Hello "All" and I hope this is of significant help and assistance to anyone. Interested in training with a Jian type sword from the Chinese culture. This week from www.Kultofathena.com Amongst 3 books I received the book titled "The Art of Chinese Swordsmanship" (A manual of Taiji jian) by Zhang Yun (25 years experience). The book is very comprehensive in it,s. 287 pages and costs only 17.95 through KOA.
My wife Gayle (a sword advocate in her own right) has the Hanwei Ming Sword and I have the. Shaolin Wootz Sword, so we are both excited about this book and thoroughly satisfied with it's elaborate content!
I thought this might be helpful to some members.

Bob

This is one of the three best books on Chinese swordsmanship I know of. The other two I'd recommend are Scott Rodell's Chinese Swordsmanship and Zhang Yun's other book, The Complete Taiji Dao (which is, of course, dao rather than jian).

Zhang Yun's jian book can also be obtained here, through the myArmoury.com Bookstore.

Scotts book on cutting is excellent and easy to read. I haven't read the other, but if it's anything like that one it's really good.

These are not really beginner's books since they assume much prior knowledge, but if you're interested in some English translations of historical Chinese swordsmanship texts, see here:

http://www.chineselongsword.com/

Here's a translation of the Wu Bei Zhi, a 400 year old text on the two handed straight sword (shuang shou jian):

http://www.chineselongsword.com/straightswordtranslation.shtml

and here's a translation of the Dan Dao Fa Xuan, also a 400 year old text, on the two handed sabre (miao dao):

http://www.chineselongsword.com/translation.shtml

Personally, as someone with a background in interpreting historical European texts, I love being able to read and work from original treatises rather than modern works. To be sure, nothing quite beats learning from a living tradition, there are just too many subtleties to be able to learn everything from a book... but these historical texts do have the advantage of being from the period when these weapons where in their heyday, without the inevitable distortion, dilution and evolution that occurs over centuries within all living traditions.

Cheers,