Bowls can easily be broken. So, bowl repairing emerged as a trade, and it flourished during the Qing Dynasty. Bowl repairmen were clever and deft. Their outfits were merely shoulder poles with two chests, one at each end. The main tool was a small drill with a diamond bit. "Without a diamond bit, you do not take on china work,” as the saying goes. When repairing a broken bowl, the craftsman would carefully examine the pieces, and then clean them with a small brush. He would then join the pieces together with clay. More importantly, the craftsman would have to drill holes into the pieces and then rivet them to other pieces with copper pegs. Repaired bowls never leaked, and they often resembled gold, because of the glittering copper pegs. In Taiwan, an island province of China, some foreigners, who praised such craftsmanship as the acme of perfection, once broke a bowl on purpose just to have it repaired by a Chinese craftsman.
