“三尖刀” Three point Spear

二郎神 or Erlang Shen is a Chinese god with a third truth-seeing eye in the middle of his forehead. His weapon of choice is a three pointed spear. Erlang Shen is almost always accompanied by his dog who helps him subjugate evil spirits. In the mythology of this character he and his dog were know for battling evil creatures and bringing them to justice. His path even crosses with Sun Wukong “ The Monkey King” another mythical creature of the Chinese culture. Erlang Shen’s weapon is the main focus here since I will be demonstrating some of the movements associated with it. As always I tried to find a traditional style weapon. This one shown in this video weighs in at just over 12lbs and is very well constructed. This weapon consists of a spear tip with shorter spoked edges mounted on a pole with a pointed tip at the end opposite end. The smaller blades/spokes are deliberately shorter and thick to keep the spear tip from colliding and breaking during battle. Uses of this weapon include the following: divide, punch, drill, lick, dot, collapse, twist, pull and block. The taolu shown here has all the basic movements described above.