Here a small sample of an article by Damon Smith about the study of weapons in Chinese Martial Arts. Anyone interested in weapons or chinese style martial arts would benefit from the reading.
It is interesting to note that the Manchu favoured the bow above all weapons, and they were originally skilled archers. The Chinese were also originally skilled archers, but in some circles, particularly those relating to option 2 above, anything Manchu was tainted with a hint of being a traitor or collaborator. This factor may well have led to a reduction of the use of the bow among ethnic Chinese martial artists. So while the Manchu military and their Mongol and Chinese militias continued the practice of archery and other weapons, the native "ingrained" martial arts population among the ethnic Chinese began to reduce somewhat the number of weapons studied and focus on those which could be easily concealed. Favoured weapons included smaller jian swords and dao type blades, as well as weapons which could be claimed to be for another use, such as the staff used for walking or carrying loads, or a shorter-than-battlefield-length spear with the point removed that could be claimed to be a staff. Straight swords (jian) were also often regarded as a symbol of social status and may have been overlooked by the authorities in cases where other types of weapons would not be acceptable. This might be likened to the practice of sword wearing at special events like weddings in a few European countries today, and indeed more so until very recent times. As a symbol of social status, the sword would be acceptable at such an event, but a bow would not be.
Thus, there was a tendency towards smaller size in the dedicated weapons and towards non-specialisation in the larger weapons among the Han. Use of weapons that could only be associated with the battlefield, such as various types of specialised lances, halberds, war-hammers and war-axes, began to disappear among the general population, if not among the Manchu military and associated units.
