On the evening of October 11, CCTV's "Veteran, Hello" column interviewed veteran Shen Congqi, who is a knife casting man who commanded the plausible guard of the People's Liberation Army.
According to the interview, from June 1953, China began to form the honor guard of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Army, Navy and Air Force, and on the eve of the National Day in 1992, the executive captain of the honor guard of the three services wore a pistol and used a simple hand salute in diplomatic occasions, lacking charm and style.
According to public information, at the beginning of 1992, the Central Military Commission issued an order: It was decided to remake a new type of courtesy uniform for the honor guard of the three services, and the executive captain and detachment leader of the honor guard changed the pistol they originally wore to the honor guard command knife, and changed the hand-held ceremony to a more powerful and solemn saber ceremony.
The honor guard command knife was designed by Shen Congqi many times and was officially opened by the Tiananmen Square Flag Guard on October 1, 1993, and is still in use today.
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Shen Congqi was born in November 1940 to a peasant family in Longquan, Zhejiang Province, the "land of swords". After liberation, Shen Congqi was escorted to school and later joined the public security forces as a reconnaissance fighter. When the troops burned firewood, he invented the "tiger stove", which greatly saved firewood resources, and in 1963 and 1964, he was named "Five Good Soldier Pacesetters" and "Chairman Mao's Good Soldiers", and was twice awarded the third class meritorious service, and in June 1964, he was received by Mao Zedong and other party and state leaders of the older generation in Beijing.
After retiring from the army in 1971, Shen Congqi entered a fertilizer factory, and in 1983 Shen Congqi served as the secretary of the party branch and deputy director of the Qingyuan County Paper Mill, and in 1985 he became the director of the Zhongshan Hat Factory.
According to public reports, the task of making command knives was then taken care of by the Military Equipment Research Institute of the former General Logistics Department, and engineer Huang Zhaolin, a Chinese ordnance expert, was responsible for drawing. However, at that time, more than ten well-known sword manufacturing factories in the country did not dare to accept the task because of the technical and technical difficulties of the command knife. A leader thought of Shen Congqi, who had sponsored 600 "Zhongshan Swords" to foreign guests during the 1990 Asian Games, and the relevant parties immediately contacted him.
"Zheng Shi'er" noted that from the preliminary design to the finalization, Shen Congqi changed his draft and the command knife passed the centralized review in September 1992.
Shen Congqi introduced in the interview that at that time, the Central Military Commission demanded that the command knife must be a command knife for the modernization of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and that it should be guaranteed to be foolproof under any circumstances.
According to the CCTV interview, when he received the task in 1991, Shen Congqi's identity was the director of the Zhongshan Hat Factory. Since there was no project fund, Shen Congqi mobilized the whole family to collect 380,000 yuan, organized the expert staff of the Zhongshan Hat Factory, and hired sword production experts and engineers from Longquan.
Since most of the knives around the world are curved, the first version of the command knife also has an arc. According to the Zhejiang Provincial Archives Bureau, when it was first sent for trial, Deng Xiaoping read it and issued instructions, "Taishan does not bend down!" After that, Shen Congqi thought of the traditional Chinese sword and decided to make the sword straight, "sword and sword in one."
In the stage of technical attack, Shen Congqi found Zhang Jianping, a sword casting master who had lived in seclusion for decades, and finally obtained an ancestral knife-making secret book and improved the process flow.
According to a 2017 report by the magazine "Great Development of the Western Region", in September 1992, Shen Congqi sent the sample knife to Beijing for the tenth time, and Yang Shangkun, Liu Huaqing, Zhang Zhen, Chi Haotian, Zhang Wannian and others deliberated intensively, passed the acceptance of the command knife, and praised it as "the first knife in the world". General Chi Haotian, then minister of national defense, wrote down eight big characters: "Mighty and civilized, strong and powerful in our army."
Shen Congqi introduced at the scene of the program, the command knife body is 1 meter long, 2.5 cm wide, weighs 1.65 kg, the top of the knife is a large ruby, surrounded by 34 small gems, symbolizing China's 34 provinces, municipalities, autonomous regions and Taiwan Provinces and Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Region; the bottom of the knife body is decorated with a cloud dragon pattern, the hand guard is bandaged with cowhide, the appearance is a phoenix that wants to fly, and the side view is a peace dove; the design of the peace dove leaves a "stumps" to remind us "don't forget the scars and forget the pain"; one side is inscribed" The first knife in the world", the other side is inscribed "Guard the national flag, more important than life" or "mighty civilization, strengthen the might of our army"; the sheath of the sword has nine dragons and the Great Wall, engraved with the words "National Sword" and "Not a Good Man Who Is Not great enough".
"Political Affairs" noted that Shen Congqi revealed in an interview with CCTV that in July 1994, two foreign businessmen wanted to invest 10 million US dollars to buy the patent rights, but he categorically refused.
At that time, two Americans came to Shen Congqi with an interpreter and offered to give him $10 million to open a company in China that was "the first knife in the world", demanding that "we tell you to meet whoever you see, and ask you to cast it for whomever you want", and the knife must be marked with the mark of the United States.
He refused on the spot, "Even if you give me 10 billion, I will not betray the country, you just go." ”
According to public information, Shen Congqi has only made a small number of commemorative knives at the 50th and 60th anniversaries of the founding of New China, and the process is slightly different. The standard of the command knife has always been in its original state after approval and has never been changed.
"Political Affairs" (WeChat ID: xjbzse) Writer/ Reporter Xu Tengfei Proofreader: Liu Baoqing Source: CCTV, People's Daily Overseas Edition, Zhejiang Provincial Archives Bureau, etc