Initial Impression: The Complete Taiji Dao: The Art of the Chinese Saber

As a birthday present for myself, I picked up a copy of The Complete Taiji Dao: The Art of the Chinese Saber (ISBN 1583942270), hoping it would help with my quest to make the Hockey Stick from Heck more than just a psychological weapon. I was even a good boy and waited until my birthday to open it. Unfortunately, between work and family, this only left me a half-hour or so to glance through it, and no time for any actual blade work. Even so, this was enough for me to form an opinion on the book.

I was a little leery when I ordered it because of the price: under $20 for a "fighting manual" usually means it's some guy talking about how great he is. That's not the case here. The entire book is written in third person, with absolutely no self-aggrandizement. And what's even better is that the pictures actually show the moves pretty well.

The book begins with a history of the style and the weapons, before going into the basics (hands, feet, blade) and then how to combine the basics. I will admit that I skipped over the history and went straight to the good stuff so I can't tell you much about the first part of it, but if you're a wire-weenie like me, you don't care about the history anyway.

The basics were covered quite well, but if you're looking to translate the style over for SCA fencing, I'd skip the footwork as it's designed for power and better suited for armored combat. The hand work (holding the blade and hand positions) is spot on for the strong hand, but I'll have to play around with the weak-hand stuff: it's weird. And the various attacks look good, although some of the defenses are questionable for our style. With the exception of two thrusts and a single draw, the attacks are entirely tip-cut variations. This will mean that you have to be careful of your power to avoid percussive hits, but it should give you good flow with a curved blade.

And the section on combining the parts looks to be designed to increase the flow inherent in the style, turning it into the ballet of blades we are used to seeing in Chinese martial arts movies.

All in all, I am pleased with the book so far and can't wait for the chance to play with the style with my sword in hand.