Located in the southeast of Qinghai Province, the northeast of Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, and the hub of the intersection of the three provinces of Sichuan, Gansu, and Qingqing, Tongren is a multi-ethnic settlement with Tibetans as the mainstay and Han, Tu, Hui, Sala, Baoan, and Mongolian. Historical changes and cultural integration among various ethnic groups have laid a rich foundation for the culture here.
Tongren is called "Regong" in Tibetan, which means "dreams come true". From the 13th century onwards, the Art of Regong, with thangkas, murals, embroidery and sculpture as the main body, originated, developed and flourished with colleagues, until it formed today's scale. In 2009, the art of Regong was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Rinchen Dorje: A painter's painting dream
The 27-year-old Renqing duo was born in the atmosphere of Regong art since he was a child, and his family drew thangkas, as well as neighbors and friends. However, when he first wanted to learn thangka, he was opposed by his grandparents.
Renqing Dorje's father, Niangben, is the representative inheritor of the national intangible cultural heritage project Regong Art and a master of Chinese arts and crafts. Rinchen Dorje's grandparents witnessed the hardships of Thangka painting in Nyangben's early years: there was no market for works in the past, there was no industrial scale, painters had to go to monasteries all year round to find job opportunities, and their income was both unstable and meager. Out of love for their grandchildren, they initially disapproved of Rinchen Dorje's study of thangka, believing that they would have a career in other jobs in the future and would not have to take such a hard road.
However, Renqing Dorje longed for Thangka painting, looked at others to paint, felt that the painting was very smooth, and wanted to learn from his father. Thangka painting was followed by someone, his father was happy, and his grandparents chose to respect his decision. That year, Rinchen Dorje was 12 years old.
Learning thangka is not so easy, the introduction is to learn the "Sutra of Measurement", but also to learn to meditate cross-legged. For a child, 12 years old is the most playful and naughty time, and Renqing Dorje is no exception. From playing wherever he wanted, to sitting quietly for 11 or 12 hours a day, he did it and got used to it.
The picture shows a 2019 exhibition in Beijing, Renqing Dorje introduces his work Photo: Yang Yueyun
Renqing Dorje learned to learn, and slowly fell in love with thangka, painting during the day and wanting to paint at night; when he opened his eyes in the morning, he also thought about where he had painted yesterday, and what he wanted to paint today. Talk about the steps of painting thangkas, the provenance of paint, the techniques of coloring... Be at home in. Before I knew it, 15 years had passed. Regong Thangka took Renqing Dorje from his colleagues to Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan... There are also foreign cities like Osaka.
Renqing Dorje believes that compared with his father, his works are in the same style, and their brushstrokes and wax methods have their own characteristics. In 2017, Renqing Dorje created his own blue and green thangkas, which is a completely new attempt at thangka drawing. For Renqing Dorje's innovation, his father is also very supportive and will give specific guidance professionally.
Regong Painting Institute: The responsibility of a company
Growing up with Renqing Dorje, there was also the Regong Painting Academy founded by Nyamoto. Located in Wutun Village, Tongren Longwu Town, Regong Art Institute was officially opened in August 2008, mainly engaged in the creation, research, training, production, sales, exhibition and collection of Regong art.
The picture shows the Regong Thangka Painting Institute courtesy of Renqing Dorje
According to Renqing Dorje, the purpose of establishing the Regong Painting Institute in the early years was to help poor families improve their lives and get rid of poverty. After the opening of the academy, the first thing I did was to adopt orphans from the welfare home and teach them the art of thangka painting, so that they could have a skill. Even today, when absolute poverty has been eliminated, studying at the Regong Academy of Painting is still exempt from tuition, living expenses, paint fees, and even living expenses will occur in the New Year. Counting miscellaneous items such as electricity and water bills, the Regong Painting Institute only spends on this one item, which is about one million per year.
At the same time, Niangben and his friends also funded local poor college students according to the standard of 5,000 yuan per person per year, and more than 170 college students have benefited.
As a leading enterprise in Huangnan Prefecture, The Regong Painting Institute has set up the Qinghai Regong Art Transmission Center and the Regong Painting Institute Vocational Skills Training School, as of now, the former has driven 500 local farmers and herdsmen to engage in the cause of Regong art, and signed more than 600 painters, and among the painters trained by the latter, there are more than 700 teachers, and more than 70 students are currently studying.
In the selection of pigment raw materials, thangka is mainly based on minerals and plants, such as: gold, silver, agate, malachite, lapis lazuli, cinnabar, etc., as well as saffron, rhubarb, blue indigo and so on. The natural raw materials combined with the unique development process have created thangkas that have remained colorful over the centuries. The picture shows the raw material of thangka pigments Photo: Xu Na
Because of this, Regong Painting Institute has successively won the titles of "Qinghai Cultural Industry Demonstration Base", "Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship Apprenticeship Base", "National Cultural Industry Demonstration Base", "Qinghai Provincial Industrial Poverty Alleviation Leading Enterprise", "Sanjiangyuan Ecological Protection and Construction skills Training Demonstration Base for Farmers and Herdsmen", "National Intangible Cultural Heritage Productive Protection Demonstration Base" and so on.
In the past two years or so, due to the epidemic, the sales of thangkas have been greatly affected. Renqing Dorje said that although a 1300-meter thangka long scroll being created by the Regong Painting Academy has been created for more than half of it, it is currently in a stagnant stage for various reasons. But as a leading enterprise, even if the Regong Painting Institute bites its teeth, it must stand up and walk forward.
Thangka's dual responsibility: cultural inheritance and rural revitalization
Regong art is a business card that shows the cultural heritage of colleagues; it is also a bridge that connects colleagues and the outside world. Regong Thangka also has its double-sided connection, on the one hand is cultural inheritance, on the other hand is rural revitalization.
The inheritance of thangka skills is also changing with the development of the times, and the regulations that once existed such as "passing on men and not women, passing on inside and not passing on outside" have now been broken. In the Vocational Skills Training School of the Regong Academy of Painting, there are less than 10 girls studying thangkas, and there are basically female painters in every household of local farmers.
The picture shows Renchen Dorje's eldest daughter "creating" Renchen Dorje
Dorje himself has two daughters, the eldest daughter is almost five years old, influenced by the family environment, from the time he can walk, he likes to take a brush, but also very fond of drawing. Renqing Dorje and his father were painting every day, and once in Beijing, when a thangka by Renqing Dorje was about to be completed, her daughter took advantage of the lunch break between the adults' meals and ran out to take a brush and paint to paint herself. The painting, Renqing Dorje, has been kept in Beijing, ready to be given to her daughter when she grows up.
According to Renqing Dorje, women of his parents' generation could only do farm work without mobile phones or makeup. Now, with the development of the economy and the improvement of life, women have more employment options, such as painting thangkas, and thus have the economic ability to buy mobile phones, buy brand-name cosmetics, buy cars, and build houses.
Life has improved, but students have become a little harder to bring. Renqing Dorje began to take students in 2016, including those from Qinghai Province to Shandong, Beijing and other places. When Renchen Dorje studied Thangka, mobile phones were not common, and the students were obedient. And now, there are more mobile phones and more entertainment methods. The Niangben Thangka Art Center has opened a short video account, and Renqing Dorje sometimes brushes short videos for several hours in a row, in addition to sharing some creative fragments, there is also very relaxed and lively content. The study and inheritance of thangkas is facing new opportunities and challenges.
Renqing Dorje said that thangka is an art that can go to the world; if more people pass it on, thangka will also go further and go to a bigger stage. (China Tibet Network Reporter/Yang Yueyun Xu Na)