There is a local saying in Wenchang: wherever there is seawater, there are Wenchang people, and wherever there are Wenchang people, there are murals of private houses.
It can be seen that the murals of the folk houses are of great significance to the Wenchang people. Even overseas Chinese who are far away will hire Wenchang craftsmen to paint murals and relieve homesickness.
As early as 10 years ago, the Mural paintings of Wenchang Folk House were recognized as the intangible cultural heritage project of Wenchang City.
Xu Dalian is working on the creation of gray sculptures.
mural
In Wenchang City, Wencheng Town, Touyuan Pine Tree Village, there stands a Fu family mansion. In the centuries-old vicissitudes of the mulberry fields, moss crawls all over the walls, and between the mottles, the patterns on the walls, eaves, and door arches are still colorful. This is Wenchang's mural of the house.
"The branches and leaves of Qiong's Putian (Southern Fujian's Putian), the root of Qiong's Qiong." Wu Yali, vice president of the Wenchang Cultural Research Association, said that most of the Ancestors of Wenchang came from Fujian, and they brought culture from the mainland, including murals of private houses, "Wenchang people have to paint murals when they build new houses, and the murals pin on the good wishes of Wenchang people for life." ”
Murals are made from a wide range of materials. In the house, most of the mascots that are popular among the people are painted, such as the "Magpie Dengmei", which symbolizes the top of the eyebrows, which symbolizes the high character; the plum, orchid, bamboo and chrysanthemum, which symbolizes noble virtue; the "goldfish and begonias" that symbolize the golden jade hall; and the "lotus and carp", which means that there are more than one year. The window arches are often painted with pine cranes symbolizing longevity and peonies symbolizing wealth. The murals in the ancestral temple of the ancestral hall include dragons, phoenixes, unicorns, etc., which symbolize auspiciousness, as well as various folk protectors, myths and legends.
Murals in the Mansion of the Fu family in Wenchang
In the past, the pigments used by painters were natural mineral stone powder, and the colors were only 4 basic colors of earth yellow, earth red, milk blue and ink color, and the advantage was that the fixed color was long-lasting and could be maintained for decades or even hundreds of years.
With the development of the times, painters began to mix with gouache, acrylic and other pigments. Compared to minerals, these pigments retain a shorter time but are more colorful. The painters mixed the two in their works to achieve a complementary effect.
Paintbrushes are passed down from generation to generation. Zeng Xiaoning, director of Wenchang Cultural Center, introduced that there are currently more than 30 painters in Wenchang, including 6 municipal non-hereditary inheritors.
People in Qiong Island, murals are traditional; people outside the island, murals are nostalgia. Therefore, 6 non-hereditary heirs are often invited to paint murals outside the province or even abroad.
The mural patterns of Wenchang Folk House are mostly mascots that are popular among the people.
Non-hereditary heir Pan Xianliang remembers that the first time he went abroad to paint was when he was invited by the Thai Chinese to paint a new temple. Later, he went to Southeast Asia several times, leaving vivid murals of houses in Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia.
The murals of the Tianhou Temple in Malaysia were painted by Wenchang painters and took more than a year to complete. When it was completed, many local Qiong expatriates flocked to the area. Fu Hongguo, an overseas Chinese compatriot from Wenchang in his 80s, held Pan Xianliang's hand and was excited, lamenting that these murals evoked his childhood memories.
Gray sculpture
Wandering around Wenchang Old Street and ancient villages, in addition to flat murals, you will often see a kind of sculpture protruding from the plane. For example, squirrels and grapes, which mean that people are prosperous; bats and peaches, which mean many blessings and longevity. This is the gray sculpture, which is also a form of expression of the murals of the houses.
