Hi guys

Check out this Tang Dynasty mural painting (dated 767 AD) located at the Dunhuang caves:

neato. Would the armor be bands or is that a simplified depiction of rows of lamellar?

Most likely a liangdanshan rather than a real liangdangjia.

In other words, ceremonial dress designed to look like armour.

Did commanders actually use the jian to fight, or was it only used for ceremony and to distinguish rank? It seems like a two-handed sword would be ineffective for war, but effective for a dual.

Here's a jian wiki article.

I dont' think commanders actually did any fighting in the first place.

Digressing a little bit, but I do recall Yun once telling me that Geshu Han had a special technique on the battlefield- which involved him laying the blade of a lance on his opponent's shoulder and giving a roar- which would cause the enemy to turn back and slit his throat on the lance. An assistant would help him take heads.

Though perhaps not entirely relevant, the possibility of commanders fighting in the field cannot be discounted (though whether they often used swords when they did I am not certain).

You use 2-handed swords to hack apart stuff: human legs, horse legs, horse heads, etc

Probably the ideal was that the commander didn't get involved in the fighting himself. However, I imagine that there would be occasions when a general had to swing the weapon himself:
To rally flagging or shirking toops
to inspire cowed troops
to fight off enemy troops who had penetrated to his position.

Nobody ever said war was easy.

Thanks for the info

If a commander had to use his jian, he must have been either a great, charismatic commander, or a really poor one...

Also, did military officers also wield two-handed swords, or were they held exclusively by commanders?

Whether the jiang actually does any fighting depends on two factors. His rank, and how desperate the situation is. In some rare cases, he may also be there because it was strategically important for him to show up at that place at that time. If the enemy is storming the camp, you can expect that even the commander in chief will be out there beating the enemy to death with their own severed arms. If it was just a minor skirmish, he probably won't even show up to take command and just delegate it to some minor jiang.