Hangzhou Arts and Crafts Museum
Cluster of craft galleries where a scissors trademark war and imperial tribute shaped a three-century brand.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Hangzhou Arts and Crafts Museum centers on a small stamped mark, jinji, carved into every blade sold under the name Zhang Xiaoquan, and the question of why it was necessary. It traces the scissors shop back to around 1600, through generations of the Zhang family, and the sprawling counterfeit trade of rival shops that borrowed the name outright. You'll hear how, in 1663, one grandson tried to settle the matter with two carved characters. Watch the craftsmen in the workshop behind you still forging steel into iron by hand, the same technique guarded since.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
China Knives, Scissors and Swords Museum
Museum hall tracing a scissors dynasty forged to outwit a flood of copycats.
China Umbrella Museum
Canal-side hall tracing umbrellas from ancient bronze finials to wedding parasols and folk craft.
China Fan Museum
Fan collection housed in the iron-trussed sheds of a once-bankrupt nineteenth-century cotton mill.
Southern Song Dynasty Government Kiln Museum
Kiln ruins and crackle-glazed imperial ceramics rebuilt from over eight thousand excavated shards.
Meijiawucun
Working tea village of terraced hillside gardens, roadside teahouses and farmers roasting the season's Longjing harvest by hand.
Huqing Yutang Chin. Medicine Msm.
Qing-dynasty pharmacy hall and camphor-wood counters behind an honesty plaque written by its own bankrupted founder.