Hi

I'm not sure if i've posted in the correct section (moderators can punish me!) but i've got to do a Chinese Assignment on warfare (weapons, armour, tactics etc) in China during The Waring States Period right up until 221 BC. My assignment also requires me to choose a film on this time period (ie Warring States period). I've Choosen HERO (stars Jet Li directed by Yimou Zhang). So straight to the point >>>> is it possible that anyone on CHF, knows what swords Jet Li (nameless无名), Maggie Cheung (Flying Snow飞雪), Tony Leung Chiu Wai (Broken Sword残剑), Ziyi Zhang (Moon如月) & Donnie Yen (Long Sky长空) used????

I know thats a lot to ask, but i REALLY hope someone can help me!

P.s If anyone is feeling EXTRA kind, does anyone know what weapons Qin's Army used in HERO???

THANKYOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Qin army used crossbows (not those HUGE ones, those were pretty bs), bows, dagger-axes, swords (jian, but they rarely use'em), spears, & in some sources I seen shields.

All the main characters used Jians. (Chinese two-sided sword)

Long Sky used a Qiang (Spear)

Moon I'm not sure... I think those are just knives but they look like small sabres (Dao).

Hero is riddled with unaccuracies, for example: A jian wouldn't wobble like that, they didn't have mandingo ballista-like crossbows. Not the best movie to takes note from but pretty exciting/colorful to watch. Check out the Emperor & the Assassin (1998).

You'll get good info from that movie & a lot more realistic.

T.H.A.N.K.Y.O.U sooo much WangEnlai! I wasn't sure with Jet Li's sword because it has a slit in the middle of the sword..... I wasn't sure if that was just a 21st century fabrication!

Correct forum, aye! Looks like Wang answered what I was gonna answer. lol

The hole in the middle is fabrication (I think lol).

Almost all swords I've seen don't look like the Hero swords. The three main characters had fantasy elements added to their swords to make them look cooler.

Look at the troops or the emperor, better example of chinese jians.

No problem.

Awesome, yeah Long Sky's sword looks like it has horse hair on the end???

Yup, okay i'll look at the troops and emperor's weapons! Thanks once again, lol,

Poppet, Long Sky used a spear.

The red/white tassle is something you'll see a lot on chinese Wuxia (fantasy) spears & swords.

Some people speculate that the "blood guard" is for confusing the oponent, most people think it's just decoration.

It is also assumed (though still no documentary proof as yet exists) that the Qin would have used both arcuballistas and traction catapults for artillery.

What is this 'poppet' you're using, Wang?

It's the British version of darling.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=poppet

Not the last definition though.

I knew that. Just wondering why you used it is all.

Feeling a bit like Ms. Doubtfire.

Doubtfire was pseudo-Brit IMO.

But I enjoyed that film - and Robin Williams.

I would drop Hero as an example, unless it was only to discuss how much it got wrong. If you are just starting to research these weapons then it is not a good starting point.
Assume that nothing is correct, since historical accuracy in the dress, armour, weapons was not seriously attempted. The only few notable things I could give them credit for is the travelling chariot in the opening sequence and the complex hairstyles worn by the men. These are both based on the terracota army.
The long polearms, dagger-axes, were correct but no other weapons were much based on the period.

What did they get wrong? Nearly everything else. The Qin army was dressed in black....which is just a dynasty colour but never adopted by the troops. The evidence is that the Qin army was consistently brightly coloured in mainly red & green.
...see CHF thread under Qin & pre-QIn forum over the colours of the army which has many photographs of the original colours.
The sheilds were wrong, the helmets were wrong, the armour was incorrect. There is actually little evidence of helmets in the Qin army but what does exist is not like Hero. Shields may have been removed from the buried army and so not found but ancient Chinese shields were not like the round Hero examples.
...see nearby CHF thread with link to East Zhou helmets.

