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In a contemporary take on turning swords into plowshares, Taiwanese blacksmith Wu Tseng-dong has forged a career making kitchen knives out of Chinese artillery shells that were once fired at home.
Known locally as “Master Wu,” his workshop on the island of Kinmen, which is just two miles from mainland China, is a vivid reminder of the threat of war that continually looms over Taiwan.
Beijing sees self-governing democracy as its own territory and has vowed to take it one day, by force if necessary.
Like many of the older generations who lived in Kinmen, Wu grew up under the bombardment.
Even after China’s civil war ended in 1949, leaving Mao Zedong’s communists in charge of the mainland and Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists in Taiwan, the island continued to be bombarded by communist forces.
Wu was born shortly before the worst bombing raid in 1958, when nearly half a million projectiles were fired at Kinmen and other nearby islets over a 44-day period, killing 618 and wounding more than 2,600.
The shells kept falling until the 1970s, although by then they were filled with propaganda brochures rather than explosives.
Wu has vivid childhood memories of hiding in bomb shelters with his family at night while collecting metal fragments during the day in search of scrap metal.
“I remember the fear we felt at night,” he told AFP. “The bombings can seem exciting in movies the more intense they get, but they are actually very dangerous.”
“We tried to collect as many shells as we could, even climbing trees to get them, to exchange them for small prizes. It was fun for our childhood although we feared aerial bombardments,” he added.
A third-generation blacksmith, Wu learned to mold metal as a child.
Wu followed his father, who began turning projectiles into knives when some Taiwanese soldiers stationed at Kinmen began asking for personalized orders.
Most of Wu’s knives are made from the cases of the propaganda projectiles, which are better preserved since they did not explode on impact. In the last three decades, he estimates that he has struck around 400,000 such knives.
The old shells are piled up in Wu’s workshop, which has become a kind of attraction for tourists. Visitors enthusiastically take pictures as Wu methodically carves a shiny piece of metal on a blade.
In recent years, at least until the coronavirus pandemic closed the borders, Kinmen had become a popular destination for tourists from mainland China.
Direct transport links were launched in 2008 when ties were warmer under the government of Taiwan, then a friend of Beijing.
But relations between Taiwan and China have since plummeted to their worst levels in decades.
In 2016, Taiwan elected President Tsai Ing-wen, who views the island as an already sovereign state and not as part of “one China.”
China cut off official communication and, in response, exerted economic, military and diplomatic pressure.
President Xi Jinping has become the most belligerent Chinese leader since Mao, describing the takeover of Taiwan as “inevitable”.
In recent months, Chinese aircraft have started crossing Taiwan’s defense zone at an unprecedented rate.
Wu says he feels tensions are now at an all-time high, probably even higher than in the mid-1990s when China launched ballistic missiles into the Taiwan Strait, in an attempt to dissuade Taiwan from voting for a presidential candidate who Beijing didn’t like it.
The threats from China are something that the 23 million people of Taiwan have had to live with for a long time.
“People don’t want war,” he said. “It is very brutal and we in Kinmen had experienced it during Bombardment 823 (in 1958), with relatives and friends killed or injured.”
“I hope the two sides can deal with each other peacefully … It depends on the wisdom of both governments.”
aw / jta / gle / oho / je
