The Pole Pick (Zhua), or Bronze Fist

[DrNgor]

Years ago, I was watching a clip of the opening sequence to 1979's The Odd Couple (probably posted by @SMK) in which a narrator describes the 18 traditional weapons of kung fu. One of the weapons is referred to as the "Ghort" in both the English dub and Subbed version. It's shown to be a pole-arm with a metal weight sculpted into a fist holding a spike at the end. 

This particular weapon interested me, as it looked like it could really jack up you up in a fight, if you were to take the weight straight to the face.

I'm now about 700 Chinese movies in and I have yet to see this particular weapon in action, either in a Venom Mob film, or a Mainland film, or in a recent epic battle film. 

I've looked for information about it, but never found anything definitive.

The Australian Chin Woo School website defined the weapon as Bi (筆), or Pen. Obviously, putting "pen" in Google (both in English and Chinese) will yield lots of non-kung fu results, so that was a bit of a dead end to learn more.

This site calls it the "Zhua", which suggests "Claw." That would suggest that the weapon was a variation of the long-handled claw, which shows up in 1971's The Angry River.

The Wikipedia entry for the Eighteen Arms of Wushu mentions a "pole pick" on three of their lists of the 18 weapons of kung fu, including those from a Ming Dynasty writer *and* the novel The Water Margin, also written during the Ming Dynasty. The weapon is represented by the character 撾 (simplified: 挝). The word is pronounced "Wō"). It means "To Smite", an interestingly enough, the nation of Laos. Hence, the joke name I gave the weapon in title.

So the official name of the weapon is the "Wo," but what is it? That's a subject that's up for debate. So I looked for Chinese websites for more info and found this one.

Using Google translator and my years of experience as an English teacher to Portuguese speakers, I gathered the following:

The author of the article also seeks to know more about the Wo, and comes up with several possibilities. First of all, he points out that the weapon is mentioned in several novels, including the Romance of the Tang Dynasty, in which Li Cunxiao (played by David Chiang in The Heroic Ones) uses it as one of his main weapons. Unfortunately, no description is given, however. Nevertheless, artists over the years got it in their heads to depict it as a pole-arm with the fist-shaped weight and that's what we have today. This is where the author questions it.

He suggests one possibility that it was a long-handled mace. He shoots this down as being improbable, due to the difficulty in wielding a long, top-heavy weapon from a horse and striking directly with the head.

Another possibility is the design we are discussing today. He looks for the reason that it would've been designed like that, even though the weapon itself would function like the obsolete dagger-axe, another traditional wushu weapon. He questions it though, as the Romance already depicts Li Cunxiao as wielding a heavy spear (as David Chiang does in the film), so riding into battle with two pole-arms would be unlikely.

Finally, he points out that some artists suggest a short-handled talon weapon, which we occasionally see in movies. The basis for this supposition is that in the Water Margin, the context of the weapons's mention is a group of soldiers armed with hard whips, or bian, and the "wo". The author suggests that it would be odd for them to be wielding a short weapon and long weapon together, so he supposes that they had a hard whip in one hand and short-handled claw in another. He points out that a claw at the end of a rope or cord (see Two Assassins of Darkness for an example) is known as a "flying wo", so it's reasonable to assume that the regular wo is just a short claw weapon.

Which brings us to his fineal point of the argument: there is no archaelogical evidence for the existence of a pole-arm that ends in a metal weight shaped like a hand holding a pen (or spike), not even as a ceremonial weapon. He points out that no such weapon was found in the Forbidden City, which had collections of weapons dating back to the Ming Dynasty. Thus his hypothesis is that the wo was a weapon, but it wasn't a pole-pick and that depictions of it by artists over the centuries had more to do with their imagination than reality.

 

Edited July 16, 2020 by DrNgor

[Asmo]

Cantodict suggests that such a weapon might still be called 'Zaa' (or 'Zhua' in Mandarin), as the 'Wo' reading is apparently only when transliterating 'Laos'. Interestingly their meaning for 'Zaa' is 'beat' or 'knock at' rather than 'smite'. 

http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/characters/2123/

Fascinating weapon, even if we can't be sure of its provenance.

[Chu Liu Hsiang]

http://greatmingmilitary.blogspot.com/2016/05/exotic-weapons-from-san-cai-tu-hui.html

This site quotes from a late Ming Encyclopedia also including "weapons which were considered exotic even during the Ming period, and hardly anyone used it" and describes it as

Tong Quan (銅拳, lit. 'Bronze fist'): A long handled war pick/war hammer shaped like a fist holding a large nail, or sometimes a brush-shaped spike. In modern Chinese martial arts communities, this weapon is known as Zhua (撾). Incidentally, this weapon is very similar to German Dolchstreithammer.

Edited July 16, 2020 by Chu Liu Hsiang

[ShawAngela]

What an interesting thread !!

I'm always fascinated by the unusual weapons I see in the movies, and this one is among them, but I never took the time to make searches, so, many thanks for sharing.

[paimeifist]

Very interesting @DrNgor, thanks for taking the time to research this stuff and share it with us.

 

Im still looking for that “Iron Hand Staff” that the abbot in the “head butt” chamber comically rubs Gordon Lius chest with in “The 36th Chamber of Shaolin”.

[DrNgor]

8 hours ago, Asmo said:

Cantodict suggests that such a weapon might still be called 'Zaa' (or 'Zhua' in Mandarin), as the 'Wo' reading is apparently only when transliterating 'Laos'. Interestingly their meaning for 'Zaa' is 'beat' or 'knock at' rather than 'smite'. 

