"There are numerous folding knives on the market, but this is the first and only one born and bred in Taiwan, and this is the only shop that sells them."
The Shihlin Night Market in northern Taipei is a popular spot for the young and not-so-young to gather after work. Thronged with visitors nearly every evening, the busy bazaar offers all kinds of snacks plus a wide assortment of clothing, furniture, and CDs. After their stomachs and shopping bags have both been stuffed, most visitors consider that there is no reason to linger. But those who are willing to explore a bit further may discover that the Shihlin district has another attraction.
On Tapei Road, a narrow street just a few minutes' walk from the busiest section of the night market, lies the small Kuo Ho Chi cutlery shop founded by Kuo Ho in 1869. For more than 130 years in virtually the same location, the shop has been making a special folding pocketknife originally known as the Pachihlan knife--but called the Shihlin knife ever since Pachihlan was renamed Shihlin after the end of the Japanese colonial period in 1945. "There are numerous folding knives on the market, but this is the first and only one born and bred in Taiwan, and this is the only shop that sells them," says thirty-three-year-old Kuo Ming-jang, the great-great-grandson of the founder.
Kuo Ho, who learned from a Cantonese craftsman the basics of making a piece of metal into a blade, was the creator of a unique pocketknife featuring an eggplant-shaped handle and bamboo-leaf-shaped blade. Why he was inspired to come up with this particular design is unknown, but the shape of the handle furnishes a superior grip and the blade is both attractive and highly effective for cutting, paring, and even shaving. Three major components--a buffalo-horn handle with brass liner, a brass lock-back (the piece of metal at the top of the handle that releases the blade from a locked position), and an iron-clad steel blade--are assembled with brass pins to form the folding knife. Although iron rusts, Kuo Ming-jang explains, the cladding protects the hard-but-brittle steel just as the wooden shaft in a pencil protects the lead inside, and it therefore increases the blade's durability.
The Pachihlan folding knife won several knifemaking contests during the Japanese occupation. Although considered rather expensive, they were very popular due to their quality, durability, and convenience to carry. Up until the 1970s and early 1980s, they were still commonly used by all kinds of people from fishermen to betel-nut vendors. "It was in my father's tool bag--he was a mechanic at the Directorate General of Telecommunications," recalls twenty-six-year-old knife collector Yang Shih-huang. "I saw it used by farmers when there was still plenty of farmland near my home in Panchiao, and it was used by almost all the wet-market vendors. It was indispensable."
At the peak of the business, some twenty shops along Tapei Road made Shihlin pocketknives. Kuo Ming-jang's grand father and his four brothers were all in the trade, and the supply still could not meet the demand. But rapid industrialization caused major changes in the market. After mass-produced, machine-made knives started to appear, the handmade products became less price-competitive, and many knife craftsmen turned to other trades to make a living. When Kuo Wen-cheng, Kuo Ming-jang's father, was running the shop, Kuo Ho Chi had become the only cutlery store left on Tapei Road.
Being the only supplier of handmade Shihlin pocketknives, however, did not make life easier. Kuo Ming-jang notes that an experienced craftsman like him, using power tools, can make three folding knives a day at most, but a small factory can produce at least three hundred. "What's worse is that there wasn't any such thing as copyright protection more than a hundred years ago, so anyone can mass produce this folding knife with its eggplant-handle and bamboo-leaf-blade," he says. "The average consumers can't tell the difference between the handmade and machine-made versions in quality and craftsmanship, but they can tell the difference in price, and they see no reason to buy the more expensive one." To survive, Kuo Ho Chi started to make kitchen knives in the 1970s, and it has been selling various imported cutlery items such as scissors and collectors' knives since about 1990.
Unlike the first three generations of owners who worked until well into their seventies, Kuo Wen-cheng opted for early retirement nine years ago at the age of fifty-two. Kuo Ming-jang says that a major reason for his father's decision was a shift in the market brought about by the introduction of the hobby of knife collecting to Taiwan. "Cutlery collectors want more--a little artistic touch or better blades, for example--but that didn't make much sense to father, who believed that a knife is a tool and only needs to be sharp and durable. He didn't want to compromise, but in light of the customer feedback, he felt that if he was no longer making something the market wanted, he should retire."
