Chen Lihua guards the rosewood culture with "ingenuity"

China News Service, Beijing, November 3 Title: Chen Lihua guards the rosewood culture with "ingenuity."

Author Li Xiang

"In the future, I hope to build an old Beijing Cultural Park and put the city gate works made of rosewood in it to show the public, so as to create a new cultural business card for Beijing." Chen Lihua, honorary president of the China Overseas Chinese Merchants Federation and chairman of the board of directors of Fuhua International Group, showed her love for rosewood in the dialogue with reporters.

Chen Lihua left Beijing in 1980 to develop in Hong Kong, and after returning to the mainland in 1986, she established the China Rosewood Museum in Beijing. "In 1986, I was cordially received by Deng Yingchao, then chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, who held my hand and asked me to come back."

Chen Lihua recalled, "Sister Deng's hands were very hot, and this meeting made me feel the warmth of home, because my roots are still in the mainland. After consulting with her family, Chen Lihua decided that her whole family would return to the mainland and devote herself to the construction of new Beijing, and she also became a model for overseas Chinese businessmen who returned to the mainland to invest and develop in the 1980s.

Chen Lihua, who was commercially successful, then made a bold decision to focus her work on the inheritance of rosewood culture.

Chen Lihua said, "After returning to Beijing from Hong Kong, I opened a rosewood furniture factory, and when Beijing was going to host the Asian Games, I wanted to do something for the Asian Games, so I proposed to the Beijing Municipal Government to make a rosewood carved dragon screen for the Asian Games to be used by the asian games officials to receive foreign guests." ”

Shan Shiyuan, former vice president of the Palace Museum, and Wang Shixiang and Zhu Jiaxuan, three state-level cultural relics appraisal experts, went to Chen Lihua's warehouse to make appraisals. "The moment I opened the door of the warehouse, several experts were shocked by the stock of rosewood in the warehouse, they looked at the rosewood screen I wanted to donate, they were very excited, and supported me to use rosewood to copy the cultural relics of the Forbidden City."

The affirmation of the three old gentlemen is a great encouragement for Chen Lihua, and at the same time, she is more determined to engage in the research and inheritance of rosewood culture. For a long time afterward, Chen Lihua personally went to the Forbidden City to carefully study and measure the dimensions of each warehouse and cultural relics.

"Sometimes there is no ruler, I take the hair to measure, the purpose is to use rosewood to copy these cultural relics, can do the same, 100% restoration." 」 Chen Lihua said this, her eyes were persistent and firm.

According to Chen Lihua, as of 2021, she and her team have done more than 20,000 rosewood works, and more than 990 pieces have been exhibited at the China Rosewood Museum in Beijing. In 2019, she also opened the Hengqin Branch of the China Rosewood Museum in Zhuhai.

From 2008 to 2016, Chen Lihua's team used rosewood to build and copy a total of 16 old city gates and 10 corner towers in the "Lijiuwai Seven" of old Beijing in a 10:1 ratio in the past 8 years.

Chen Lihua confessed that her childhood impression of the old Beijing city gate made her decide to do it. Experts from the Forbidden City, Zhao Chongmao, Park Xuelin, and Wang Zhongjie, also assisted in finding drawings and documents.

"At that time, Elder Zhao (Zhao Chongmao) said to me, it costs you more to do this than to build a city gate!" But Chen Lihua still insisted, personally studied the drawings and materials, and led the workers to make them day and night, and finally vividly restored the old Beijing city gate and corner tower.

Chen Lihua said: "I always feel that we should leave something behind, instead of leaving money for future generations, it is better to leave these cultural treasures left to us by our ancestors, because this is a kind of inheritance." "She was very relieved and her family thought it made sense and was very supportive of her.

Chen Lihua has experienced 35 spring and autumn periods since she returned to the mainland, and these 35 years are also the stage of China's rapid economic take-off and rapid development. "China is my home, and my sons and daughters will adhere to the roots and soul of China no matter how many generations they will have." Our country has developed from poverty and white to the present, which is a very great achievement, and I hope that generation after generation can bear the whole country in mind. (End)

Source: China News Network