While many Songshan Shaolin schools use wushu type blades, classical Shaolin can easily adapt to something more sturdy and if they wish to secure their hold on being traditional, now is the time to adapt. It is my firm belief that if the form cannot be done with a traditional weapon, it's not traditional. And by traditional, I mean that the weapon is tough enough to punch through a car door. Car doors are lighter than medieval armor. Unfortunately, it's very difficult to control for modern wushu entering into traditional rings. Here in the Bay Area, it has discouraged the traditional community away from competition. Heck, when I was competing here (and this was back when mammoths still roamed the earth) I remember losing to modern wushu players in traditional divisions. Drawing that distinction is very difficult. With weapons, it's very challenging, but the current standard is this 'blade must support it's own weight' rule. It's only effective at weeding out the blatantly wushu style blades. If you have a sword with a really light hilt, it can be supported by a pretty light blade. In fact, that's what our Stainless Steel Kung Fu Broadsword is - that would pass the standards for a traditional weapon in competitions, but it couldn't punch through a car door. Ironically, our Wushu Competition Tai Chi Sword can support its own weight too, so that's the flip side of the issue.

In our class, we practice Meihua Dao, which is showcased in the current issue (Shaolin Special #12 - Shaolin Plum Blossom Broadsword By Shi Yanguang, with Zhao Xiaohu). There's a dearth of traditional weapons at our school, so we practice it with bokken. Some of us practice with suburito too, for the extra training. Note that wooden dao will meet the requirements of traditional weapons in our tournament too.

BTW, there's a discussion of traditional swords happening now on the Question for Gene , but just stop reading before hskwarrior totally derails it.