In every Chinese sword-fighting novel or movie, aside from swordsmen who fly through the treetops and appear wherever justice needs to be done, there is always a priceless, magically endowed sword. For most readers and members of the audience, these swords are probably just props with little significance, but for Kuo Chang-hsi (郭常喜), who forged the Green Destiny Sword and nearly 400 other weapons for Taiwanese director Ang Lee’s (李安) 2000 hit movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, they are an important part of Chinese culture. “The sword no longer has much use in real life, but it played an important role on the battlefield for a very long time,” Kuo says. “It’s part of the culture that needs to be preserved.”
When Kuo was born in 1944, he became the eldest son of a family of blacksmiths in Kaohsiung City, southern Taiwan. He recalls that when he was growing up, temples and blacksmith shops were the two central pillars of every community, as the former provided people with spiritual comfort and the latter daily tools. “Working as a smith didn’t make my grandfather and father rich,” Kuo says, “but by forging farming tools and kitchen knives, they managed to put food on the dinner table.” As there were no power hammers in those days, the work had to be done by at least two men, with one doing the hammering and the other maneuvering the piece of red-hot iron. The young Kuo started helping out in his father’s shop at the age of 7 and began working there full time when he graduated from elementary school. “I didn’t want to be a blacksmith, but I guess it was not my choice to make,” Kuo says. “My father threatened to chain me to the forge if I tried to run away.”
Forging everyday tools was very boring, but Kuo managed to find a diversion in filling orders for props used by the Song Jiang Battle Array, a folk performance that involves acrobatics, elements of folk religion and martial arts and takes place each spring in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District. Participants in the array dress in traditional garb and parade around with their designated weapons. Although the shop received only intermittent orders for such props, working on them still sparked the young Kuo’s interest in Chinese “cold” weapons, or weapons that are not powered by fire, gunpowder or other combustible materials.
After a few years, Kuo was capable of producing the entire set of weapons used by the Song Jiang Battle Array. According to Lin Chih-long (林智隆), an associate professor of history at Meiho University in Pingtung County, southern Taiwan and a consultant on cold weapons for Taipei’s National Palace Museum, Kuo is one of the few blacksmiths who still know how to forge the dozens of different weapons used by the Song Jiang Battle Array. “Old craftsmen have retired or died off,” Lin says. “I’m concerned that the battle array, which is an important part of Taiwanese culture, could disappear if the weapons are no longer available.”
An exhibition of Song Jiang Battle Array weapons. Kuo is one of the few swordsmiths who can still produce a complete set of weapons for the array. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)
In line with the tradition holding that a family business should be inherited by the eldest son, Kuo became owner of the family shop at the age of 20 when his father passed away. Business volume for traditional blacksmith shops started declining in the mid-1960s, however, as mass-produced metal products made inroads in the market. Kuo therefore began looking into ways to diversify his product line to generate more income. He began making props for sword-fighting movies and television series, which became popular in the 1970s, as well as turned out industrial cutlery for food processing factories in the 1980s. In 1990, he moved the family shop to Xingda Port in Kaohsiung City in a bid to draw business from fishermen and fishmongers. “Traditional blacksmith shops closed down because there was no longer a market for their products,” Lin says. “Kuo has been able to survive because he’s willing to make changes to meet market demand.”
“Lost” Technique
Kuo’s new ventures brought in a steady income, some of which he used to collect cold weapons. Initially, he focused on Japanese swords, as they are regarded as being of the highest quality and reference materials on them are plentiful. Kuo made several trips to Japan to gain a deeper understanding of the blades and the techniques for making them. “One thing I learned there was that the Japanese regard sword culture as an important cultural asset and do their best to preserve it,” he says. “The irony is that Japanese sword-making technique actually originated in China, while people in China consider the technique lost.”
Knowledge of sword-making has been under pressure in mainland China for centuries. Kuo explains that in order to reduce the risk of rebellion, many emperors of ancient China did not allow civilians to make or own weapons, which greatly limited production. Of the weapons that were made, many were later taken as souvenirs by American, European and Japanese troops during their various expeditions in mainland China in the 1900s. Most of those that remained were melted down during the late 1950s, when the mainland Chinese government initiated the Great Leap Forward, an economic and social campaign in which the public was exhorted to produce steel in “backyard” smelters.
In the late 1980s, Kuo began thinking about aligning his enthusiasm for making swords with his interest in the traditional Chinese weapons used for the Song Jiang Battle Array. He thus sold his collection of more than 50 Japanese swords and began focusing on Chinese cold weapons. Although such weapons are much rarer than those made by the Japanese, Kuo has still managed to assemble an impressive collection over the years.
Kuo and professor Lin Chih-long worked together to recreate the turtle-shell patterns on the blade of the Gan Jiang Sword (67 centimeters) and the wavy patterns of the Mo Ye Sword (63 centimeters)—a pair of legendary weapons from the Spring and Autumn Period. (Photo Courtesy of Kuo Chang-hsi)
Meanwhile, he started work to recover the lost technique of forging Chinese swords. “When it comes to preserving a cultural item, it’s not only about collecting a few examples, but also about finding out how they were made,” he says.
The techniques involved in forging a sword are very different from those a blacksmith uses to make implements like a hoe or kitchen knife. To begin with, superb skill is required to forge the straight ridge lines that run along the length of each side of the blade. As blades have a diamond-shaped cross section, similar ability is required to form their four symmetrical primary bevels. For Kuo, however, forging those features was actually not too difficult, thanks to his experience of making Song Jiang Battle Array weapons and movie props.
