One man's Green Destiny

It's nearly a meter long and engraved with 100 green dragons. It's double edged, sharp at the tip and can cut through iron as if it were mud. It's the legendary Green Destiny Sword (青冥劍), the sword everyone covets in the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍).

But few know that the birthplace of this exquisite sword is a fishing village in Kaohsiung County, Taiwan. Kuo Chang-shi (郭常喜) a blacksmith for 47 years, is the man who remade the sword which dates back to the Chin era (around 200BC).

Besides Green Destiny, he has made nearly 400 swords, machetes and spears, such as the double-edged curved ax (子母鴛鴦鉞), ax-shaped hooks (斧頭雙鉤) and willow-shaped double machetes (柳葉彎刀).

Kuo is not just a maker of film props. He is the owner of Shin Da Arts Sword Store (興達刀舖) and a collector of swords and knives. His Kuo Chang-shi Arts Swords Museum (郭常喜藝術兵器文物館) opened early this year.

Kuo's neighbors from the small fishing of Shin Da call him master Ah-shi (阿喜師). Three years ago Ang Lee (李安), whose home town Tainan is not far from Kuo's village, visited Kuo and asked him to make some swords for the film. Kuo is one of the few blacksmiths in Taiwan hand-making swords and knives in the ancient Chinese way. This patent design and technique is called multiple-layered veined steel manufacturing (積層摺疊花紋鋼).

A third-generation blacksmith, Kuo learnt his skills at the age of 13. Now that he's 47 years old, he's still the only full-time worker at his sword-making factory. Every day he works by the forge sweating in the 7000C temperatures. Kuo said a good sword should be forged over 100 times, sometimes in temperatures as high as 13000C.

After taking up his father's blacksmith shop in his 20s, Kuo soon became famous in south Taiwan for his knife-making skills. He is one of the few workers who is able to produce full sets of Taoist traditional weapons used in local temple

ceremonies.

His love of ancient swords and knives then prompted him to go to Japan for eight years and learn sword making, especially the multiple-layered steel wrapping technique that he developed and which dates back to the Warring States period(403 to 221BC.). The blacksmith first prepares eight layers of steel and iron, with the steel inside and iron outside (as iron is softer than steel). Then the eight layers are folded together to become a bar. Then it is folded again to create 16 layers, then 32, then 64, and so on up to a 1,000 layers. Kuo said swords or knives made in this way are strong yet supple and cut like a razor. To prove it, he chopped a 5cm-thick steel rope in half and one of the pieces flew out the side of the house.

It takes strength, perseverance and devotion to become a sword maker and Kuo delights in talking about the stories of Gan-jiang (干將) and Mo-xie (莫邪), an ancient blacksmith couple in the Warring States period.

A king from the Wu state ordered the couple to make two superior swords in three months. But limited by technique, the two found it hard to forge pure steel. In desperation, Mo, the wife, then threw herself into the forge.

As human bones can filter out impurities from iron and steel great swords were eventually made. And the swords were named after the couple. "That was the first sword made with a steel-wrapping technique in history," Kuo said.

Kuo said he had been collecting swords for over 40 years and boasted the newly opened Kuo Chang-shi Art Swords Museum now has more than 1,0000 ancient swords and knives. Kuo has also reproduced some of the ancient swords that had been lost. About 80 percent of the swords in the museum were re-created by Kuo, including the Green Destiny. There are also Japanese samurai swords and swords used by Taiwanese Aboriginals.