"In the deep blue sky hung a golden full moon, and below the sandy ground by the sea, there was an endless green watermelon, and in the middle of it was an eleven- or twelve-year-old boy with a silver ring, holding a steel fork in his hand, and stabbed at a horse with all his might, but the monkey twisted his body and fled from his crotch." In Lu Xun's book "Hometown", the young leap soil is used to guard the melon field, and the weapon against the Yu is the steel fork that can be seen everywhere in the countryside. The fork was originally a production tool, mostly used by people for hunting, fishing and farming, and later gradually evolved into a military weapon, and was listed among the eighteen weapons. Nowadays, he appears in many novels, films and television works.
▲ Fork is a kind of ancient Chinese long instrument, with multiple strands at the top, which belongs to the stabbing weapon. The picture shows the iron fork style excavated in the Ming and Qing dynasties.
Many of the ancient weapons evolved from agricultural tools, because the peasants were one of the main sources of soldiers in the ancient army and the largest component of the ancient army. When there is a shortage of weapons and military resources, the militia will naturally use familiar agricultural tools as weapons. It is also for this reason that after many battlefield battles, the shape of those agricultural tools slowly began to change, becoming more perfect, and developing in the direction of battlefield weapons. After that, the agricultural tools that can be used on the battlefield began to be used in large quantities by the army, and officially evolved from agricultural tools to armament weapons, typical of which are shovels, forks, harrows, etc., of which the most successful evolution is the fork.
▲ The fork that appeared as a farm tool is one of the earliest and most important production tools in ancient China, and people used it to fish and farm to support their families.
The fork is one of the ancient long-thorn weapons and is the most frequently used weapon in the agricultural tool class. Perhaps because of the fishing fork in its prototype, the fork as a weapon was originally used in boat warfare and is rarely recorded in land warfare. Because it is an alien weapon, the use of the fork is unique, and the fork handle should be rotated to rotate when stabbing, which can not only make the opponent difficult to block, but also enhance the lethality. To facilitate grip rotation, the profile of the fork handle is round like a spear, unlike weapons with side branches such as halberds and hook-and-sickle guns, which are octagonal or oval. And in order to ensure that it is smooth, the fork will add a melon hammer at the tail end, otherwise due to the heaviness of the steel fork, the overall head will be heavy and the tail will be light, resulting in strenuous swinging and difficult to use. And you can't use it with both hands to hold the front end, because the fork is shorter than a weapon such as a spear, and if you hold it with both hands, it will make the attack distance shrink further, and you will lose the original long-handled advantage. Some steel forks also have tails similar to melon hammers, which can adjust the center of gravity and have an advantage in facing many enemies alone. After holding a one-man weapon, you can turn the fork head and use the tail hammer as a weapon to hit other opponents.
▲ In the largest peasant uprising in the Qing Dynasty, the Taiping Rebellion, the weapons commonly used in their armies were agricultural tools, and the fork was one of them.
There are many types of forks, which can be divided into two-strand forks according to shape, "three-headed forks" and three-strand forks, as well as "pen holder forks" and "flying harpoons". The prototype of the two-strand fork is a farm tool fork used for fork grass or straw, also known as a horn fork or a dragon whisker fork. This fork can not only be used in close combat, but also has considerable lethality when thrown.
▲Double-stranded dragon whisker fork system.
Three-strand fork. The fork head is in the shape of a mountain, the fork branches are mostly quadrangular, round or triangular, and although the fork head has no blade, it is very sharp and the stabbing force is extremely powerful. Due to its three-strand design, it can be balanced by force, not easy to damage, and even if one of the strands is damaged and deformed, it will have little impact on normal use.
▲ The three-strand fork in the fork, commonly known as the tiger fork.
A flying harpoon with five strands at the front is also known as a five-toothed flying harpoon. In order to increase the lethality, the five strands are equipped with barbs, which are difficult to get rid of after being forked onto the enemy. Some will add some material to the barb, such as poison or gold water, etc., in the ancient times when the medical conditions were backward, they were hooked by such a fork, and the damage can be imagined.
▲ Five-strand flying harpoon, which is said to have evolved from a fishing fork.
Although as a military weapon, the fork appeared later than various other weapons, in the weapon circle is a veritable junior, in the Song and Yuan Dynasties, the fork is almost invisible on the battlefield, all occupied by predecessors such as guns and spears. However, in the Song Dynasty, although the fork was not used much, there was a flying fork method, which was said to be created by Zong Ze's partial general, Zhang Chun. Zhang Chun is a native of Huaxian County, as powerful as a fierce tiger, the flying fork skill is outstanding, a hundred hairs and a hundred, without exception, can fly forks to injure people twenty steps away, so that the soldiers of the Song Army at that time are scrambling to learn, "Water Margin" in the flying gun of the Hua Xianghu Gong Wang, its prototype may be from Zhang Chun's inspiration.
▲ Zhang Chun founded the Flying Fork Method, as a traditional Chinese martial art, which has been passed down to the world since the Song Dynasty. Pictured above is a modern flying fork performance.
Later, in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the reputation of forks suddenly increased, especially in the Ming Dynasty, where there were frequent occurrences of Wukou, forks can be described as battlefield protagonists. Qi Jiguang, a famous general against the powerful long knife of the Wukou, used the fork as one of the prototypes to invent the boring palladium to restrain the long knife, which once became the main weapon against the Wukou.
▲ Boring and palladium is the main weapon in the Qi family's army, and it is also the basic weapon for Qi Jiguang to invent the Mandarin Duck Array, which is called "the most advantageous in the army." ”
Boring palladium is flexible to use, coupled with multiple strands at the front end, it not only has a length advantage in opposing short weapons such as swords, but also can block the sword and block the actions of the sword user, which can be said to be the natural nemesis of the sword and is a common weapon in Qi Jiguang's army. After Qi Jiguang developed boring and palladium, Wukou repeatedly lost battles, one of the reasons was that it was difficult to use the Knife against the fork and palladium weapons in Qi Jiguang's army, so that it was greatly defeated on the battlefield. In the New Book of Ji Xiao, it is said that "whoever tries to fork palladium, shilling self-made, hand and hand footwork are one, and the single person is compared with a long gun and a short knife." Can stand long guns, knives, sticks, out of the killer for the cook. "The forks and palladium mentioned in it are horse forks and boring palladium. The horse fork was also the main weapon of the anti-Wu period, and the spearhead was flanked with double edges and four corners, resembling boring. When used, it has the advantage of sticks and hooks, except for the side of the grip, the remaining three sides can be used as weapons to attack the enemy, which is very popular in the coastal areas around Shandong. The Ming Dynasty soldier book "Wu Beizhi" states that he "can fork people on the top and fork horses on the bottom".
▲ The third in the picture is boring palladium, the fifth is a horse fork, and the seventh is a wolf, all of which are commonly used blades in Qi Jiguang's anti-Wu period.
Due to Qi Jiguang's resistance to the Wu, during the Ming and Qing dynasties, fork weapons were not only frequently used on the battlefield, but also appeared repeatedly in various novels. For example, the scorpion spirit and the yellow wind monster and many small demons in "Journey to the West", You Junda in the Sui and Tang commentaries, Xie Zhen who fights tigers in "Water Margin", the two brothers of Xie Bao, and the three brothers of the Ruan clan who play fishing are all masters of using forks, and the fork is therefore one of the eighteen weapons, which has been passed down as a martial arts instrument to this day.