Juyuanhao Bow and Arrows

From the year of 1720 – today.
The Ju Yuan Hao bow and arrow-making workshop used to be one of the 17 Imperial bow and arrow-making workshops in the gong jian da yuan (bow & arrow courtyard), located on Dongsi Street. This workshop is the only bow and arrow-making workshop that retains its bow and arrow-making tradition.
The Ju Yuan Hao bow is one kind of “recurve” Chinese traditional bow, which has a curvature when it is unstrung. Craftsmen first make a core for the bow from thin bamboo and attach the wooden grip and the ears. Then they firmly glue horn and sinew to the core. Finally craftsmen decorate the bow with material such as birch bark, symbols, and lacquer.
The traditional bow and arrow have struggled mightily in the market since the 1960s. In order to continue keep this technical tradition alive, the owner of the Ju Yuan Hao workshop, Yang Wentong, passed on his skills to his third son, Yang Fuxi.
Now, Mr. Yang Fuxi (Master of Ju Yuan Hao Workshop) is the only one who can make the Chinese traditional bow and arrows. Juyuanhao Workshop, today’s only one who can make Chinese traditional archery which were used by ancient Chinese royal military.

History of Ju Yuan Hao
In the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), bow makers were on the payroll of the Imperial Treasury and so, although their status was not high, they enjoyed extremely rich pickings and hence came to feel themselves several cuts above the rest of the ordinary people, living a life free of deprivation.
The Manchu banner men of those days often led pretty dissolute lives; the seventh generation of Ju Yuan Hao’s founder was no exception. Finally he became an opium addict and hardly had the willpower left to do any business. In the end, he had no choice but to sell off the family business.
Yang Wentong’s father Yang Ruilin was a craftsman who was infatuated with bow and arrow making when he knew the seventh-generation inheritor of the Ju Yuan Hao shop wanted to sell it, he immediately collected the money and bought it.
In the prosperous time, the “bow and arrow courtyard” could produce more than 500 bows a month. However, with the changes of time, Yang Wentong, the ninth-generation of Ju Yuan Hao makers, gradually went out the practice of making bows.
His fortune began to reverse itself in 1998, when Yang took his bows to an international archery competition. There, the coach of the national archery team took a fancy to his traditional bow, and from then on, Yang Wentong began to make bows again in his spare time, and also encouraged his sons to inherit the ancestral craft.

Inheritor of JuYuanHao Workshop
Alongside the development of science and technology, the traditional technique of bow and arrow making is facing permanent extinction.
Yang Wentong is more than 70 years old. His son, Yang Fuxi, worried that the tradition could wither and die in his hands, so in order to pass on the technique, Yang Fuxi undertook the responsibility to save it.
When Yang Fuxi first learned how to make the bow and arrow, he was already 40 years old.
To master this craft, Yang Fuxi resigned from his work, and worked as a taxi driver for 4 years. During this time all the money he saved was used to purchase material. Starting from 1998, Yang Fuxi devoted himself to making the bow and arrow.
Bows and arrows are complex to make, demanding in their construction and particularly needing an accumulation of experience. There is no way to train someone in a few short years to undertake the whole process: At best people might get very skilled with one part of it.
In the first year, Yang Fuxi made 40 bows, but he only sold one.
Yang Fuxi, the only continuator of Ju Yuan Hao.

—Juyuanhao Workshop, today’s only one who can make Chinese traditional archery which were used by ancient Chinese royal military.