People's Daily Sydney, April 1 (Li Hanyue) Recently, the Wellington Chinese Cultural Centre shared the sword casting series of micro-videos of "Ingenuity - Chinese Intangible Cultural Heritage" through the official social platform, introducing the profound sword forging skills to the New Zealand audience who love the Chinese intangible cultural heritage skills and their infinite wisdom.
"Beautiful jade is born of rocks, and the sword is out of the dragon." The Longyuan mentioned in the poem is the ancient place name of Longquan in Zhejiang. Longquan, since the Spring and Autumn Warring States, has a history of more than 2,600 years of sword casting, and the longquan sword forging technique was included in the first batch of China's national intangible cultural heritage representative list in May 2006. The biggest feature of its skills is that it uses exquisite materials, unique craftsmanship, and has distinct regional characteristics.
With more than 80 production processes, the most important skill of the Longquan Sword is the forging technique. "Forging skills are an important part of the sword-making process, this process is very troublesome, it needs to be folded repeatedly many times, for a sword, this is not only the fusion of water and fire, but also the repeated fusion of gold, wood, water, fire and earth at the same time, in order to cast a sword." Shen Xinpei, who was born in a family of sword casting and is a representative inheritor of the Longquan Sword Forging Technique of the National Intangible Cultural Heritage, said that for him, the most important and difficult point is how to make a sword reflect its cultural disposition, there is change to have life, and there is life to have aura.
Shen Xinpei, who has experienced more than 60 years of sword casting career, said that in order to pass on this skill completely from generation to generation, it is not only necessary to inherit the forging skills of the sword, but also to inherit the culture of the sword, so that the Longquan sword is famous at home and abroad, and shines brightly.
The Longquan Sword is famous for its sharp edge, cold light, rigidity and softness, and ingenious ornamentation. Chen Ajin is a representative inheritor of Longquan sword forging skills, in his view, making a good sword, from design to completion, it takes at least half a year, and some sword sheath molds, he also has to make them by hand. According to him, by using the traditional bellows furnace heating method, when smelting iron according to a certain proportion of wool iron and steel produced in Longquan, this process requires thousands of hammers and hammers.
"Taking fire as an example, many idioms such as striking iron while it is hot originate from this process, and in our industry, it is called 'grab this fire', also called 'grab the fire'." Chen Ajin said that he often inlaid some animals and different patterns on the sword to give the sword a specific cultural meaning, in his view, the sword casting technique and even the inheritance of the sword culture is not only the inheritance of craftsmanship, but also the witness of history and the record of the times.