Taiwan blacksmith turns China’s artillery shells into knives under the shadow of latest tension with Beijing

On the island of Quemoy, Wu Tseng-dong has made about 400,000 kitchen knives from shells fired from the mainland

While Wu remembers bombardment on the island as a child and other times in his life, he says tension between Taipei and Beijing is now at its worst

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Blacksmith Wu Tseng-dong, owner of a knife factory, shows an artillery shell case containing communist Chinese propaganda, which was fired decades ago from Xiamen on the mainland at Taiwan’s Quemoy island. Photo: AFP

Published: 2:58pm, 30 Oct 2020Updated: 4:08pm, 30 Oct 2020

In a contemporary twist on beating swords into ploughshares, Taiwanese blacksmith Wu Tseng-dong has forged a career fashioning kitchen knives from Chinese artillery shells once fired at his home.

Known locally as “Maestro Wu”, his workshop on the island of Quemoy – which lies just 3.2km (2 miles) from the Chinese mainland and is also known as Kinmen – is a vivid reminder of the threat of war continually hanging over Taiwan.

Beijing views the self-ruled island as its own territory and has vowed to one day seize it, by force if necessary.

Like many of the older generations living on Quemoy, Wu grew up under bombardment.

Even after the 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 shelled by communist forces.

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