ChineseCookingDemystified
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How to Get That Achang People's Knife from the Videos
🕑 Added 2021-11-26 10:48:58 +0000 UTCOk, so we've gotten a lot of questions about the so-called "orc knife" that we've used from time to time in our videos - and a lot of people wondering where they could buy one themselves. It's something called a Husa knife from southwest Yunnan - the minority group there (the Achang people), have historically be renowned for their knife and sword production. Wikipedia actually has a pretty decent discussion if you're curious to go down a small rabbit hole.
We picked ours up about a half year back because we've got some fond memories of travelling to Husa, and thought it'd be cool to support some traditional Achang knife makers. Unfortunately, though, up until now Husa knives haven't been remotely available in the West - because, of course.
But we've got some good news, together with a bit of bad news.
Good news? An acquaintance of ours decided to try his hand at exporting Husa knives and selling them on Amazon. And as of a couple days ago, the shipment arrived, and the knives are up and ready to purchase.
Bad news? Well, the Husa knives weren't super cheap over here anyway (we got ours for USD ~50-60), and the cost of shipping everything over - especially during COVID time - wasn't cheap. They're targeting a price of... $150-200 for the knife. That'd be expensive for my wallet, and to be completely frank, we're not the type of cooking geek with a big knife collection - it's the nicest knife that we own, but I've got no idea how the quality compares to similarly priced knives. All I can tell you is that the Husa knife's graced our videos recently because our Shibazi vegetable cleaver gets dull significantly faster, we get lazy, and we use the often-still-quite-sharp Husa knife in its stead. Even when maybe it doesn't make so much sense to, visually.
So yeah. It's a very nice knife. Whether it's worth that premium is probably ultimately up to your personal situation.
Lastly - I do want to clarify our relationship to the seller of this knife. We aren't making a dime off of these knives, and are not associated at all with the seller. While we could've probably negotiated some sort of commission, we didn't want to have the headache of having our channel mixed up with someone else's business. The guy that's exporting the knives is our old real estate agent in Shenzhen, and being a bit of a foodie himself we kept in touch. We gave him the idea of potentially exporting the Husa knife over a dinner one night, and told him we'd let everyone know once he got his store up and running. But we also wanted to make it crystal clear that his business was his business - we're just letting people know that the Husa knife - at long last - is finally available in the West :)
Next week we'll be releasing a public-for-a-day-then-unlisted video showing the knife, but we did tell y'all that you'd be the first to hear about it, haha.
Comments
SHEP
An update on the Chinese-Husa Hand-Forged Cleaver Butcher Chef-Knife - it is listed on Amazon for $79.99 USD. So, less than the $200 price tag you listed in your post, but still about twice the price of similar knifes of this style.As mentioned, keeping the way of life and supporting the people who craft the knife may be worth it.
John Haines
An interesting morning read ! If this helps keep the craft alive, it's all to the good.
Mr. Martini
Thanks for the link and the detailed explanation about the knife
*clicks buy now* - A fool and his money are soon parted!
