综合一区欧美国产,99国产麻豆免费精品,九九精品黄色录像,亚洲激情青青草,久久亚洲熟妇熟,中文字幕av在线播放,国产一区二区卡,九九久久国产精品,久久精品视频免费

USEUROPEAFRICAASIA 中文雙語(yǔ)Fran?ais
Lifestyle
Home / Lifestyle / News

No match for progress

By Wang Ru | China Daily | Updated: 2012-11-19 09:03

No match for progress

Beijing collector Wang Yuxiang and his matchbox collection. Photos by Wang Ru / China Daily

Cigarette lighters and other conveniences have killed a once-essential commodity, but matchbox-label collectors are keeping the flame of a lost art alive, Wang Ru reports.

Related: Cases of fire

As time goes by, some things fade into history while other things pop up and thrive.

After the license-plate lottery began for private vehicles in Beijing, Wang Yuxiang's family-owned car-rental business boomed almost overnight.

But change hasn't always been kind to the Being native, 55, a passionate collector of matchbox labels. Wang heard some bad news in September.

Botou Match Co Ltd, the biggest producer of matches in Asia - 280 km away from Beijing in neighboring Hebei province - announced its bankruptcy.

"It is inevitable in times when few people use matches," says Wang, sitting in his office in Dongcheng district in Beijing.

"There are many fire-making tools now. The value of the match has gone," says Wang, who similarly notes that he seldom writes with a pen instead using a computer.

In the 1990s, there were about 40 match factories across China. According to Wang, only three are still producing matches now.

The existing match factories, like the oldest one in Beijing, now only produce orders from wedding planning companies and hotels. Some so-called match companies are in fact souvenir producers.

However, the story of the match has not been extinguished. Earlier this year, a nationwide convention of matchbox-label collectors, known as phillumenists, was held in Nanjing, Jiangsu province.

"The labels of matchboxes are full of information and aesthetic value, like stamps. I am glad to be one of the collectors who have recorded the stories of matches in China," Wang says.

Since the 1970s, when Wang saved his first matchbox label, he has been charmed by the colorful patterns that often represent diverse cultures, landscapes and characteristics of different regions.

Matches then were a necessity of life, when most people used them to smoke and to light coal stoves.

In the planned-economy era, a box of matches remained at the price of 2 fen or 0.02 yuan, affordable for daily use. "It was very common that some customers and neighbors came to borrow matches for lighting cigarettes or making their lunches," he says.

One year in 1970s, Wang's remembers, an official proposal to raise the price of a box of matches from 0.02 yuan to 0.03 stirred a wide debate.

A national newspaper published the proposal and discussion. The price was never raised.

The match industry witnessed the modern history of China. In the old days, matches were sometimes called yang huo, literally meaning "foreign fire".

Previous 1 2 Next

Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site.
License for publishing multimedia online 0108263

Registration Number: 130349
FOLLOW US
桂阳县| 新晃| 丹巴县| 长武县| 荆州市| 防城港市| 虞城县| 民权县| 盱眙县| 开封县| 论坛| 会宁县| 简阳市| 陈巴尔虎旗| 丰原市| 巩留县| 石狮市| 伽师县| 弥勒县| 岳阳市| 博客| 通海县| 台东市| 江西省| 永靖县| 乌兰县| 马关县| 玉溪市| 昆明市| 香格里拉县| 开平市| 山阴县| 观塘区| 胶州市| 龙泉市| 恩平市| 太保市| 当涂县| 新宁县| 定安县| 汝城县|