Three-section staff and other possible Chinese cousins to the nunchuck

This March is Nunchuck Month at Martial Journal so I wanted to add my two pennies to the subject. Earlier this month Jaredd talked about the history of the nunchaku. In his article Jaredd mentions a Chinese version of the nunchuck, one that I was not familiar with. Here I want to focus on a few other similar weapons from Chinese martial arts that share many similarities.

Three-section staff

First and foremost, let’s see nunchuck’s big cousin. Might even be an older brother, considering there is a Japanese version of this weapon.  The three-section staff, san jie gun (三节棍), in Mandarin. Also known as coiling dragon staff or pan long gun (蟠龍棍). As the name suggests it consists of three short staves linked either by chains or rope. As with many Chinese weapons it’s origins are a bit shrouded in legend. It is of course associated with the Shaolin Temple but not exclusive to it. The earliest mentions of the weapon date it’s origins to the Song dynasty (960-1279 AD). You can find it in many styles, from the north and south of China.

It’s a very versatile weapon. Though it is visually quite different from the Japanes nunchaku, they share some uses.  You can hold it from one stick and use it as a sort of whip. You can use it as a flail, by holding one of the side staves on one hand, the center one on the othter and attacking with the remaining. It also serves as a short staff by folding the three sticks together. Also you can wield the two side sticks, one in each hand, similar to escrima, using the center one to block or parry if necessary. Despite its complexity, or because of it, it’s clearly a weapon for civilian use, rather than military. You can see one of the best examples of the sanjiegun’s vesatility in this scene from the movie Heroes of the East (aka Shaolin Challenges Ninja).

Two-section staff

This weapon is a bit more obscure and from what I’ve seen there’re a couple of different versions. The two-section staff, called changxiao bang  or shaozi gun in Mandarin, is for all intents and purposes a two handed flail. The main difference between this weapon and the nunchuck or the sanjiegun is that the sections are asymetrical. The handle has the length of a staff. On one end it has a short chain and a very short stick attached to it. There are references of flails like this as far as back as the warring states. According to a Song dynasty military manual it was a preferred weapon of the nomadic tribes of the north.

The use of this one is fairly obvious, like a flail you can use it to hit opponents with the stick at end of the chain. It’s useful for keeping the distance and the flexible part adds extra momentum to the strike. It’s kind of a longer nunchaku that you can also use as a staff when needed.  Some illustrations show different chain lengths. That might indicate that it was also used to disarm oponents by wrapping the chain around a weapon. There is one variation that I’ve seen very little in which the shorter staff is almost as long as the handle, basically a giant nunchuck. This might be a more recent invention but don’t quote me on that.

Seven-section whip and similar weapons

Finally we get to the most distant cousin of the nunchuck. The chain whip consists of a series of linked metal sections. A sort of handle, followed by short metal sticks each connected to the following by a couple of chain links, the last segment ending in a sharp point. The chain whip has always an odd number of sections. As little as three, but generally either seven or nine segments (I’ve heard of five also). You can find this weapons in northern and southern styles with varying lengths. The chain whip is very popular in modern wushu, the gymnastics like Chinese sport. It takes serious skill to master but it’s one showy weapon for exhibitions. The history of the weapon is not clear. There is an ancient weapon called whip, bian in Mandarin, but it was more like a truncheon or an iron club.

Again this weapon seems easy to understand. It’s a whip with a pointy end. You can use it to strike or slash and hurl it to pierce an oponent. So far it’s no so different from other kinds of whips like the rope dart or even the meteor hammer. But this is a shorter whip with metal links and sections. This allows you to use it to block weapons, especially swords, knives and similarly sharp items. Check out Legendary Weapons of China where we can see Lau Kar Leung using a three section chain whip.

Final words

I hope you enjoyed this post. I’m by no means an expert on any of the aforementioned weapons (I prefer them without moving parts), but I enjoy going all nerdy about kung fu. If you have any question, correction or anything else you might want to add, please leave a comment.

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Ezequiel Davidovich Caballero

I'm from Argentina, Spanish is my mother tongue, and English my second language. I've been into martial arts for as long as I can remember. I've been doing Hung Sing Choy Li Fat (aka Choy Lee Fut or Choy Lay Fut, same thing) for almost two decades now with bits of other Chinese styles in it. Hope you like what I write.

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