In Class at the Rabbit Pencil School

When you enter the Rabbit Pencil School in Yilan's Wujie, it looks like a location for a film set in the 1970s.

When the bell rings, visitors-or "students," as they are called here-file into the classroom. The shared desks even feature the chalk lines that students would draw to divide desktops into personal halves. The first-period class features a video that offers information about the history both of pencils and of Rabbit.

A colorful assortment of pencils placed in some vintage racks offers an even more retro flavor.

For second period, the guide (or "teacher") brings the students into the factory. "Some of this machinery is 50 or 60 years old," notes Tang Zhi-tian, who is a member of the third generation of Tangs to run Rabbit. Though still shiny, the machines show the marks of long use. There are slogans on the wall, such as "Increase production to support the nation!" Employees with more than 25 years of experience can be seen at work. For visitors, the nostalgic atmosphere prompts a flood of personal childhood memories as they learn about the history of Rabbit.

"Do lead pencils really have lead in them?" asks the guide. The question leads to a brief history of this writing implement. Invented more than 300 years ago, pencils don't actually contain lead. Rather, their "leads" are typically made from graphite mixed with a clay binder. But when the first graphite deposit used to make pencil "leads" was discovered, people thought it was a kind of lead, hence the name.

"At one point we thought of renaming them 'leadless pencils,' because writing pencils, like eyebrow pencils, are com-pletely free of toxins," says Tang Jing-chuan, "principal" of the Rabbit Pencil School.

Tang Jingchuan worked for a foreign company before returning to the family firm more than 20 years ago. His leadership has breathed new life into the old brand of Rabbit.

"Students, do you know what the H and the B on pencils represent?" It turns out that the H and B represent the different components of a pencil's core. H means "hard" and B means "black." The higher the H, the more clay binder and the lighter the mark. The higher the B, the more graphite and the darker the mark. Because graphite is more expensive than clay, pencils with higher B levels are more expensive. The Rabbit Pencil School produces 19 pencils of different levels of hardness, meeting various international standards.

A pencil may seem simple, but its manufacture isn't easy. There's the cutting, curing and routing of wood, as well as the mixing of components to form its core. Once the core and wood are bonded together, the pencil must be finished, painted, printed and capped with an eraser, before being packaged and shipped. By watching and listening carefully as you walk through the production line, you realize that making a pencil is no simple matter.

"You know what? A luxury car gets five coats of paint, but our Rabbit pencils get nine coats!" says Tang, proudly pointing out how to distinguish between high and low quality as he picks up a Rabbit pencil and contrasts it with one from mainland China.

Apart from producing shinier pencils, the Rabbit production process also emphasizes quality control, rejecting pencils with imperfectly centered cores (which will easily break when inserted into sharpeners), and mix-matched wooden sides (showing too great a difference in color), as well as pencils with other kinds of blemishes.

"People are flabbergasted when we tell them that we deep-fry the cores in lard at 1130°C!" Tang explains that Rabbit uniquely takes this step to keep the pencil tip from tearing paper.

Visitors, whether big or small, have their own unique memories about pencils. Here, under the tutelage of a Rabbit guide, they fish for pencils using hooked lines tied to the ends of other pencils. The winner gets a prize!

For third period, you walk into the exhibition room, where you are greeted by a map of northern Taiwan, upon which pencils have been used to convey information about the founding of Rabbit and its move from Taipei to Yilan.

Three brothers from Shang-hai opened Rabbit on Tai-pei's Heng-yang Street in 1947. Originally, it was a stationery supply company importing Parker and Wearever pens, ink and cartridges. The brothers then built a factory in Jing-mei that manufactured carbon and typing paper, as well as paperclips, thumbtacks and the like. Later, with the government implementing policies to encourage factories in Tai-pei to move elsewhere, Rabbit built this factory at the foot of Mt. Tai-ping in Yi-lan County, so as to be close to supplies of wood.

In 1964, the first generation of management decided to produce pencils as a way of planting the seeds of brand loyalty early, since pencils are used by children every day. And thus the Rabbit pencil-with its yellow barrel, red eraser and six sides to impede rolling-was born. Along with Simbalion and Liberty, Rabbit would become one of the three main pencil manufacturers of the era.

In 1966 Rabbit stepped out front to produce Taiwan's first ballpoint pen. It had a yellow barrel and blue cap, and it featured the Rabbit logo as well as the model number: F-220.

Since it was Rabbit's-and even Taiwan's-first ballpoint pen, why not number it 001? Tang explains that "F" referred to "Factory" and "220" represented the total number of company employees responsible for producing the pens.

Then why was it called -yuanzi bi (literally "atomic pen") in Chinese? Tang explains it was an era in which the atomic bomb had made a dramatic impact, and people felt that "atomic" represented cutting-edge technology. Back then stockings were marketed as "atomic stockings" and nylon trousers as "atomic pants." Atomic was used in much the way that "nano" is favored by marketers today.

At a consumer products exhibition held at the triservice ball park near the Presidential Palace back then, pitchmen used a Rabbit ballpoint pen to put dents in an aluminum basin. The feat left a deep impression on users of fountain pens, who always felt they required special care to keep from getting damaged.

