Jinmen Knife Factory

Maestro Wu is in the back with the blue shirt

BY CARLY

I tried to cover Julian's eyes again but he shoved my hands away.  We were in a knife factory watching a knife being made.  At the moment we were watching the knife being zapped with a long tool that shoots sparks out of the end and apparently that could make you blind if you look at it too long.  That's why I wanted to cover Julian's eyes, "If you look at that too long you will be like this, 'Ohhh what is this? What is this...????'"  I said the best I could in the jumbled assortment of Chinese words I knew.  We watched as the knife maker, Maestro Wu, put the knife into the oven full of hot, red coals, flattened the blade in a pounding machine, and finally it looked like a knife with a pointy metal stick that, later, they would put the handle onto.  I thought the knife was interesting but I would have rather have been browsing around the shop than watching the knife actually being made.

The finished knife without a handle

The cool thing about the knife making, though, is that they are made of mortar shells.  The knife business has been going for three generations.  In 1937, Wu Chao-Hsi inherited his Dad's knife business.  Later he became known as "Maestro Wu," by carrying his forging furnace on his shoulder around the towns of the small, Taiwanese island of Jinmen, near China's coast.  There was not enough steel, so he decided to take the left over bombshells from the Chinese and Taiwanese conflict and use them instead.  Over one million bombshells were left on the island after the conflict and the Chinese kept bombing Jinmen all the way until 1978.  Fun Fact: You can choose your own bombshell from either inside the shop or bring one in and have him make a knife out of it.

The bombshells

We exited the workroom and entered the shop.  I was kind of relieved to leave the workroom because finally there weren't banging and sizzling noises surrounding us.  There were tons of knives.  There were long sword-like knives, there were tiny pocketknives, and there were thin knives.  There was one knife in particular that most of us liked because it had a fat, oval blade and it was incredibly beautiful.  We all inspected the interesting knives until it was time to go to the ferry.

More bombshe

We had just backed out of the parking lot when my Dad started obsessing over a knife that he had wanted.  "Then go back and buy it!" my Mom said.  "Nah, it's ok," said my Dad.  I could almost feel my Mom rolling her eyes.  I chuckled in the back seat as we drove up onto the highway.