The bagua jian or straight sword is an extremely long weapon and people don't carry them around much. In August 2008, Liu Laoshi was teaching the jian form to his Greek student. Some days I saw him using the somewhat shorter taiji jian, and occasionally he improvised with a folding fan. I didn't get to see him using a bagua jian until September in Tokyo, and it was worth waiting for.
I was struck by a comment of his that the bagua jian is not used like other swords, in which the arms do most of the cutting work. Instead, the turning motions of the entire body move (drag?) the sword along the opponent's body. The idea is to maneuver the sword into the proper location, then letting my body motions - those characteristic twists and turns of ba gua zhang - do the work. There are very few hacking or slicing motions, though there are numerous thrusts and blocks.
Curiously, there are many parallel motions between this form and the yuan yang yue form he taught me last year. Yue are a pair of much smaller, multi-bladed and curved weapons completely different from the jian in appearance, yet they can be used with very similar motions, another lesson in the inter-connectedness of the empty-handed and weapons forms of ba gua zhang.
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