Artillery Shell Knives – A Family’s Peaceful Tradition

Wu Chao-Hsi sweats as he collects his travelling blacksmith kit. He assembles an anvil, hammers, tongs and chisels. A sturdy portable forging furnace, sooty but solid, is also included. Chao-Hsi is preparing to visit customers in towns and villages across Kinmen Island.

Chao-Hsi will repair and make farming equipment, other metal necessities, and knives. Kinmen Island is close to the Chinese coastline. Blacksmith Chao-Hsi is making travel preparations during the 1930s. He is the second generation blacksmith in a family that spans three generations of blacksmiths with over a hundred years of combined experience.

Chao-Hsi will repair and make farming equipment, other metal necessities, and knives. Kinmen Island is close to the Chinese coastline. Blacksmith Chao-Hsi is making travel preparations during the 1930s. He is the second generation blacksmith in a family that spans three generations of blacksmiths with over a hundred years of combined experience.

I'm strolling through his son's present-day expansive knife shop and museum. Along the length of one wall, life-size pictures, captions, and important dates map out the family's metalworking history chronology. But how did Chao-Hsi travel Kinmen?

It's unlikely the second generation iron working-Wu heaved his equipment over a shoulder. I'm guessing he used a draught animal and cart. A cart loaded with tools and complete with a sack of coal pitched aboard, belching dust as it landed. 

Also, in Chao-Hsi's cart, he stacked his raw steel. Chao-Hsi may have supplemented that supply with a once deadly form of steel. Japanese mortar shells.  

Chao-Hsi begins to lead his animal, perhaps a water buffalo, towards a dirt road away from his home with the cart stocked. The buffalo's shoulder muscles snap-tight, bulge, and the pair push against Kinmen's strong winds that swirl the red soil away in their wake.

Later, riding my bicycle beside a field with present-day lounging water buffalo, I wonder if these grass-grinding bovines are decedents of Chao-Hsi's helper. If so, their life is considerably more tranquil and safe. 

Years earlier, Chao-Hsi's father, Tsong-shan, arrived in Kinmen and began his metalworking career in the early twentieth century. The first generation smithy learned his trade in Xiamen China, just across the bay from Kinmen during the Qing dynasty. Tsong-shan forged mainly farm implements that began from glowing steel the colour of sunset oranges, yellows and reds. 

Tsong-shan's business grew, and time passed until the Second Sino-Japanese War erupted in 1937.  That began the family's unintentional steel sourcing tradition.  

That same year, Chao-Hsi, now involved in the family business, created the Chin Ho Li Steel Knife Factory in Jincheng.  The Japanese were on the offensive. Metal was scarce, so the Wus recycled Japanese mortar shells lobbed on the island to help supplement inventory and continue their livelihood. 

 

handy fruit & veggie cleaver from Kinmen

A few years later, the Japanese Empire controlled Kinmen, and WWII was underway. Steel was limited again. Now the family collected US and Allied bombs to continue making steel goods. Still, like all islanders, Chao-Hsi must have felt anxious for his family and community waiting for the next bombing.

But there must have been satisfaction and a sense of triumph using the enemy's weapons to create something peaceful and helpful for his tiny island. 

WWII ended, but conflict continued. The Chinese Civil War resumed between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT). By 1949, the Nationalists were defeated and retreated to Taiwan. Kinmen remained a KMT possession and on the front lines. Again, Kinmen faced danger.     

In 1954-1955 Kinmen was shelled by the CCP and returned fire. Then again, in 1958, the island experienced 44 days of intense shelling. Over half a million shells fell on Kinmen at a rate of approximately 12,000 artillery shells a day. Thousands of homes were destroyed, and hundreds of people died. Kinmen absorbed an average of four artillery shells per square foot. 

After 44 days, the shelling eased off but did not stop. Sporadic shelling continued from both sides on opposite days until 1979. Many later projectiles were propaganda shells meant to land and deliver leaflets promising CCP rescue to residents and not lethal fragments.  

From the 1950s, the Wus collected shell fragments, especially the relatively intact propaganda shells and continued working.

In the twenty-first century, the third generation Wu, Tseng-dong, has renamed the brand ‘Maestro Wu’ and has customers worldwide. The tall, wiry smithy has created dozens of speciality knives popular with chefs, collectors and the general public. 

 

Maestro Wu's stamp on my razor sharp cleaver

The soft-spoken metalworker even ironically jokes, “who would have thought artillery shells fired in war could become gifts from the sky.” Now, the shelling has stopped, but the threat of renewed strife remains.  

Riding my bicycle down a quiet back road from the museum, I reflect on those three generations of Wus and a century of blacksmith history. Many of those decades recycling ammunition into useful and peaceful tools. There’s something to be said for transforming mortars, bombs and artillery shells into nonviolent objects - something to be proud of.