mghFond, I'm also researching the Song dynasty army (sometimes spelt Sung) and found the sources in English frustrating. The Ospreys by CJ Peers on Chinese armies are good as far as they go but suffer from a common problem with that series – some of these booklets attempt to cover far too large a period and subject matter, ending up confusing and unsatisfactory. Coverage of the Song army is particularly poor for such an important dynasty in my opinion.
See this thread on TMP for a discussion about this some time ago:
TMP link
With that said, anyone bringing new Chinese sources to the West are to be treasured and on the Benno figure forum Chinese member "lirui" has some great information on stuff probably only available in China. He's got a Ming dynasty army on the go but answered some questions about the Song, recommending a PC game mod covering 13th century China for Medieval Total War 2 that uses excellent sources.
See:
link
The mod is called "Shaoding: The Road to Luoyang" 绍定入洛 and divides the Song into the following four forces:
Song Imperial Court
Liang Huai or Huai River region
JingHu region
Xichuan region
Each region reflects subtle differences in army composition and armour types.
The imperial guard and regular forces have armour – light, medium and heavy and different unit types – long spears, short spears and shield, halberds, sword and shield, Zhan-Ma-Dao ( 2-handed "Horse-Chopping Sword"), archers, crossbows and firelance infantry.
Provincial militia conscripts in each region have similar unit types but wear no or little armour.
Cavalry reflects the same but was supposedly relatively poor. Artillery has the Chinese advances in catapults, bolt-throwers and incendiary weapons.
See the screenshots here for reference:
link
Couple of examples (not great on detail):
Also this article:
link