Instead, the hardest part was making swords with the right combination of characteristics. Kuo explains that a sword needs to be light and thin enough to allow for easy swordplay, but strong enough to withstand heavy impacts. While the Japanese achieve that combination by wrapping hard carbon steel around a softer iron core, Kuo believes the ancient Chinese used Damascus steel to serve the goal. He explains that Damascus steel is actually made from two different types of steel that are hot-forged together to form a single billet. The billet is then hammered and folded repeatedly to remove impurities. Because the different colors of the two kinds of steel make patterns in the completed blade, Damascus steel is also known as pattern-welded steel.
By taking advantage of the qualities offered by the two kinds of steel, Damascus blades can be tough and resistant to shattering, but also capable of being honed to a very fine edge. The tricky parts of making a Damascus blade are selecting which kinds of steel to use and knowing how to fold them to gain the desired results.
In terms of preserving Chinese sword culture, Kuo believes that continuing to use ancient forging techniques is as important as collecting fine examples of the craft. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)
Collector’s Item
After several years of trial and error, Kuo succeeded in producing his first batch of Damascus steel in 1993. He started using the steel to make kitchen knives and other tool knives, but those smaller blades did not find a very warm reception in the market, and it often took Kuo several months to sell one. “People tend to buy knives to use, not to collect,” he says. The problem was that Kuo’s handmade knives were very much collectors’ items, with prices to match. Currently, for example, the least expensive item he offers is a Damascus steel hunting knife with a 6-centimeter blade selling for NT$3,300 (US$110). It was not until the advent of the 2000s, which brought the movie Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and an increase in the number of knife enthusiasts in Taiwan, that Kuo was able to develop a steady client base for his blades.
The year 1998 saw Kuo finally succeed in developing a technique that allows him to control the intermingled pattern of Damascus blades without compromising blade quality. His Fengxixiang Sword, which took seven years to forge, provides a good example of his mastery of the technique, as each of the sword’s four bevels carries a different pattern.
In addition to making his own Damascus designs, Kuo wanted to use the technique to reproduce some of the famous swords of Chinese history. That was not so easy to do, however, given that most Chinese swords have disappeared under the onslaught of history, and academics have produced few reference materials on them. Most of the research Kuo came across focused on early bronze swords made during the Western Chou dynasty (1046–771 B.C.). He found little on iron and steel swords, which first appeared in the Spring and Autumn Period (771–476 B.C.).
Lin, however, had extensive knowledge of Chinese swords and was able to translate descriptions of ancient blades into designs for Kuo to forge. The blacksmith and historian worked together to reproduce the Gan Jiang Sword and Mo Ye Sword, two legendary blades from the Spring and Autumn Period. While Gan Jiang (干將) and his wife Mo Ye (莫邪) were noted swordsmiths of the period, no archeological evidence of their swords has ever been found. A book from the period, however, describes the Damascus steel of a Gan Jiang sword as having turtle-shell patterns and a Mo Ye sword as having wavy patterns. Lin and Kuo relied on such descriptions and their knowledge of the basic design of swords of the era to recreate the pair of legendary blades, for which Kuo received a work of excellence award at the 2009 Taiwan Craft Awards.
Blades from Taiwan’s indigenous tribes on display at the Kuo Chang-hsi Museum of Weaponry Art. The differences in blade design from tribe to tribe reflect variations in environment and use. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)
Kuo held several exhibitions of items he had collected and recreated in galleries and museums around Taiwan before setting up the Kuo Chang-hsi Museum of Weaponry Art near his shop in 2002, with Lin volunteering as the curator. “Where I grew up, cultural preservation wasn’t something people cared about,” Kuo says. “But maybe because of the legends about Chinese swordsmen every kid was familiar with when I grew up, I’ve always believed that we have a sword culture that’s worth preserving.”
In addition to Kuo’s collected and recreated Chinese cold weapons, the museum has a section demonstrating the process of making Damascus steel, one on all the weapons used by the Song Jiang Battle Array, and another on aboriginal knives which, according to Kuo, differ in design from tribe to tribe. Mountain tribes, for example, prefer curved blades, he says, as they are easier to carry and do not slip out of the sheath easily. In 2003, Kuo’s museum was designated by the Council for Cultural Affairs (now Ministry of Culture) as a Kaohsiung Local Culture Museum.
A static museum, however, can only do so much to preserve sword culture. For Kuo, passing along the technique of sword-making is of even more importance. He is more than willing to share the technique with those who are interested, and previously ran a workshop at the National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute in Nantou County to teach the craft.
Over the years, many young people—including university design students and one artist from the United Kingdom—have shown interest. Except for one apprentice who has learned under Kuo for nearly five years, however, none has managed to stay for more than three months. “Power hammers have replaced human muscles, but I guess working at a hot forge all day is still too much for most of today’s young men,” Kuo says.
Now approaching 70 years old, Kuo has spent more than half a century at the forge, but has no intention of retiring. Every morning at five o’clock, he puts on his protective apron, fires up the furnace and starts to work. “I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep doing this,” Kuo says. “But you know how the expression goes—strike while the iron is still hot.”
Write to Jim Hwang at cyhuang03@mofa.gov.tw