My Chinese dictionary at home says that "Zhua" is an alternate pronunciation for the character "Zhao", which means "Claw."

 

3 hours ago, Chu Liu Hsiang said:

This site quotes from a late Ming Encyclopedia also including "weapons which were considered exotic even during the Ming period, and hardly anyone used it" and describes it as

I do find it interesting that a weapon so exotic, even its own time, would find itself on the traditional weapons list above other weapons still used (or at least practiced, with established forms/sets) today.

[Chu Liu Hsiang]

This is a fascinating puzzle.

Found some info/ discussion/ medieval graphics as well as pictures of specimen of the "Dolchstreithammer" (literally, dagger warhammer) on this site

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=15532

Woodcut by Albrecht Dürer, 1504

Talhoffer Fencing Manual, 1459

 

[ShaOW!linDude]

It almost does seem more of a European medieval weapon than Asian, and a good one for use in a melee. 

Regardless, I like it. And I am digging this thread. Very interesting observation and research, @DrNgor.

[DrNgor]

38 minutes ago, ShaOW!linDude said:

Regardless, I like it. And I am digging this thread. Very interesting observation and research, @DrNgor.

Thank you. 

I think I'll do another obscure weapon a little further down the line.

[odioustrident]

Great idea. It would be nice to have more of these types of threads. The only films I can remember showing these weapons for more than a few seconds are Crimson Charm and Fight for Glory.

The claw version is more common. People always seem to remember it in the hands of those white haired twins in Bruce and Shaolin Kung Fu. I included some more pictures.

 

 

[DrNgor]

6 hours ago, odioustrident said:

The claw version is more common. People always seem to remember it in the hands of those white haired twins in Bruce and Shaolin Kung Fu. I included some more pictures.

 

I remember the long-handled claw/zhua from The Angry River, with Angela Mao. I believe it's Pai Ying who wields it.

 

6 hours ago, odioustrident said:

The only films I can remember showing these weapons for more than a few seconds are Crimson Charm and Fight for Glory.

I need to find these films.

[HyperDrive]

[DrNgor]

On 8/2/2020 at 12:48 PM, HyperDrive said:

Those would be the Wolf's Teeth Clubs. That will probably be my third weapons post.

[DragonClaws]

On 7/16/2020 at 3:09 AM, DrNgor said:

Years ago, I was watching a clip of the opening sequence to 1979's The Odd Couple (probably posted by @SMK) in which a narrator describes the 18 traditional weapons of kung fu. One of the weapons is referred to as the "Ghort" in both the English dub and Subbed version. It's shown to be a pole-arm with a metal weight sculpted into a fist holding a spike at the end. 

 

Always enjoy reading your weapons inspired posts/threads, I've got some content which I think will be of interest to you. I've just got to compile the information first, so its easier to digest.

[DrNgor]

On 7/16/2020 at 12:32 PM, Chu Liu Hsiang said:

Found some info/ discussion/ medieval graphics as well as pictures of specimen of the "Dolchstreithammer" (literally, dagger warhammer) on this site

 

Medieval Warlords by Tim Newark suggests that it was the favorite weapon of Czech warlord Jan Žižka, whom I talked about not too long ago on my Facebook page (see below). Most statues and art seem to depict him as wielding a regular mace, though.

Quote

Jan Žižka got his start as a Royal Hunter for the Bohemian court, after which he got involved in a Civil War between the Rosenberg family and the King, in which he sided with the latter. However, he eventually found himself out of work, so he turned to pillaging to support himself. Much like Bertrand de Guesclin, the King of Bohemia dealt with jobless mercenaries by sending them into a foreign war.

In the case of Jan Žižka and other Bohemian/Slavic marauders, they were sent to fight with Poland and Lithuania against the Teutonic Knights. The Teutonic Knights were a group of super-religious warriors who had set themselves up in Poland and started slaughtering the Lithuanians as Pagans, even *after* they had converted to Christianity. Jan Žižka fought at the decisive Battle of Grunwald and did some castle defense jobs before going back to Prague, where he played bodyguard for the Queen.

His life took a turn under the preaching of Jan Hus, who preached against the Papacy, who preached against the fact that the ruling class in Bohemia was German while the Czechs were the lower class, and all sorts of stuff that Žižka liked. Jan Hus was burned at the stake for heresy, having being tricked into an audience by the King of Hungary, also the Holy Roman Emperor at the time.

As this same King also had the legal right to the Bohemian throne should the current king died--and he did--Jan Žižka was determined to not let that happen. And thus we get the Hussite wars, in which the Hussites, or followers of Jan Hus, fight against the King of Hungary and his men, many of whom came from all over Europe after the Pope declared the conflict to be a Crusade.

Some historians call Jan Žižka one of the greatest military minds of all time. He enlisted peasants and taught them how to convert their flails, scythes and hammers into instruments of death, which they quite handily used against better-armored knights. He knew how to position handgunners (being a pole with a small pipe at the end for firing shot) and archers, and employed "armored wagons" which were decked with handguns and cannons and were the forerunners to tanks. Žižka is considered a national hero in the Czech Republic (and Slovakia perhaps?) today.

 

Edited August 25, 2020 by DrNgor

[DrNgor]

Fight for Glory (1980) - Ma Chin-Ku wielding a short-handled pole pick: