Biography
Xing Caicheng, a native of Lanzhou, Gansu Province, and vice president of the Qi Family Culture Research Association, has long been engaged in the research of jade making technology in china's dynasties, especially known for the Qi family culture jade technology. In 2016, he was hired by the CCTV "Treasure Hunt" column group as an expert in ancient jade appraisal, and participated in the activities of "Treasure Hunting and Appraisal Into the Hometown of QiJia Culture" and "Qijia Culture and Chinese Civilization International Forum". In 2019, he was hired by the Qijia Cultural Research Association of Gansu Province as the "Director of the Jade Center of the Qijia Cultural Research Association of Gansu Province", and represented the Qijia Cultural Research Association of Gansu Province to participate in the academic seminar "Early Cultural Exchange: Path and Society" jointly organized by the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Neolithic Archaeology Professional Committee of the Chinese Archaeological Society, the Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the People's Government of Lintao County. In 2020, it was declared the fifth batch of state-level intangible cultural heritage Qi Jia Cultural Jade Project in Linxia Prefecture, and was approved by the state people's government on May 28, 2021.
Throughout the ages, the Chinese nation has always had a kind of respect for jade from genes, and jade has been respected by the Chinese people for its unique qualities such as "moisturizing and warm, benevolent fangye". As mentioned in the "Zhou Li", "with jade as the six rui, with the heavens and the earth, with the cangbi to the heavens, with the Huang Qi, with the Qing Gui to the east, with the ChiZhang to the south, with the white amber to the west, with the Xuan Huang ceremony in the north." The ceremonial vessels based on Gui, Bi, Chun and Zhang are the representatives of the ritual system of the Western Zhou Chongyu culture, and the jade is endowed with a unique spiritual connotation, which is regarded as abstract and rationalized gods and holy relics, and is also the carrier of moral concepts, and their most important role is to establish and consolidate the humanistic relationship on the basis of the patriarchal hierarchy. Jade has long formed a beautiful spiritual symbol in Chinese culture. It is a symbol of morality, custom, deity, wealth, and power. From this, many idioms related to jade have also been derived, such as "Ji Ji Pu Wang, Left and Right Fengzhang", "Qiong Zhen Yu Pei", "Repay it with Qiong Yao", "Bai Gui Zhi Defilement, Shang Ke Grinding Also, Si Yan Zhi Jie, Not To Do It", education gentlemen should be as persistent as jade, cautious in words and deeds, etc.
It can be seen that jade plays a pivotal role in traditional culture, and jade culture has continued from the day of its birth to the present day and has never been interrupted. Recently, the 2021 Gansu Cultural Tourism High-quality Development Seminar and Intangible Cultural Heritage Week series of activities - "Passing on the Torch, Red Ingenuity" Jincheng Handmade Intangible Cultural Heritage Exhibition activity was held in Lanzhou. Xing Caicheng, the inheritor of Qijia culture, participated in the event on behalf of the Qijia Cultural Research Association of Gansu Province. He restored how the ancients made jade at the event site, and his jade treatment process of "such as cutting and grinding" was elegant and full of ritual, which aroused the strong interest of the audience.
Xing Caicheng told reporters that he is the fifth generation inheritor of Qi Jia Zhi Jade Technique, who has loved Qi Shi Mei Jade since childhood, and followed his uncle Zhang Yingru, who is also the fourth generation inheritor of Qi Jia Zhi Jade Technique, to learn to rule jade, and Xing Caicheng mastered the complete Qi Jia Zhi Jade Technique when he was young. However, after completing his studies, he faced serious challenges. Xing Caicheng said: "After the 1960s, in order to improve the efficiency of jade making, jade craftsmen gradually replaced traditional jade tools (jade stools) with power tools. It has squeezed the living space of traditional jade and forced traditional jade to gradually withdraw from the historical stage. In order to improve his skills and seek development space, Xing Caicheng later studied modern jade carving technology, but he could not let go of the plot of ancient jade, so he secretly resolved to revive, carry forward and pass on the ancient jade technology.
After that, Xing Caicheng began to sink his heart to study the jade of China's dynasties and its production technology, especially in excavating, exploring, and inheriting the Qi family culture jade technology. In 2016, he was hired by the CCTV "Treasure Hunt" column group as an ancient jade appraisal expert; In 2019, on behalf of the Qijia Cultural Research Association of Gansu Province, he participated in the academic seminar "Early Cultural Exchange: Path and Society" jointly organized by the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Neolithic Archaeology Professional Committee of the Chinese Archaeological Society, the Gansu Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and the Lintao County People's Government.
Talking about the origin of the Qi family culture, Xing Caicheng told reporters as many family treasures that the Qi family culture was discovered by the Swedish scholar Ant in 1924 in the Qi Jia Ping Society of Yuanziping Village, Qi Jia Town, Guanghe County, Linxia Hui Autonomous Prefecture, Gansu Province, which is different from the "Remnants of Majiayao Culture" and so on, and nominated as the "Qi Jia Period" site. In 1944, after Mr. Xia Nai, the founder of Chinese archaeology, excavated the yangwawan site in Guanghe County (Ningding County) in Gansu Province, he determined that the remains of the "Qi Jia Period" were later than the remains of the "Yangshao Culture of Gansu Province". From 1947 to 1948, archaeologist Pei Wenzhong officially proposed the name of "Qijia Culture" after excavating the crock pot mouth site in Lintao County. The Qijia culture is a culture from the late Neolithic to early Bronze Age in the upper reaches of the Yellow River, centered on Gansu. The remains of the Qi family culture are widely distributed, reaching the northwest of Shaanxi Province in the east, the Bailongjiang River Basin in Sichuan Province in the south, the Haidong and Haibei regions in Qinghai Province in the west, and the Alxa Left Banner in Inner Mongolia north of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in the north.
