Tainan’s Lee Yi-nan (李一男) on Friday kept a centuries-old family tradition alive by drawing the special “iron quench water” from an ancient well at noon on Friday. The day was Taiwan’s traditional Fifth Month Festival Day (五月節) on the lunar calendar.
Proprietor of the Chuan Li Blacksmith Shop (泉利打鐵鋪), Lee headed to his neighbor’s ancient well, which reportedly has a 200-year history dating to the Ming Dynasty, and is the only remaining “octagon well” in Tainan’s Yanshui District (鹽水), with eight-sided brickwork lining its inner wall.
Lee, 81, is a fifth-generation master blacksmith who has passed the family tradition to his son, who continues the business as its proprietor.
Photo: Yang Chin-cheng, Taipei Times
“We change the quench water needed to forge metals, shape steel and iron bars, and sharpen swords and knives. It is a tradition to take water from this well on this particular day, passed down from my grandfather, and probably much earlier,” Lee said.
“Our family cannot give up this tradition. We must keep the blacksmith shop and its traditions going,” Lee said. “I will pass the craft to my son for him to take over.”
Lee said that he began metalwork at age 14, learning from his father while helping in the family’s shop.
This weekend is known as the Duanwu Festival (端午節), or the Dragon Boat Festival, with traditions carried over from China.
In Taiwan, the festival begins with Fifth Month Day, which is celebrated as that start of summer — the fifth day of fifth month on the lunar calendar.
Marking the transition from spring to summer has been important in Taiwan’s agricultural society, and features the drawing of “pure yang water” from old wells at noon on this day. In traditional folklore, well water possess the highest level of positive energy at this particular time and date.
Lee stocks the metalwork shop with a year’s supply of water from the well on this day, as his ancestors did.
The water is believed to imbue the forged tools with enhanced strength and durability, Lee said.
“The water from this well is always clean, containing no impurities,” he said. “It never goes bad.”
Lee remains active in the business despite having handed the daily operations to his son, Lee Hsin-hsien (李信賢). The two continue to retain the good reputation of the traditional blacksmith shop, serving long-term local customers while receiving overseas orders for its handcrafted tools.
The shop has become a historic landmark in Tainan, located on Qiaonan Old Street, known as the first old town street of southern Taiwan, and among the earliest settlements in Tainan’s north region.
Many of the area’s landmarks and attractions are more than a century old, including the nearby Yuejin Harbor (月津港). Lee Yi-nan’s classical blacksmith shop — with its original wooden construction, furnace, wind bellow and brickwork floor — add to the area’s charm.
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