In his latest apology to customers last Monday, Xia Qianliang, the general manager of renowned knife manufacturer Zhang Xiao Quan, said his company is mulling to replace the knives purchased in China in the past five years that accidentally broke, either from their company or an agreed-upon brand.
Zhang Xiao Quan, a traditional famous Chinese brand first born in 1628 and specializing in manufacturing knives and scissors, recently got involved in controversy after a customer in Guangzhou complained that her knife purchased from the brand’s jd.com store broke in half when she tried to smash garlic with it.
Trying to lodge a complaint and perhaps hoping to get some form of compensation, the customer, however, was told by the brand’s after-sales personnel that she was not supposed to smash garlic with the knife.
In a detailed apology, the brand later explained that the knife, with a price tag of 99 yuan (US$15.47), is a cost efficient choice for daily use, light-weight and with a sharp blade, yet not suitable for smashing garlic.
Curious netizens, after learning about Ms. Wang’s incident with the brand, inquired with other producers and found out that Zhang Xiao Quan is not the only brand that advises customers against smashing garlic with their knives.
Staff from the German brand Zwilling and top Chinese kitchen utensil manufacturers Supor and Aishida have all made it clear that some of the knives they make are not suitable for smashing garlic.
For generations, it has been a common practice for Chinese housewives in their kitchens to smash garlic with the side of their knives.
Fuchsia Dunlop, a chef and award-winning author from England, praised the versatility of the traditional Chinese kitchen knife in her 2008 book “Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper.”
Unlike the typical Western way of cooking, where specialized knives are used to pare, carve, slice, bone, cut bread, cut cheese, open oysters, and prepare sashimi, the traditional Chinese way is to use one knife for many occasions. The traditional Chinese knife may need sharpening from time to time, and is not as easy to use as special-function Western knives, but it usually suffices for cooking homemade Chinese dishes. A similar comparison comes from dining tools: The Chinese use a pair of chopsticks to eat rice, dumplings, noodles, stir-fried potato and beef stew, while a Westerner will need different knives and forks to eat salad, beef steaks and spaghetti.
It would be arbitrary to say which is superior, the Chinese way or the Western way, since each has evolved for generations to meet the needs of daily usage in accordance with different eating habits.
Another twist of the incident with Zhang Xiao Quan came when some netizen found the video clip of a previous interview with Xia, who was saying then that most Chinese people used their knives the wrong way and explained how a Michelin star chef would process their ingredients in the kitchen. He said it was necessary to “educate the customers.”
Many Chinese netizens were enraged by the video. Michelin, a Paris-based company best known for its tires and also famous for its annual Michelin Guide that reviews food offered at various restaurants, dates back to 1900.
The netizens were enraged partly because they thought Xia, the general manager of a Chinese brand with a much longer history, was implying that the Western criteria and style of cooking were superior to the Chinese way, which Xia later denied. But the netizens didn’t seem convinced.
The netizens were also enraged by the arrogance Xia displayed in the interview. The concept of “educating the customers” was rather new. Thought of as an important part of presales marketing, the idea is to teach customers about the new functions of an upgraded product or a totally innovative product. The often quoted successful example is Apple, which started a brand new era of tablets and smartphones. Before the iPhone, people had no idea that they could have so many uses for a phone, such as serving as a camera, a wallet and mobile entertainment center in addition to communication.
The consumers today are more than willing to be educated; only the product needs to be innovative enough to persuade the buyers to reach for their wallet.
Zhang Xiao Quan, the first Chinese knife and scissors manufacturer to get listed on the A-share market, however, didn’t seem to succeed in that respect.
Last year, the brand spent 117 million yuan (US$18.2m) on sales and marketing, more than four times of its R&D cost of 22.87 million yuan.
Chinese media also reported that more than half of the brand’s products sold in the markets are turned out by OEMs, which partly explains the unstable quality of its products.
Hopefully, the brand will learn its lesson and focus on providing more innovative and better-quality products in the future so that customers will gladly choose be educated.
(The author is a Features Department editor of Shenzhen Daily.)