"As fast as the wind and as smooth as oil, the steel is distinct and thick. The country is cut into a beautiful scenery, and Hangzhou is more than a state." This is a poem left by the famous playwright Tian Han when he visited Zhang Xiaoquan's Hangzhou factory in 1966. Few people can imagine it.

It’s amazing that a company that makes scissors can receive such praise from literati.

From the late Ming Dynasty to the present, Zhang Xiaoquan's scissors have been passed down for nearly 400 years and are still able to sell nearly 30 million pairs every year.

On July 7, Zhang Xiaoquan Co., Ltd.’s application for listing on the GEM was accepted by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. It is expected to become another time-honored brand listed and the “first scissors stock”.

Unlike many controversial time-honored brands, Zhang Xiaoquan’s knife and scissors business is still full of vitality after hundreds of years of operation.

Why can small scissors have such a strong life?

Let's take a look at this somewhat different time-honored brand.

Inheriting the spirit of four hundred years of craftsmanship, it is not difficult to guess from the name that Zhang Xiaoquan is not only the name of the brand, but also the name of the founder himself.

Zhang Xiaoquan was a scissor maker in Hangzhou in the early Qing Dynasty. His ancestral home was Qian County, Huizhou. Making scissors was a craft inherited from his family.

His father, Zhang Sijia, learned to make scissors in Wuhu. Later, during the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty (around 1610), he opened the "Zhang Dalong" scissors shop in Dajing Lane, Hangzhou.

According to historical information reviewed by Maomei, most of the scissors-making materials in my country at that time were copper and pig iron, but Zhang Sijia introduced the casting process of Longquan sword into the production of scissors, creating a unique "steel-embedded" process.

That is, the cutting edge of the scissors is forged from medium carbon steel and then embedded in the iron handle.

In the era of hand-making, there were as many as 72 processes in the production of "Zhang Dalong" scissors, from forging to polishing.

The strength of fine steel and pig iron is naturally different.

"Zhang Dalong's" scissors, which adopted the sword forging process, were dazzling, sharp and durable. They stood out among the scissors of their peers and became a gold-letter sign in Hangzhou at that time.

It is a pity that our country did not have the awareness of intellectual property rights in the Ming Dynasty. Counterfeit products of "Zhang Dalong" scissors emerged in an endless stream in Hangzhou, and their quality varied, so that the reputation of real "Zhang Dalong" scissors suffered a cliff-like decline.

In the second year of Emperor Kangxi's reign in the Qing Dynasty (1663), the founder Zhang Sijia passed away and was succeeded by the rich second generation Zhang Xiaoquan.

He believed that the brand value of the time-honored brand founded by his father had been damaged by counterfeiters, so he simply abandoned the original brand, named the scissors produced by the family company after him, and engraved his name on all the scissors.

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In the forty-sixth year of Qianlong's reign (1781), Zhang Xiaoquan welcomed the most important guest in history, Emperor Qianlong himself.

According to relevant information, Emperor Qianlong visited the south that year and passed by Zhang Xiaoquan's scissors shop during a private visit in Hangzhou.

After I bought a pair of scissors and went back, I admired them very much, so I inscribed a plaque with the words "Zhang Xiaoquan" on the scissors. I also listed Zhang Xiaoquan's scissors as a tribute and designated them as "imperial scissors for the imperial court."

The identity of Zhang Xiaoquan's scissors may be true, but the story of Emperor Qianlong personally bringing various delicacies and specialties is so common that it is difficult to tell the truth from the false.

In modern times, Zhang Xiaoquan became more active in history.

In the third year of Xuantong (1911), Zhang Xiaoquan's eighth-generation grandson Zhang Zuying registered the trademark "Haiyun Bathing Day" with the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, becoming one of the first trademarks in the history of our country.

Since then, Zhang Xiaoquan's scissors have frequently appeared at international exhibitions and won awards.

These include the Nanyang Entrepreneurship Association in 1909, the Panama World's Fair in 1915, the Philadelphia World's Fair in 1926, and the West Lake Exposition in 1929.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Zhang Xiaoquan's scissors still received great attention.

In 1956, Chairman Mao mentioned at the work report meeting on "Accelerating the Socialist Transformation of Handicraft Industry", "I remind you that there are many good things in the handicraft industry. Don't get rid of them. Don't get rid of the scissors of Wang Mazi and Zhang Xiaoquan even in ten thousand years."

. The good things of our nation that have been destroyed must be restored, and they must be better." It is worth mentioning that at that time, together with Zhang Xiaoquan, people in the world said "there is Wang Mazi in the north, and there is Wang Mazi in the south."

Wang Mazi, a time-honored scissors brand in Beijing owned by Zhang Xiaoquan, also became famous for using steel to make scissor blades. However, it failed to develop well after the reform and opening up and declared bankruptcy in 2003.

It is not difficult to make small scissors, and there seems to be no technical threshold.

But Zhang Xiaoquan's scissors can travel through 400 years of time, and have been recognized from the Ming Dynasty to modern times, from domestic to overseas, and their production must be unique.

A person who carefully and meticulously crafts an item day after day is called a craftsman, and the spirit of concentrating on perfecting the item he creates is called the craftsman spirit.