What's more, the Rabbit ballpoint pen, already 45 years old, still costs just NT$5. "Let's compare a NT$28 gel pen against a NT$5 Rabbit pen: a typical gel pen will run for 450-500 meters before running dry, whereas our Rabbit ballpoint pen will run for 2200 meters." Tang clearly thinks there's no comparison when assessing which represents a better value.

There is a tremendous variety of pencil types, and each requires series of complicated steps to make. A visit to the Rabbit Pencil School provides an understanding of the specialization involved in pencil manufacture.

With rising wages, greater computerization, and the drop in family size, pencil use has been in decline. In order to reduce costs, other pencil manufacturers one by one moved to mainland China and Southeast Asia. But most of the old Rabbit staff didn't express any willingness to pack up and move abroad.

Having missed that opportunity, the Rabbit factory, which had operated around the clock with a staff of 550, had to gradually cut its workforce to 30. "The hardest time was the 1980s. The more orders we took, the more money we lost," explains Tang. Back then it cost less to import pencils than to make them here.

It was then that Tang, who at the time was working for a foreign-owned com-pany, accepted the invitation of his elders to come back and take the reins at the family firm. Relying on Rabbit's non-toxic core, food-grade paint and clearly printed barrel designs and logos, the brand has earned the love of Taiwan clients who stress quality. It has become the des-ig-nated manufacturer of pencils for numerous hotels and companies, including Disney in Japan.

Yet the Rabbit logo doesn't appear on pencils made for those clients. With Rabbit pencils gradually fading from people's memories, the factory transformed itself into a school, moving from manufacturing to services. Visits to the World of Coca Cola in Atlanta and the Louisville Slugger Museum in Kentucky (which is dedicated to the company's famous baseball bats) prompted Tang to think about how he could leverage the history of Rabbit and the story of its brand. And just then the Yi-lan Tourism Association began promoting factory tourism. The Rabbit Pencil School opened in June of 2008.

Tang Jingchuan worked for a foreign company before returning to the family firm more than 20 years ago. His leadership has breathed new life into the old brand of Rabbit.

Tang has a firm grasp of the difference between the demands of a factory boss and school principal: "Manufacturing deals with production lines and puts the stress on efficiency. The service industry emphasizes teamwork and concern for others. There's a big difference."

When introducing Rabbit's product line, Tang points to the various sketching pencils and colored pencils that the company makes: "At Rabbit you can see 19 different black cores and 36 different colored cores." Holding up a pencil stub too small to write with, he asks, "Students, have you ever used a pencil to the very end? When I was young, I had a friend who would do just that. He'd go to sandbars and spend all afternoon looking for reeds that were good fits, and then he'd attach them to pencil stubs that were otherwise too small to hold."

Picking up a yellow-barreled ballpoint pen, he asks, "What other uses does the cap of a pen have? In fact it can be used as a whistle, or to scrape out earwax!"

Every question and every answer sparks memories of childhood. Some people recall another use for a pen during exams-as a tiny cheat sheet. They'd carve formulas on it with a needle. "Someone once shook my hand and laughed, saying he had used more than 10 Rabbit ballpoint pens on every test, because he wasn't good at memorizing. They allowed him to advance in his studies all the way to receiving a doctorate."

Tang Jingchuan worked for a foreign company before returning to the family firm more than 20 years ago. His leadership has breathed new life into the old brand of Rabbit.

Because Yilan has a wet climate, the boards used to make pencils need to be stacked in "pagodas" 185 centimeters tall, which are stove dried to eliminate moisture.

At this point in the tour participants are split up into teams to get a sense of the challenges of making pencils. The visitors are told to create those pagodas by arranging boards that are 0.5 centimeters thick into octagonal stacks. But the newcomers end up creating irregularly shaped stacks that fall apart as soon as they are lifted.

"There used to be teams of three -women that would create 18 neat -wooden pagodas in an hour!" Tang says.

Before school lets out, visitors can make their own unique pencil as a keepsake. Of course, they also get an opportunity to shop at the school store, which stocks a variety of stationery items produced by Rabbit. It also has on display many special pencils designed by earlier customers, such pencil pairs with the names of brides and grooms, pencils with a baby's name to celebrate its reaching one month of age, pencils that were used to promote a candidate's electoral campaign, and promotional pencils printed for corporations.

Standing in front of the school gate, Tang holds a 220-centimeter pencil, which is taller than the mainland Chinese basketball player Yao Ming. With great feeling, he says that pencils accompany artists as they sketch, are used by scientists to explore new frontiers of knowledge, and have even accompanied astronauts into space. And unlike the writing made with fountain or ballpoint pens, pencil marks won't fade. The mission of the Rabbit Pencil School is to disseminate information about the history of pencils and ensure that pencil culture never dies.

Visitor information:

Address: 330 Zhongxing Rd. Sec. 3, Wujie, Yilan County

Hours: 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. (appointment required)

Phone: 03-9653670

Fax: 03-9656070

Website: http://www.rabbit1.com.tw

Visitors, whether big or small, have their own unique memories about pencils. Here, under the tutelage of a Rabbit guide, they fish for pencils using hooked lines tied to the ends of other pencils. The winner gets a prize!