the chinese trousse is a chinese version of the traditional mongolian and manchu knives,,
the knife styles native to china are quite different..
many times the chinese produced these knives to sell to the nitive populations that boarded china,, also they became popular in korea and japan, they are not originaly a chinese knfie,,
and for the most part were only possessed by the richer classes in china,, as the avverage chinese used the local national forms of knife,,
the chinese created their own style of these knives, adding many fancy tools and chinese decorations,, aswell as dome different blade forms,,
still as i said, you see many of these knives with chinese fittings on them in places as far away as tuva .. the chinese massproduced them in the 19th centuary on a very large scale,, and dont seem to have made them specificaly for the local groups they were sellign them to,,
i remember reading a book,, dont remember the title , long time ago , but it was written by an english solider, in the book he commented that in hongkong ... sometime in 1900 , there was a fine array of chinese copies of japanese swords, and native knives and swords,, all of chinese make, on display in the shops and markets there,,
seems they were producing them by the ton,, like those bone or ivoery katanas
|