Hammer and tongs: Chinese village leads hand-made wok revival

Record ID: 1361691

  • Title: Hammer and tongs: Chinese village leads hand-made wok revival
  • Date: 25th October 2018
  • Summary: DATIAN VILLAGE, ENSHI CITY, HUBEI PROVINCE, CHINA (RECENT) (REUTERS) FIRE IN FORGE TANG YUNGUO, 58-YEAR-OLD BLACKSMITH, SMOKING PIPE VARIOUS OF TANG MELTING WOK PLATE IN THE FORGE TANG TAKING PLATE OUT FOR HAMMERING VARIOUS OF TANG HAMMERING WOK PLATE (SOUNDBITES) (Mandarin) TANG YUNGUO, 58, LOCAL BLACKSMITH, SAYING: "The edge of the wok must be round and the bottom must b
  • Embargoed: 8th November 2018 03:32
  • Keywords: China iron woks handmade blacksmiths entrepreneur
  • Location: DATIAN VILLAGE, ENSHI CITY, HUBEI PROVINCE, CHINA
  • City: DATIAN VILLAGE, ENSHI CITY, HUBEI PROVINCE, CHINA
  • Country: China
  • Topics: Society/Social Issues,Editors' Choice
  • Reuters ID: LVA00193KB8M1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: In a small village in central China's Hubei province, 58-year-old local blacksmith Tang Yunguo is smoking his pipe while melting a piece of iron plate in a forge that's in intense heat of up to 1,600 degrees centigrade.
    Trained by a master who learnt the trick at a steel factory during Chairman Mao's Great Leap Forward era in the 1950s, Tang has been a professional since he was 13 years old.
    Tang is one of the 12 blacksmiths employed by 27-year-old Tian Huan, an entrepreneur, who hopes to revive old ways of wok-making and tap into growing demand for niche, handmade goods from China's young, affluent consumers.
    The woks are made from scratch after three of hammering and polishing. Tang said that the difference on thickness of each hand-made wok is normally within one millimetre.
    Tian started his business selling handmade iron versions of the famous round-bottom cooking pan three years ago in Datian, near his home village in central Hubei province, inspired during a visit to a Japanese artware shop in Beijing, where he saw gift items made from traditional ironwork that were popular with young Chinese consumer.
    Tian, whose great-grandfather was a blacksmith, owns six shops in Datian, a village of 3,000 people about 1,267 km. (787 miles) from the capital Beijing.
    He sells 300 to 400 woks per month via the ubiquitous mobile platform WeChat, for roughly between 600 yuan ($87.94) to 1,000 yuan each, up to nearly triple the price of a machine-made wok.
    Buoyed by their rising spending power, Chinese consumers in their 20s and 30s are willing to spend more to buy what they consider to be unique or higher-quality products.
    "None of the stuff we bought when we were children was mass produced on the factory assembly lines. They were all hand-made piece by piece. So I think this pan is better," said Fu Liting in Beijing, a 32-year-old marketing personnel who has already bought three woks from Tian's shop.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2018. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
  • Usage Terms/Restrictions: None
Register