Zhang Xiao Quan's knife broke on garlic and its CEO said Chinese people cut wrong

In July 2022 a Guangzhou consumer, surnamed Wang, reported that a Zhang Xiao Quan kitchen knife she had bought broke in two when she used it to pat garlic. When she asked after-sales customer service, the reply was blunt: 'A kitchen knife cannot be used to pat garlic.' She posted the exchange online, and a 400-year-old heritage brand found itself the subject of a nationwide mockery.

Zhang Xiao Quan first responded on 14 July that high-hardness blades are not recommended for horizontal patting, and offered an 'unconditional refund' even though the knife — bought in September 2020 — was past the after-sales period. That day the company's securities staff explained that the blade was high-hardness and high-sharpness and therefore relatively brittle, so violent force such as a horizontal pat could break it.

The crisis then escalated into a brand-messaging failure. In a circulating interview clip, CEO 夏乾良 said Chinese people had been cutting wrong for decades, that no Michelin chef cuts that way, and that the tilted blade was 'consumer education', not a design flaw. The clip reignited the anger precisely because it blamed the customer for a product that had snapped.

On the evening of 18 July 夏乾良 posted a formal apology on his personal Weibo video account, saying the clip was an old interview taken out of context, and acknowledging problems in the company's brand management, product management and after-sales service. Around the same time the company launched a '断刀召集令': any knife bought domestically in the past five years that had broken — including competing brands — could be exchanged for a new knife of similar type and value. The China Consumers Association later cited the case in its 2022 typical consumer-rights cases.