Like the flat murals, the gray sculpture also has a long history, and is a decorative craft commonly used in traditional architecture in China, which is called ash batch and ash pile by the people. The gray plastic craftsmen design the corresponding patterns according to the needs of the architectural space and decorative parts, and then mix lime, paper, straw, etc. into viscous raw materials like cement, and smear them on the wall through gray knives, and then carve them to form a three-dimensional decoration. The theme of gray sculpture is usually composed of auspicious birds and animals, flowers and plants, auspicious pictures and other patterns, and most of them are based on auspicious allegorical elements that are popular with the people.
A gray sculpture of Haikou Qilou Pedestrian Street.
At present, there are far fewer craftsmen who master gray sculpture than there are painters of flat murals.
Xu Dalian, 72, is one of the best gray sculpture craftsmen in Hainan: "It is precisely because I feel that there are few gray sculpture craftsmen that I changed from a flat mural to a gray sculpture. ”
It's not easy to change careers. In particular, the production of gray sculptures is very few words, but it is actually time-consuming and laborious. There is a lot of attention to the step of preparing the stucco alone: for example, in order to improve the viscosity, the stucco has to be covered for a period of time; the stucco has to be rammed to ensure that it has both a certain density and a high degree of plasticity and flexibility. In addition, the curing speed of plaster is too fast to be conducive to plasticity, too slow and easy to damage, so the blending of plaster is very important. Over the years, after repeated ratios and improvements in the formula, the materials produced by Xu Da lian are highly viscous, even if they are intricately carved on the outer layer, they are enough to support.
The gray knife has been flying in his hand for more than 50 years, and Xu Dalian has participated in many projects. The exquisite gray sculptures on the roof ridge of the Wenchang Confucius Temple, which he participated in making, have survived decades of wind and rain and are still vivid today.
Walking in the Fu family house, looking up at the gray sculptures that have been preserved in the house for a hundred years, Xu Dalian said that with the development of society, people's requirements for gray sculpture art are getting higher and higher, even if they have passed the age, they still have to continue to learn, ponder, and insist on practicing, in order to make gray sculpture keep up with the aesthetics of the times, so that more people can understand gray sculpture, love gray sculpture, and inherit gray sculpture.
Inheritance
There is an arcade building hotel on Zhongshan Road in Haikou, and the interior is full of exquisite stuccoes and murals. This is the work of Xu Dalian and his friends.
At present, people's lives are getting better and better, many people have entered the city, moved into high-rise buildings, and the murals of private houses have declined. Wu Yali sighed: "The murals of the folk houses are the historical and traditional business card of Wenchang, but not many outsiders know about it; it was once prosperous, and now there is no successor." ”
The gray sculptures in the Huanhai Pavilion Hotel in Haikou Qilou Old Street were created by Xu Dalian and his team.
Treasures should be known and passed on. To this end, Wenchang's non-hereditary heirs have innovatively moved their creations from the wall to the wooden planks, making it easy to move and carry. The Wenchang Municipal Party Committee, the Municipal Government and all sectors of society have also thought of many ways: holding exhibitions; regularly organizing cultural exchanges; and setting up a mural base on campus to regularly teach teachers and students.
When the hotel on Zhongshan Road in Haikou came to the door, Xu Dalian did not hesitate to respond. He told the Hainan Daily reporter that the main market for folk house murals has always been in townships, how can more people know the murals of folk houses, and then inherit and protect this craft? He hopes that through the projects in this city, the murals of the houses will go out of the countryside, into the city, and appear in popular tourist attractions such as Qilou Old Street, so that more people can see the beauty of the murals of the houses.
In April 2021, Xu Dalian opened a studio in Haikou "898 Art Village", on the one hand, to undertake projects, on the other hand, as a display platform for wenchang folk house murals.
In recent years, when Wu Shidong, a non-hereditary heir, receives some large-scale mural projects, he will also deliberately let college students from colleges and universities do assistance work. In the process of work, he will teach Wenchang mural painting skills to college students. He believes that with the participation of young people, there will be more room for creativity and development in the murals of private houses in the future. He also hopes that more and more young people can appreciate the charm of the murals in the houses, join this line of work, and pass on this intangible cultural heritage. (Xi Jihong)
Source: Hainan Daily