Question:
In recent years, the “spirit of craftsmanship” has been frequently mentioned. It usually refers to the spirit of artisans who take great pride in making their traditional crafts and who devote themselves to enhancing their skills and producing high quality products. Moreover, it is much beyond: a spirit for people in all fields of life.
Write a passage to explain your understanding about the “spirit of craftsmanship” and illustrate it with examples. You should write between 300 and 500 words.
exercise
Generally speaking, spirit of craftsmanship refers to the spirit of traditional artisans who attach great significance to the quality and perfectness of their products. They always try their best to pursue better precision of their works even though it is not necessary to the standard of common people. For example, Chinese craftsmen in Xin Jiang province have been making knives for six hundred years and won nationwide reputation for the quality of their knives. Different from common process, Xin Jiang craftsmen always go through nine procedures and take at least six months before finishing an extraordinary knife. Owing to their great devotion to their works, Xin Jiang knives feature outstanding sharpness and sustainability at the same time.
In addition, craftsmanship spirit also represents resisting temptation of the external world and fully concentration on their works, even though their job may not involve attracting salaries. No matter how rapidly the modern society develops, traditional craftsmen always focus on their works just as their ancestors hundreds years ago. In other words, the motivation of those craftsmen is not decent payment but their insistence on their jobs. Take Hu Bei craftsmen for example. They have been making China pots since Ming dynasty. Even though everyone in their village have gone to big city for decent jobs with higher salaries, they will stay in the village and make pots every day.
Besides, people with craftsmanship spirits are not just limited to those artisans who make traditional works. Many workers and scientists in modern society also have craftsmanship spirits in a similar way for their precision and devotion for their jobs. For instance, Chinese train engineer Yang Jianxi has been devoting himself to Chinese transport industry for more than thirty years. The part of his works is extremely precise, with error less than one tenth of a millimeter. It is those workers who have craftsmanship spirits like Yang that guarantee the rapid industrialization of current society.