Lan Eucalyptus visited a pensmith, Qiu Ming. Qiu Ming's family is not a pen-making family, and his father has been supporting his family by carrying on the dock all his life.

In 1966, Qiu Ming, who graduated from primary school, was assigned to the Lake Pen Factory as an apprentice, and thus began his fate with the Lake Pen for nearly half a century.

At that time, Shanlian was very lucky to be able to work in the Lake Pen Factory, which was almost synonymous with worry-free food and clothing.

Qiu Ming studied under Yao Guanqing, a famous pen maker, in the Hu Pen Factory, and engaged in the "pen selection" link in the entire pen-making process. At that time, Mr. Yao was very old and had no children, so he regarded the young Qiu Changming as his own and passed on his teachings until his death ten years later.

"Pen selection" is a very critical part of the lake pen production process. The Yanghao Lake pen must be used in the Hangjiahu area of the goat's armpit or under the neck of the undamaged wool, relying on the workers with their eyesight to carefully select, remove the miscellaneous hair, retain the integrity of the "Fengying", the writing will feel like flowing water, the pen head will not be scattered and forked. This process is commonly known as "choosing one out of ten million".

Recalling the situation back then, Qiu Ming's most memorable thing is Shanlian's quiet atmosphere at that time.

"Master taught us to be very attentive, and we also learned very carefully. Shanlian is a small place, and the people around me at that time were all making brushes, and there were no other temptations. Qiu Ming said that pen making is a very boring and strict work, only when the pen maker calms down, can really make a high-quality brush.

This is probably the meaning of the current buzzword "craftsman spirit" - to spend your whole life on one thing, to explore the possibilities little by little, to surpass yourself for pleasure, and finally to reach the state of self-realization.

Qiu Ming doesn't know what the "craftsman spirit" is, but he knows very well that doing a good job of every brush is the duty of a pen maker.

At that time, the Hu Pen Factory continued the tradition of the master and apprentice of the pen making workshop in the past, requiring "three years of apprenticeship, four years of companionship", and a total of seven years before the master could make a pen alone.

In this process, he often has to do a pen back and forth three or four times, from the blank, selection to degreasing, from fixing, drying to scattering, and then carefully pick out the hair, and finally dare to send it to the master.

If it is not done in place, it is not smooth enough, and the master is not satisfied, he has to start again.

These rules are not some kind of inner spirit, and there are no explicit rules written on the wall, but they are deeply engraved in the psychology of the masters.

"In the past, the master attached great importance to the quality of the pen, and the person who made the pen did it without care, and the person who wrote it was clear. If you ruin your reputation, you are equivalent to smashing your own job. Qiu Ming said that in the past, the masters often said: "If you have a skill, you will not be afraid to go all over the world." He still thinks so.

Lan Eucalyptus got off at Hubi Road and got on a tricycle. After exiting the bus station, cross a few small bridges and enter the town center of Shanlian.

I have to say that there is indeed the atmosphere of "China's pen capital" here, in addition to the main road crowned with the "lake pen road", Shanlian's street lamps are also in the shape of a brush.

What shocked me even more was that although there were few pedestrians on the street, there were many pen shops on the side of the road, and the shops were all dried in white wool, which was quite spectacular at a glance.

On the bumpy tricycle, Qiu Ming talked to me about the history of Shanlian's pen. The people here worship the famous general Meng Tian of the Qin Dynasty as the "ancestor of the pen".

Legend has it that General Meng Tian followed Qin Shi Huang on his eastern tour through Shanlian and fell in love with Bu Xianglian, a woman who lived in Shanlian Xibao Village.

The husband and wife made pens together and taught them to the villagers, so the villagers of Xibao have been making pens for generations, and they have been serving Mengtian as the "ancestor of pens".

He has made a series of improvements to the brush, such as tying the original tip on the outside of the barrel and incorporating it into the bamboo tube, and changing the rabbit hair that was popular during the Warring States period to deer hair and wool, which are both rigid and soft, to achieve the purpose of writing fluently.

Shanlian, which is not far from the cultural resort of Suzhou and Hangzhou, enjoys a unique geographical advantage, whether it is to take the goat hair in the area of Hangjiahu Lake as the nib, or to use the mangosteen in the Yuhang area as the pen holder, it is very convenient, and the quality is guaranteed.

What is even more rare is that at that time, there were many literati and ink writers in Huzhou who were particularly fond of calligraphy and painting, including the great calligrapher Zhao Mengfu, who further processed and perfected the Hubi technique, making it more and more suitable for writing and painting.

After nearly a thousand years of continuation, the lake pen has gradually become the pillar industry of the town. Qiu Ming remembers that when he was young, there were about 2,000 people in the town, almost all of them were >>