Why Chinese people are crazy about this wok?

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The iron wok produced in Zhangqiu District, east China’s Shandong Province, went viral after being featured in a popular food documentary that began broadcasting last Monday.

“A Bite of China,” a documentary exploring the relation of food and culture, came back with its third season during the Spring Festival holiday.

Its first episode focused on the handmade Zhangqiu iron wok. According to the documentary, a Zhangqiu iron wok needs to go through 12 procedures, be put in a temperature of 1,000 degrees Celsius and be beaten 36,000 times until it becomes "as clear as a mirror."

Zhen San Huan, an official online store of Zhangqiu iron wok, made an announcement. /Photo via Taobao

Zhen San Huan, an official online store of Zhangqiu iron wok, said that within one hour after the first episode, the online store sold out all of its 2,000 iron woks.

In a statement posted to its official page, the store also said that handmade iron wok took a long time to produce, so it was impossible to meet the large needs.

The store also urged people not to climb over the wall of the factory to look for iron woks or to wait outside the factory and claim that the factory does not allow visitors anymore.

According to the statistics of Tmall, a branch of Alibaba, the sales of Zhangqiu iron woks had increased 6,000 times.

An offline store of iron wok in Jinan, Shandong Province was crowded with people. /Kanfa News Photo

In Tong Sheng Yong, an offline iron wok store in Jinan, Shandong Province, many people across the country crowded in the store and looked for iron woks.

Until last Friday, both of the two online stores Tong Sheng Yong and Zhen San Huan removed all the iron woks off the shelves.

Liu Zimu, the factory manager in the documentary, told Beijing Morning Post that he was glad that craftsmanship got more attention and craftsmen won more respect. However, as the handmade iron woks couldn’t meet the huge demand, Liu worried that many unqualified products would appear in the market.

Zhangqiu iron woks in the offline store. /Kanfa News Photo

Craftsmen in the documentary also experienced judgments from others.

Liu told Legal Evening News that Wang Yuhai and his son, who were picked to show production process of Zhangqiu iron woks in the documentary, suffered from a lot of judgments and had already moved to their relatives’ place to hide from the disturb.

Liu Zimu, the factory manager of iron wok factory in the documentary. /Kanfa News Photo

“Some villagers and peers in the same industry came to visit me and would judge me with sarcastic tones. Some said that I was paid by the documentary production team to advertise the iron woks, others said I leaked out the production skill of iron woks. Some even called at night to ask for iron woks.” Wang told Liu.

Liu also said that some craftsmen who signed contracts with him scraped the contracts and started their own business, opening a lot of new online shops.

“They even use our pictures,” said Liu, “but we can’t do anything about it.”

Liu said that when the public’s fever of Zhangqiu iron wok cooled down, they would reopen the online store and offer better products for customers.