Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

[Drunk Monk]

DM - in the fight where Michelle Yeoh uses all the different weapons, she ends up with a (bronze?) short staff. Is that a standard weapon?

You mean that knurled rod that Michelle uses before the fight moves to swords? That's a bian. It's usually translated as 'hard whip' which is somewhat literal. We used to carry them. 




It's a common weapon in Chinese art because it is often wielded by door guardians or temple guardian images. It's uncommon as a modern Kung Fu practice, although I do see it from time to time. It's rarely practiced anymore. Lam Sifu had an unusual variation of this that had a guard like a sai, but the same knurled rod. He trained those in pairs. The single ones are extremely heavy (the one pictured above was over 5 lbs, which is a lot for a one-handed weapon). I saw a massive cast iron one on Wudangshan (Wu-Tang mountain) in one of the mountain peak temples. That must've weighed a ton.