The jade in the Qi family culture, with its unique simplicity, conveys to people the historical information of prehistoric human beings more than 4,000 years ago. However, from the founding of New China to the mid-1970s, due to the lack of data on Qi family jade unearthed, people paid little attention to Qi family jade. It was not until the fourth excavation of the Wuwei Emperor Niangniangtai site in 1975 that more than 300 pieces of Qijia culture jade artifacts were discovered, and people re-realized the important position of jade in the Qijia culture. But at the same time, some merchants and collectors have also poured into Gansu to buy Qijia ancient jade, triggering large-scale excavation by farmers and causing damage to the study of Qijia ancient jade, but this collection fever has also increased the popularity of Qijia culture to a certain extent. In addition to the ruins of Huangniangniangtai, the ruins of Wuwei Haizang Park in Gansu, the ruins of The Qinwei Family in Yongjing, the Ruins of Liuwan in Qinghai, and the Ruins of lajia, known as the "Pompeii of the East", have unearthed many Qi family cultural jades. Qijia culture jade has also become an indispensable part of ancient jade research, jade and jade culture research expert Mr. Yang Boda also listed Qi family culture jade as one of the five jade culture plates in China's prehistory.
Looking at the various materials and jade objects of Xing Caicheng Studio about Qi Jiayu, the reporter found that the Qi family jade shape system is simple and generous, simple and natural, humble and simple, majestic atmosphere, and most of the body is light and grainless. Xing Caicheng said that the Qi family culture jade is huge in quantity and extremely rich in variety, and the Qi family culture jade is a little less flexible than the Hongshan culture jade, and there is no complicated abstraction of the Liangzhu culture jade, but the Qi family culture jade has initially formed a pattern of "using jade as six instruments and liturgical heaven and earth to the four sides", which laid the foundation for the formation of the Shang and Zhou jade ceremonial system and had an extremely far-reaching impact on the formation of Chinese jade culture.
After years of reading historical documents, xing caicheng learned from years of analysis of historical documents, visits and conversations, and field site inspections that the Qi family culture jade treatment process is a jade control process with distinct Chinese national characteristics formed by the ancestors of the Qi family culture in the long-term historical development process. The ancestors of the Qi family culture took the lead in using bronze tools to control jade in the land of China, which had a profound impact on the traditional jade management of Xia, Shang and Zhou.
As the saying goes, "jade is not a tool", how to carve a piece of jade into beautiful jade? Xing Caicheng introduced while demonstrating, first of all, the jade is determined according to the color of the jade into which shape of the jade, and then according to the texture of the jade, the jade is cut out of the corresponding jade embryo with a stone knife and a bronze knife, and then the bone tool or bronze tool is used to treat the hole on the cut jade embryo, and finally the jade embryo that is well treated is repaired and shaped to the final instrument. The jade of the Qi family's cultural governance includes six types of ceremonial vessels such as jade bi, jade qun, yu gui, yu zhang, jade amber and jade huang, jade knife, jade axe, jade shovel and jade jade, as well as beads of various materials. In addition, according to the color of jade, different forms and different uses of jade, the same type of jade also has the size, thin and thick, indicating that the Ancestors of the Qi family culture have used the knowledge of mathematics, geometry, physics, art and many other disciplines in their daily activities.
Qijia culture jade is the foundation and source of traditional Chinese jade culture, but in today's deteriorating living environment of traditional jade management, it is necessary to protect the qijia culture jade from the perspective of literature, relics, processes and other aspects. In recent years, Xing Caicheng has collected and sorted out a large number of physical objects and materials related to qijia culture jade in view of the Qijia cultural jade declaration intangible cultural heritage project, and established the Qijia cultural jade center in 2019 to restore the qijia cultural jade process to the true, comprehensive and systematic restoration of the qijia cultural jade process. Xing Caicheng said: "After the establishment of the center, I will continue to collect and sort out the relevant physical objects and materials of the Qi family culture jade treatment, establish a relatively complete Qi family culture jade control database, produce the image data of the Qi family culture jade process, and will also apply for the intangible cultural heritage protection of the Qi family culture jade, build the Qi family culture jade exhibition experience hall that integrates display, demonstration and experience, and open the Qi family culture jade training class, although now I have three inheritors, but the number is far from enough. On this basis, I will continue to cultivate inheritors for the inheritance and development of the Qi family culture. ”
At the end of the interview, Xing Caicheng solemnly said: "Gansu is rich in surface jade mines, such as the Mandarin Duck Jade Mine in the east, the Mabit Mountain Jade Mine in the central part, and the Ma mane Mountain Jade Mine and the Sanwei Mountain Jade Mine in the west, which provide sufficient material support for the Qi family culture to manage jade." The ancestors of the Qi family culture took the lead in using bronze tools to govern jade in the land of China, which laid the tone for the traditional Chinese jade treatment of jade, and this important historical value had a profound impact on the traditional Chinese jade treatment. I will continue to pass on the Qi family jade culture with the spirit of fearless and tempered jade. ”
Hua Jing, an all-media reporter of Lanzhou Daily
Responsible Editor 丨Bai Aihong