be an option too. My teacher apparently has a friend who is working on a better practice sword for us, but I’m wondering what material it’s made of. Maybe it’s aluminum. My teacher is keeping a tight lip on it so I can’t tell. Apparently it’s something new if it ever gets produced at all. Haha.
Jian is very finesse oriented, as you say. It’s one of the most “internal” arts I’ve ever practiced. Lots of relaxed jings and very little overt, physical power.
6 Michelle de Vries // Mar 17, 2007 at 3:44 am
Great article. One critism I’ve heard, that you alluded to towards the end, is that this jian is to too light. I’ve been looking for both a metal practice dao and metal practice jian for a while that wasn’t horribly expensive or the other “stuff” you mentioned.
With the dao, I was fed up enough to make my own wooded sword. However, I agree with your comments about wooden swords. I’m still looking for a good metal dao that isn’t thousands of dollars.
I’ll consider the Adam Hsu model of jian later this year when I begin studying the jian again.
Thanks
7 chessman71 // Mar 17, 2007 at 6:09 am
Michelle,
It’s a solid buy, IMO. For the price, you really can’t go wrong. Of course, the guys on Sword Forum will rip it apart because it doesn’t cost a thousand dollars and is in stainless steel. But for beginners, I think it’s a great place to start.
8 CS Zeng // Jul 9, 2007 at 8:09 pm
The Adam Hsu swords are quite reliable for forms and are well made. However, they are not classical swords in terms of weight and constructions. The swords from Manderin Mansion is by Fred Chen and is very much the real deal in terms of weight, style and detail. One of the latter would buy 3-4 of the Adam Hsu swords. However, these are for the serious martial artist and not to be toyed with. You can get more classical swords and are not as expensive.
Leave a Comment