The Butterfly Sword

The butterfly sword is a unique weapon but before getting into that let us discuss weapons briefly.

In the Chinese art of Kung Fu there are many weapons that are used by masters and students of the art.

The students use these weapons as part of their learning in order to perfect their performance of the style of Kung Fu that they are learning.

Masters of the art of Kung Fu and its styles originally used the weapons to defend their temples, leaders, and people from hostile invaders and the like. In order to use the weapons that are employed in Kung Fu correctly, they require years of practice and perhaps even decades to learn the use of each weapon correctly. This sword is one such weapon taught extensively.

The Butterfly Sword or hudie shuang dao is a short sword or short dao and is originally from the southern part of china.

The sword has a single edge blade that is approximately the length of a human forearm, which makes the task of hiding the weapon inside a boot or within loose sleeves very easy.

Due to the short length of this particular sword when used in close quarters combat maneuverability is greatly increased.

The Butterfly is also usually used as a pair and will often be carried in the same scabbard to indicate a single weapon rather than two weapons in order to surprise an attacker or target.

The sword is used in several different types of Chinese fighting styles.

Some of these styles are known as Wing Chun, Wing Tsun, Lau Gar,and Hung Gar. Within these arts sword combat is thought to be the principle source and the basis from which all other weapons combat is derived.

The reason behind this school of thought amongst those that practice and perform with these swords is that any weapon will follow the same simple basic movements as the swords, which are merely extensions of open hand or empty-hand combat.

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