记者来鸿：张小泉剪不断的百年情愁

choi

沙磊, 记者来鸿：张小泉剪不断的百年情愁. BBC Chinese, May 3, 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/zhongwen/si ... _fooc_scissor.shtml

, which is translated from

John Sudworth, The scissor-maker that has cut through Chinese history. BBC, Apr 21, 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22160739

Quote:

(a) "exports account for less than half of one per cent of the company's total sales revenue of around $40m a year.

(b) "But there still remains one major obstacle in the way of building an export market.

"'Chinese scissors are different from western scissors,' Mr Ding tells me. 'In Europe and America, the blade is longer and the handle is shorter because they are mainly used to cut paper.'

"'But in China scissors are used to cut paper, food, cloth and even to repair shoes.'

Note:
(a) "In the dying years of the Ming Dynasty, a craftsman by the name of Zhang Jiasi found a way to make scissors that were both beautiful and durable."

The spellin is wrong. Should be "ZHANG Sijia"--张思家 (安徽省黄山市黟县会昌乡人), father of 张小泉.
(b) "DING Chenghong, Zhang Xiaoquan's current general manager"
总经理 丁 成红
(c) "The average pair of household snips being churned off the production line sells for around $3 to $5 (£2 to £3.25) a pair."

snips (n; First Known Use  1846):
"hand shears used especially for cutting sheet metal"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/snips
(d) ZHANG Qian  张 倩
(e) "About 1,000 jobs were shed - gradually and through natural wastage they tell me."
(i) wastage (n):
"(also natural wastage) British   the reduction in the size of a workforce as a result of voluntary resignation or retirement rather than enforced redundancy"
Oxford Dictionaries
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/wastage
(ii) Americasns would say (natural) "attrition."