Quick History of Yip (Ip) Man’s Bart Cham Dao.
Quick History of the Bart Cham Dao
De reel ‘Quick history of the Bart Cham Dao part 1‘ has over 515k views on Facebook. Part 1 is about: From historical reality to Chinese opera and to nowadays fantasy.
The reel shows Chinese soldiers from the mid 19th century with double swords. Those swords were relatively long, had a narrow blade and were very pointy. A typical cut and thrust blade.
In Chinese opera photographs from around 1900, the blades were very broad. Good for the show because broad blades are better visible for the audience.
The fantasy part of the reel shows nowadays Wing Chun practitioners, with broad and short double knives, performing techniques which belong to the fantasy category. This includes distance, the flipped grip and disarms.
Bart Cham Dao part 2
Quick history of the Bart Cham Dao part 2 is about real and legit double swords from around 1850, with cut and thrust capabilities, evolved into nowadays unreal broad and ‘short’ double knives with no thrust capabilities.
Most Wing Chun practitioners are neither aware about the true history of the swords/knives, nor about how to use them the correct way. The Bart Cham Dao (eight cutting knives) name and form is something Ip Man came up with and continued by his students. Every student of Ip Man has a different form, either taught different by Ip Man or self created.
Quick History part 3
Quick history of the Bart Cham Dao part 3 is about the shape of the blades of most modern double knives compared to real combat swords/knives from around 1850 till 1914.
The blades of the modern double knives have mostly the same shape as the blade of a machete, which is a cutting/chopping tool rather than a combat weapon. While there existed swords with no thrust capabilities, short combat weapons like shorter swords, bayonets, daggers and knives always had thrust capabilities. For example: the combat knives in WW1 used in the trenches (and nowhere else was less space available during battle) were relatively short and stabbing was more important than cutting. There are examples of knives which couldn’t cut at all.
Conclusion
The design of most modern double knives is bad. Most knives are too broad, which is bad for thrusting and because of the length of ca. 40 cm chopping is also not good. If you want to chop/slash effective then you need a longer blade.
Does it make sense to train with with the double swords/knives? It certainly doesn’t make sense to train with fantasy weapons which have a bad design, but in the land of blind the one eyed man is king. Which means that if your opponent has no weapons or only sticks, then even bad knives are good enough.
Training with well-designed weapons helps you read your opponent better, but you should start with one sword before trying to wield two. It helps to understand the right distances and it helps to use the transition for using tools like: walking stick, umbrella, palm stick etc.
This is especially helpful for people who are not strong, like elder people or most women for example. Age and physical strength don’t matter. Wing Chun training at EWO equips you with the tools you need for effective self-defense
