I just finished reading
Tai Pan, by James Clavell, and in it he describes several characters as using a weapon known as "fighting irons".
Unfortunately, he doesn't describe them very well, and a google search isn't revealing much.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&c...y&start=0&sa=N
I had to filter out the words "shirt", "tshirt", "dodger", "fork", and "Jeremy", which gave me only 200 hits, including 2 websites about weapons laws in Hong Kong which say that "fighting irons" are illegal.
Does anyone know what these weapons are?
I don't think they're either the 7 or 9 section whip chains, by the way. What little description Clavell does give suggests that they're heavier and have less sections. Also, he has European characters using them, and I doubt any 19th century Englishmen studied wushu.