Hmmm..... the sword of Jet Li (and Jet Li is great without all the trickery and special effects) was a load of garbage. I am sick to death of the bending swords in Wuxia movies...so now even Chinese and Westerners when I show them real Chinese swords say 'Oh yeah, and they had bending swords too!".
This is a myth coming from Wushu movie with such swords but they are not real weapons. They are a training tool.
Ancient blades of best quality were comparable to the skill the Japanese swordsmiths get and were not wobbly blades. They were tough and hard.
The silvery spear....the curved twin knives in combat etc.....all just fantasy. Sabre type weapons are very rare untill central Asian styles were adopted.
Given the nasty and lethal weapons of the late East Zhou period I dont know whey they just didnt use some of the strange authentic ancient blades if they wanted to look fancy.
see the CHF thread..''how was a Ge mounted'' nearby.
Pinned thread on images of ancient Chinese weapons on CHF also shows what real weapons looked like. There is plenty of evidence if people making movies wanted to care about history...(which they don't)

There were double edged early steel swords in existence but bronze was still being used on the battlefield too. The longswords used by people in the film were OK, but Whoopededoo. Such swords (jian) exist much like that for over 2,000 years so no credit for getting that right.
Basically for a starting point you should reject hero as a study of equipment or weapons. It is a movie, and not a documentary.
When you see people flying and pulling off super-human techniques then it should put the movie in the right context.
Entertaining fantasy. Good fun, but not to be taken seriously as history.

Choose something else unless you are prepared to hunt out pictures of real weapons. Google search 'Qin bronze weapon' or 'Warring States sword' and if you stay away from e-bay fakes you will eventually see they are not like Hero at all.
....and go back a few pages on this ancient arnsenal forum. There are pictures in here to on East Zhou & Qin weapons.

Easy.

If there are shields in the terra cotta pit, there wouldn't be many. Most of the army used two handed dagger-axes, pi, etc... Only 17(or was it 7?) swords were found, and that's among the high ranking troops. Thus, if I use the terra cotta army as an example of the Qin army, most of them probably won't have much shields but a lot of dagger axes.

I would recommend "The emperor and the Assasin" as a good movie instead of Hero.

You can view the trailer here. As you can see, it's much more accurate, at least for the trailer's part.

http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/trai...tml?v_id=180103

There are so many controversial arguments about the terracotta army I don't even know where to start.

And plus, the Qin got a lot of their head gear designs from other states...

There are no sheilds in the terracota warrior pits, only an example with the chariot pit.
The appearance of Qin sheilds can be seen then, and the are not round. Neither are the Han shields.
My comment about shields possibly being removed from the buried army is because it appears many weapons were removed from the buried army in ancient times when the pits were torched (or perhaps when labourers were armed to prop up the struggling dynasty).
The inflated figures of bronze weapons found can only be from counting single crossbow bolts since in truth the number of weapons is very small for the # troops. It appears masses of dagger-axes and spears were removed since there were (by incomplete statistics) more swords found than ge for instance and this is very odd. The swords have in part been associated with the general figures in the pits.
The excavations continue....

The Qin shields are almost identical to those shown carried by West Han warriors which I attached to a recent thread. Compared with the shield on one of the 'Emperors' chariots and they are the same. These Han warriors may well have been polearmed anyway since the weapons (on the ceramic figures) are carrying under arm rather than in the hand since the holes for minature weapons are not in the hand.
The other point is that shields (and to a lesser degree hear gear) are shown in east Zhou art of battle and some ge/dagger-axes are mounted on shorter poles and useful as a melee weapon in close...i.e in both instances of these battle scenes there are polearmed warriors with shields. It would be remarkable for the Qin to refrain from carrying shields into battle, hence the possibility they were removed as the dynasty collapsed.

The terracota army is not useful for getting real % of how troops were armed. They do show with certainty what weapons looked like but the fact shields are missing from the pits does not mean Qin warriors did not use shields amongst such a large number of troops.
Regardless.....Hero did not even attempt to study what we DO know about the Qin army and the soldiers/weapons of the period.

Wow, thank you for that detailed insight!!!!! Oh it’s a shame because my assignment is due next week and I must notify my teacher 4 weeks beforehand what film I was doing! I should've joined CHF earlier! LOL, nah a friend suggested HERO for its great cinematography and I was going to talk about the clothing but decided that weapons were better because my assignment question requires me to relate the film (in this case HERO) to its designated time period (in this case The Warring States Period.) So now I can write in my assignment that the film, HERO got it all wrong!! LOL, thanks mate.

EDITS>>>>>

Sorry didn't want to double post, is it possible that anyone would have any images (big or small!) of the Qin Army's weapons from HERO???? Or even the main character's weapons!?!?!?!?!??

Thanks (times a million! )

Hi rhiannah,

I thought I was pretty good in finding film industry info... but most of the websites have pictures of the actors only... perhaps holding a weapon, but not close enough to scrutinize. Sorry I'm not much help, however, try these, maybe you can use some pictures:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0299977/photogallery
http://www.shadowofleaves.com/Chinese_Sword_History.htm

Good luck with your report!!

-K