Modern Express News (Reporter Gu Xiaowen / Photo) The Spring Festival is approaching, and Meng Xiaohong, the non-hereditary inheritor of the Face Sculpture in Yangzhou City, spent more than 1 month creating the "Tiger Baby Spring" face sculpture work. More than 50 people wear tiger head hats and tiger head shoes on their feet, and the image of children is vivid, singing and dancing, festive and lively.
On January 18, a Modern Express reporter met more than 50 "tiger babies" at Meng Xiaohong's home. These tiger babies wear tiger hats and tiger shoes on their feet, some hold lanterns, some post blessing words, and some dance, with different shapes and lifelike. This is specially made by Meng Xiaohong to welcome the arrival of the Year of the Tiger.
The history of Chinese face sculpture can be traced back to the Han Dynasty. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, the development of face sculpture entered its heyday. Among the many schools of face sculpture, Yangzhou face sculpture is beautiful, elegant, graceful and exquisite, which is the representative of the southern plastic. Meng Xiaohong introduced that the face sculpture in the north such as Shandong can be made into a flower bun for direct consumption, and can also be used as an ancestor worshipper, while the face sculpture in Yangzhou is more collected as a handicraft, and the preservation time is particularly long, fine and vivid.
Meng Xiaohong was born in a family of face sculptures, and has been pinching face sculptures since her grandfather's generation. Under the influence of her father, Meng Xiaohong learned the art of kneading and shaping dough from a young age, and a few inconspicuous pieces of dough could become vivid when kneaded and kneaded in her hands. During her college years, Meng Xiaohong chose to major in Russian and worked as a translator for several years after graduation.
In 1999, Meng Xiaohong's father, Meng Erzhen, retired to his hometown of Yangzhou. Because she could not put down the family's heirloom face sculpture in her heart, Meng Erzhen decided to go out to set up a stall to knead the noodles, and she has been kneading noodles in Wenchang Pavilion until she is 83 years old. In order to take care of her father, but also out of the love of the opposite plastic, Meng Xiaohong gave up her profession and made face plastic with her father. Since 2009, Meng Xiaohong has come to Dongguan Street to show tourists the Yangzhou face sculpture technique every day.
In the past two decades of in-depth study of face sculpture, Meng Xiaohong has practiced a unique skill: pinching real human portrait face sculpture. A stick, a pair of scissors, a ball of dough, facing the photo or myself, the dough has been kneaded, kneaded, kneaded, and then deftly placed, cut, carved, and scratched, and the vivid character image can be completed in 20 minutes, so it can attract many tourists to stop every day.
Meng Xiaohong said that pinching portraits is mainly to see people's looks and expressions, and to grasp the characteristics of the characters in a short period of time, such as hair, eyes, clothes, and all the decorations. It is said that practice makes perfect, but in contrast, Meng Xiaohong feels that love and patience are more important, and face painting is a meticulous handicraft, if not very passionate about ordinary people can not do it quietly.
Over the years, Meng Xiaohong's face sculptures have repeatedly won gold and silver in major competitions across the country. Meng Xiaohong said that love is the most powerful force. Because of his love, his father insisted on making face molding until the end of his life. This spirit of perseverance has also been passed down in the Meng family, and Meng Xiaohong's three sisters and nieces are also making Yangzhou face sculptures.