Chinese Sword Academy GRTC

Why would you bring a knife to a sword fight?

You're holding a jian. So is the man in front of you. Carrying a feijian on top of that sounds like dead weight, or showing off.

But the Chinese throwing knife turns up in the historical record often enough that it's worth asking what it was actually for. Part of the work we're doing at the Academy is reconstructing how it might have been used as a real option in the swordsman's kit rather than a party trick.

Here Rodell Laoshi puts one idea to the test. A melon, a length of bamboo, one thrown blade.

So before you watch, where do you land? Real tactical tool, or romantic nonsense? Tell us below.

Full clip in the comments.

My groupings are not always so tight, but I'm working on it...

Six years ago today, none of this existed.

It was the middle of lockdown. The seminars had stopped, no one could train together, and we were all sat at home wondering when things might go back to normal.

Then came a conversation between Gavin and Rodell Laoshi. "Shall we try teaching this online?"

We'll be honest. Neither of us had much faith in it. Chinese swordsmanship through a screen sounded slightly mad, and we both quietly assumed it was a stopgap. A COVID thing. Something to tide people over until the world reopened and everyone went back to seminars and the online side quietly faded away.

We could not have been more wrong.

It turned out it was never online or in person. It became both. A fusion that was stronger than either on its own. People no longer had to wait six months or a year between seminars. They trained together every week. They had a community to belong to. And when the in-person seminars came back, they were better than ever, because everyone arrived already sharp, already connected, already part of something.

Six years on, we have study groups all over the world and practitioners logging on every week. The thing we thought would fade became the thing that holds it all together.

Thank you to everyone who took a chance on us back then, and to everyone who has joined since.

There's a new chapter on the way too. More on that soon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yc-jNXuYis

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Teaching people who have only previously done forms work is always an enriching experience for both the student and myself. They get the opportunity to see what the movements in the forms they do are really about, and I get to be present while they have their "aha!" moment.

Just one of many fun parts of being a professional swordsman.