The Qinling lacquer forests, source of Chinese lacquer

The name Longtou Guoqi comes from an ambition born in a lacquer forest in the Qinba mountains. When the upstream raw materials of the Chinese lacquer industry had long depended on scattered purchases of uneven quality, the group decided to take the first link of the industry chain into its own hands — starting with a single lacquer tree, building a raw material base for China's own national lacquer.

More than 5,000 mu of lacquer tree base take root in the Qinling Mountains; five years to raise seedlings, ten years to form a forest, with over 400,000 lacquer trees spread across the slopes. Every year when the hottest summer days begin, lacquer farmers make their cuts before sunrise — three cuts per tree, then again on alternate days — and the old saying 'a hundred li, a thousand cuts, one catty of lacquer' is still a daily reality here.

Raw lacquer dripping from the cut cannot be applied directly to walls or objects. Filtration, dehydration, blending and testing — Longtou Guoqi breaks the master craftsman's experience down into controllable procedures, so that every batch of raw lacquer leaving the factory is documented: origin, batch and urushiol content, with nothing missing.

Today's Longtou Guoqi has grown into a full-chain materials brand covering 'planting — tapping — refining — application', supplying historic building restoration, woodworking workshops, research institutions and industrial users on a stable basis. It rarely stands at the front of the stage, yet it supports every Zhengdaming brand that does.

'A hundred li, a thousand cuts, one catty of lacquer' — integrity in materials is the first coat of the industry chain.

Hoping that a hundred years from now, the lacquer trees will still be on the mountains and the lacquer will still be flowing.

Longtou Guoqi's vision is to bring the supply of and standards for China's lacquer raw materials back to China's own mountains: evergreen lacquer forests, lacquer farmers with an income, and traceable raw materials, so that a national lacquer of eight thousand years still has a stable source in the industrial age.