Part of the family tradition was that the craft should be taught only to sons, though not all the male offspring had the same capability or interest. Kuo Wen-cheng taught the art of knifemaking to all three of his sons, but one left the business because looking at the flames in the furnace strained his poor eyesight and another quit simply from lack of interest. So at the age of twenty-four, second son Kuo Ming-jang took over as the proprietor--the fifth-generation of Kuos to run the shop. Taking a more flexible view than had his father, the young Kuo concluded that sticking with the century-old business formula would be a recipe for disaster. In terms of sheer practicality, for example, he saw that the family's traditional single-blade pocketknife would be hard put to compete against the increasing number of knives on the market with multiple functions, sometimes in the dozens. To hone the Shihlin knife's competitive edge, the new boss started to add some "collectability" to the product by offering a broader selection of sizes and materials. Now customers can choose among twelve sizes--from eight-tenths of an inch to six inches in length. The old models with buffalo-horn handles and the easy-to-rust iron-clad blades are still available, but new versions have also been added, retaining the basic original design but with options of plastic or wood handles as well as blades made of different qualities of steel.
The top-of-the-line model is fitted with a blade made of Damascus steel, and the metal shows the natural patterns found only on steel of very high grade. The process is to heat up a piece of steel until it is red hot, hammer it to a certain length and width, and then fold it in half. As the process is repeated, the properties of the steel are changed gradually until the desired quality is reached. Different methods of folding and hammering result in different patterns on the final products.
Depending on the size, type of handle, and the level of quality of the steel, the price tag on a Shihlin pocketknife now ranges between NT$1,200 and $25,000 (US$34.29 and $714.29). These are considered to be quite reasonable prices compared with those of brand-name collectors' knives. But in addition to price, cutlery collectors judge the value of a piece from several other perspectives such as the detail work of the craftsmanship and the quality of steel. Yang Shih-huang, whose collection covers many brand-name knives such as Al Mar and Cold Steel, regards Kuo Ming-jang's Shihlin knives as every bit the equal of the output from those famous manufacturers.
For their raw material, Kuo Ming-jang points out, most knifemakers now buy what the steel mills designate as cutlery steel, possessing properties especially suitable for knives. Some use the steel as it is, while others employ various heat treatment or refining skills to change the microstructure of the steel to meet individual requirements. "The harder the metal, the sharper--but more brittle--the blade," Kuo explains. "The key is to reach a balance between hardness and elasticity, and individual craftsmen have different ideas about where that point of balance should come." On the average, craftsmen make their knives with a Rockwell Hardness between 56 and 62, and Kuo's blades are between 58 and 60. (Rockwell Hardness is a measure of resistance to penetration when material is exposed to a pointed load. The higher the number, the harder the material. Victorinox, the manufacturer of the Swiss Army Knife, uses steel measuring 55 to 56 on the Rockwell Hardness scale.)
After spending eleven to twelve hours a day on the craft since he graduated from junior high school eighteen years ago, Kuo Ming-jang is confident about his skills and his products. Exquisite craftsmanship and the wider range of products, however, have not brought much financial reward. Hsieh Chiu-wei, Kuo Ming-jang's wife, who used to sell imported cutlery at a Taipei department store, says that Taiwan lacks the kind of environment in which a craftsman can make a living by producing Shihlin knives alone. "Foreign cutlery craftsmen have the opportunity to gain both fame and wealth," she says. "But knife craftsmen in Taiwan, though they are just as dedicated, don't receive much recognition either from the government or the rest of society. They need to depend pretty much on themselves for survival."
Kuo Ming-jang himself does not seem to be bothered much by the limited financial gain. "It takes this much time to reach this level of quality and make this much money, and there's no other way unless you're willing to lower the quality in exchange for higher productivity," Kuo says. "Kuo Ho Chi has been giving quality first priority for more than 133 years, and I intend to uphold that tradition." If all goes well, Kuo Ming-jang will be able to keep the tradition going for another several decades. But what then? Kuo and his wife do not yet have any children. Even when he does, Kuo says he will probably not encourage them to learn a craft that may leave them barely able to feed their families. For the century-old Taiwanese blade, it seems that the future no longer looks very sharp.