Review - Celeste Armoury Sparring Jian

The Specs

• Overall length: 98cm
• Blade Length: 80cm (From rear of guard)
• PoB: 7.5cm (From rear of guard)
• Weight: 863g
• Flex weight: 10.75kg
• Tipping: Rolled (Folded may be more accurate)

Tl;dr A cheap jian that unfortunately doesn’t handle like a jian, nor perform well in sparring.

Overall Rating: 2.25/5

Balance and Handling:

With a Point of Balance only 7.5cm down the blade, this is a very tip light jian, moving around lightly in the hand. Which for the 863g weight is definitely an interesting development. Moving through the cuts in solo practice is easy enough, but lacking in any serious blade presence. Most jian you can feel where the tip is, and where it should be, while this one is what I would describe as “floaty”, where you’re not exactly sure where the tip is. The tip does move around quickly, and will make people who want to do fine movements around the other person’s blade happy. However, it doesn’t feel very commanding in cuts, or solid in parries.

The grip is very squared and blocky, but even with that manages to have a general lozenge shape to it, so it wasn’t uncomfortable to hold or swing, and the guard is actually rather large, providing good protection to the hand. With so much of the weight in the guard and pommel, it does feel substantial in the hand, but unfortunately that feeling doesn’t continue into the blade.

In general, this feels more like a western smallsword, or certain types of rapiers, without the development that they had received, or in the case of smallswords, the optimisation of weight, and handling. If you want light, thrust orientated blades, there’s better options, but for a sword sitting in the 850g+ category, for a sword that is meant to be both cut and thrust, this sword just doesn’t handle right at all.

B&H: 2/5

Construction:

The Celeste is made with a modular construction, blade, guard, grip, pommel, fastened by a nut over a threaded tang. While all the parts fit together solidly, they have a number of openings that make it clear it’s designed to just be economically put together. There is also a distinct mismatch between the blade and the fittings. The fittings are extremely heavily overbuilt for the blade that they’ve put on it, which is an extraordinarily light and thin blade. The rolled tip is better described as folded, there’s no chance of meloning your opponent, and is much closer to a spatulated tip than a normal rolled tip.

Due to the mismatch between the blade and the fittings, the vibrational node doesn’t sit properly within the grip, so on strikes and parries, the hand shock is intense. Making it quite uncomfortable in heavy sparring. Against light blades like itself, it will probably hold up fine, but against the typical swords used in sparring (Yaoyao, Castille, FCI, and various HEMA blades), the long term durability of the blade is in question. It could probably handle having another 50-80g of mass in the blade, pushing the PoB out to 11-13cm and be quite a decent sparring jian. The blade is really letting it down.

Construction: 3/5

Aesthetics:

This jian won’t be winning any style awards, with its very industrial finish, but the people who are wanting a scabbard, and a downturned guard (towards the blade) will likely find it interesting. That said, once you put a tip on it for safety during sparring, it won’t fit into the scabbard, so your mileage may vary there. Overall, not my preferred aesthetic, but for the price, a simple offering.

Sparring Performance:

Sparring with the Celeste jian was not a fun experience. It was a good challenge and forces you into a style of fighting that doesn’t involve engaging with the opponent’s blade, at all. Moving offline, intercepting cuts, avoiding any blade engagement and thrusts are all required (not a preference, not optional, not an ideal, required) when using the Celeste jian. Unfortunately not in the good way described in the manuals (Wudang Jian Pu, Major Methods of Wudang Sword, Kun Wu Sword) where you avoid the green and enter the red (avoid the blade and strike the opponent), but in that blade contact gives substantial hand shock in parries, and hits to the opponent. Hand snipes even when landing didn’t have enough mass behind the hit to even make a sound on hard plastic so would likely not have done fight stopping damage.

Cuts are entirely off the menu with this jian, and thrusts are really the only option that makes tactical sense, but strategies like thrusting in opposition, using jiao (stirring) to gain an opening, or control the blade through the thrust and escape cleanly have no presence or control. Which all means that actually landing thrusts is much harder than it should be. Also, because the point is so narrow on the blade, even with the good flexibility of the blade, the feel of being hit by a thrust is more painful than stiffer, but wider tipped swords.

Sparring Rating: 1/5

Price:

The Celeste Armoury Sparring Jian can be bought from a few places now, direct from Celeste on Taobao for 687 RMB (~140AUD/100USD) plus shipping and local taxes, which puts it in the entry level price bracket. And for this price, is a good starting option if you like jian to be the wushu style handling rather than replicating the handling of antiques.

Price: 3/5

Overall Thoughts:

The Celeste Jian is unfortunately just not a good jian. It feels like it was designed from a spec sheet that says a jian should be used like a smallsword, but weight closer to a kilogram. While it is safe to spar with, it’s not pleasant to spar with, for either person. It’s not a thrusting optimised sword that inspires fear in the way a smallsword does by being so fast because of its weight. And it doesn’t have enough of that presence in the blade to be able to control the opponent’s blade to bully it in the bind.

It’s a shame really, because it’s at an otherwise amazing price point, it could have been a very compelling beginner option. And if Celeste redesigns the blade profile, to give it that blade presence that a 850-900g sword really needs, then it could be a very very good option. But until then, I can’t recommend anyone actually get this, not even for forms training, it is just too different to how a jian should handle to be used as one.