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english
Ex Member
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Chinese weapons: Standard infantry arm across all periods is the spear. It is quick to produce and little training is needed for peasant levies. Standard infantry missile weapons has been, for peasantry, the crossbow. This has more than adequate penetration, is easily accurate, and in the pre-Han period to the middle of the Tang, crossbow mechanisms were manufactured with inter-changeable bronze parts. The crossbow has a long draw, almost from the end of the stock where the bow is placed to the other end, on a stock over a foot long. The early Chinese crossbow stocks frequently had pistol grip handles, and the locks were quite possibly the best in the world from around 600BCE, when they were first manufactured, to the 17th century in Europe, when new advances made very complicated mechanisms possible. (More about this later.) There are, in fact, many mechanisms which have survived and because they are bronze and remain un-corroded, they are still useable today, more than 2000 years after their original use. Missile weapon for the higher-up folks was the composite bow, which has varied somewhat throughout history in China, from small, light cavalry bows with short siyahs (ears on the recurves) to the giant Qing (Manchu) infantry and cavalry weapons with very long siyahs from the 16th century onwards. Most bows were recurved to a C shape when unstrung and were made of differing amounts of horn, sinew, wood, birch bark, silk, lacquer and other ingredients. Other weapons include swords and halberds. The ancient Chinese halberd (and double bladed halberds) were made of bronze, with a long horizontal blade and a shorter vertical blade on the end of a long pole. It was a good infantry and cavalry weapon, and there are many surviving examples, because, as with the bronze swords and crossbow locks, they have not corroded. In fact it is somewhat correct to say that many of China's innovations have gone backwards. Much of the bronze working tradition was lost in the latter half of the Tang dynasty, and later the Yuan (or Mongol) dynasty of China caused a medieval Cultural Revolution, and much of China's traditions of weaponry were lost (ie, the manufacture of crossbows by native Chinese for native Chinese was forbidden, and bamboo was strictly controlled so that bows could not be easily manufactured.) The Ming dynasty, the third of China's Golden Ages (or possibly the fourth, if one believes that that the Zhou dynasty was as noble and wonderful as Confucius and other believed), had lost the bronze working technology for making crossbow locks had been around about 1300 years before them. They used simpler, all wood, bone or antler mechanisms, which, although powerful and accurate, frequently failed during use. Also, repeating crossbows, the earliest of which found comes from 250BCE, were still in use up to the Boxer Rebellion (1900). Sword technology was also less advanced, although I know slightly less than bugger all about swords, so I'm sorry I can't provide more information. In any case, Chinese weapons technology, at its height, could be considered the best in the world, although the later dynasties' loss of the technological traditions could be said to have undone earlier gains. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.
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