Li Wenjun, A Businessman In Jinzhou: No Money For Urban Shoemaker

Now leather shoes are no longer luxurious.

It has become a common object that can be bought for tens of dollars, but in the view of Jinzhou man Li Wenjun, leather shoes are a kind of art worth collecting and playing.

He is obsessed with the traditional techniques of hand-made leather shoes, and has also bought various ancient shoe making tools. He has invited the instructor of the former Jinzhou shoe factory to guide the door and become a "city shoemaker".

(left) and shoe maker to hammer out details.

Li Wenjun is 38 years old. He is a native of Jinzhou. He is tall and tall with dark glasses.

Li Wenjun said that no one in his family was engaged in shoes related occupations, nor did he produce leather for making leather shoes in his farms.

"More than 10 years ago, there was an old leather shoes factory in Xiang Ying Town, Jinzhou. The factory received Italy's orders, and the leather shoes were sold back to Europe.

He told reporters recently that before and after 2004, when he traveled to Europe, he visited the ancient handicraft shoes workshop in Italy. One pair of shoes with exquisite workmanship and exquisite workmanship was made by hand with a variety of simple tools, such as needlework knives and so on.

It took less than 10 years to find the old hand artists who could make hand-made shoes from the idea of initiation to the accumulation of shoe making tools.

Today, some classical equipment and tools in his workshop are found in the warehouse of a small shoe factory. A green polished exterior welt equipment was produced in Italy in the 60s of last century.

With the future

At the end of the old leather shoes factory, Li Wenjun finally found a master who knew how to make hand-made leather shoes.

At the beginning of last year, Li Wenjun worked out a workshop specializing in making pure hand-made leather shoes in his old house.

The workshop is located in a small old courtyard in the old town of Jinzhou. In addition to Li Wenjun and two or three masters and several old machines, the most striking thing in the workshop is a wooden wooden foot mold, which Li Wenjun calls shoe last.

Pure hand-made shoes are tailored to measure feet, then shoes are designed according to the shoe last and customized.

After making a good shoe last, there are hundreds of processes for making shoes, cutting leather materials and making flower patterns.

In order to make the soles more solid, Li Wenjun and his master used the "Goodyear" technology of Italy's traditional shoe making, which reflected the strong Chinese style in polishing the leather shoes, and the color change of Jun kiln was applied to leather shoes by him.

"The leather materials of factory shoemaking are all lewd, but the hand-made shoes are made of raw leather and leather shoes. After the leather shoes are done, they are rubbed into leather with a variety of colored wax. The color of each pair of shoes will take about three or four days."

Li Wenjun said that the production cycle of a pair of hand-made leather shoes in a month or so, in order to maintain operation, subsidize life, the workshop also undertake private leather shoes customization, but its output and factory can not be the same day, so Li Wenjun said he was happy to become a "city shoemaker", or to play.