Swords are tools. With the exception of the bejewelled peices that the upper class bore, their designs are based on practicality. So it's a very tough argument to make - that historical swords are 'wrong' - especially in the modern day. What I've always found fascinating about Chinese sword guards is that they are relatively consistent. The same is true for Japanese swords, but I could envision that a little better, given Japanese culture. Chinese culture is all about diversity - you can see it in the vast array of weapons, but not so when you only look at sword guards.

If you take European swords, you can see a Darwinian evolution pattern across history. As the steel gets better, the swords get slimmer. They evolve from crude bronze clubs to very refined point weapons. The invention of the bell guard is very novel. You can see some of that development in Chinese guards, particularly in the south, with the cross bar on shorts swords like butterfly knives, but that could be written off to cross fertilization since it echoes the pattern of a naval boarding sword.

I'm curious what everyone thought about Master Hsu's applications techniques that he used to demonstrate his assertion.