Zhou Zhengwu‘s profile:
Zhou Zhengwu, Arts & Crafts Master, the successor of Qian Zihao (a traditional Long Quan sword workshop), the ex-founder and ex-director of the Longquan Sword Factory, the son of Zhou Jiaqiang (a famous swordsmith), was born in 1968, and began to make sword when he was 16 years old. Early at the age of 20, he had cast swords for Wu Lanfu (Ex-Chinese Vice President) and Diao Zhongxun (Ex-Chinese Vice Premier). Whe he was 32 years old, he set out to customized swords for the leaders of State General Administration of Sports of P.R.China like Yuan Wei Min, He Zhengliang, Li Jie, etc.
With 5000 years history, China had been proved the most high-level in producing ancient weapons, among which Long Quan Sword sparked most bright and was famed since early ancient era. But Chinese sword seems to have lost its color nowadays and drops far off behind Japanese Sword, Damask Sword, and European Sword. As treasure of China, today Long Quan Sword is simply the things for Wushu exercise and room decorating. “It needs change”, said Zhou Zhengwu. From then, he decided to reconstruct splendid position of Long Quan Sword and recover the bright color of one. Therefor, he has been read a lot of ancient books and literatures, and consulted swordsmiths world about the tech of sword-making. Fortunately, he’s got a great deal of helps online all over the country. Based on his experience of making sword and assistance of some experts, Zhou Zhengwu has cast series of Guangfu, namely Long Quan Damascene Steel Sword With Mysterious Light, after going through thousands of experiments. This is the first time casting the swords with such materil since the Qing Dynasty.
After he had made a great breakthrough in traditional Chinese Sword, Zhou Zhengwu set out to challenge Japanese Sword to the technics of casting sword, which forestalls all other countries. So far he has cast into a Japanese sword of iron embedded with steel, a Japanese sword of soft steel folded with hard steel and blade-forging plasteried with soil. What is more, with the helps of his several Japanese friends, he has successfully cast into a blade forged with folded Diji steel.