Shengbiao
绳镖 · shéng biāo
Literally: rope dart
Also known as: sheng biao, jōhyō
A Chinese weapon of a metal point on a rope three to five metres long, which the fighter spins and shoots with hands, feet and neck.
Quick Facts
ChinaAbout the weapon
Shengbiao (绳镖), the rope dart, is a metal point fastened to the end of a rope 3 to 5 m long. The earliest known mention of it as a separate weapon is a drawing in a 19th-century book about street vendors in Beijing. The same family of weapons includes the meteor hammer liuxing chui. In Japanese the weapon is called jōhyō. The point is of a hard material, usually iron or steel, and tends to be conical, three-sided or five-sided; near the base it has a ring or a hole for attaching the rope. In older versions the rope ran through a bamboo tube, which the fighter held in the stronger hand as a grip sliding along the rope's length. The rope was traditionally twisted from Chinese cordage and coated with wax; today it is usually of softer synthetic material and dusted with talc. Less common variants replace the rope with a fine chain. The technique relies on spinning, shooting and retracting the point; besides both hands, the rope is also guided with the arms, legs and neck. In some systems mastering the chain whip and the changquan style is a prerequisite for learning it. For performances, versions made for setting alight and heads fitted with LED lights have also appeared.
Parts of the weapon
- Point
- Chain or rope