Text, photo/ Yangcheng Evening News all-media reporter Hou Mengfei
Intern Zhang Xiaoyue
Wang Xinyuan has been exposed to embroidery since childhood, enlisted in high school, and picked up embroidery needles again after retiring from the army in 2001, learning embroidery while working. In 2008, his work "Loving Mother" won the Gold Medal of the Hundred Flowers Cup, which was his first gold award. In 2011, he registered his own brand, Juyuanxiang.
Wang Xinyuan in 2021 already has many titles: representative inheritor of the national intangible cultural heritage Guangdong embroidery at the municipal level, master of Cantonese embroidery arts and crafts, member of the China Embroidery Professional Committee, and executive director of the Guangdong Arts and Crafts Association. These titles all attest to his achievements in wide embroidery.
What does embroidery mean to Wang Xinyuan? Behind the embroidery innovation, how does Wang Xinyuan view the changes and invariances in innovation? He is a treasure of his own works, does not shy away from the dissatisfaction in innovation, does not hide his desire for the promotion of guangdong embroidery, and proudly expresses his role in the promotion of guangdong embroidery.
Wang Xinyuan is confident, self-consistent and pragmatic. But even so, he needs to break through the fog on the road to innovation.
When questioned, he may have asked himself, what is my "rightness" for the integrity and innovation of Guangxiu?
Luckily, he got the answer.
In the long journey of Guangdong embroidery innovation, Wang Xinyuan still has to go a long way. He said: "I'm not going to stop. ”
The following is Wang Xinyuan's self-statement.
I come from a family of tailors, and my whole family does this. Around 1990, I started studying tailoring. At that time, girls were learning, but I saw that my brother and my brother-in-law were learning, and my parents also said that you would not starve to death if you learned a craft, and you also had a skill when you went out to work. At that time, watching my family do, I helped them iron their clothes, put away their clothes, and learn to cut. When I was a teenager, other boys were playing with balls and catching frogs, and when I was embroidering, I thought I was a little weird.
At that time, winter and summer vacations were at my cousin's house, and I often saw her embroidering birds on white cloth, which was very beautiful. I was thinking about how this was embroidered, I tied it on the white cloth myself, and my cousin didn't interfere, let me try. Unlike some people who may say "don't touch me" now, if my cousin had stopped me, there might not have been me now. Later, I became more and more interested in this craft.
But as a child, learning embroidery was not systematic. And people are playing, I'm embroidering, so [they] don't like to play with me. Junior high school is a boarding house, and my classmates do not bully me, but it is inevitable that they will look at my embroidery with different eyes - like "mother cannon".
So in high school I ran to the army. Originally, I went to Hainan to be a soldier, but I felt that Hainan was too close, and I wanted to go to a northernmost and farthest place, so I went to Xinjiang to become a soldier.
Enlistment Training:
My persistence is inseparable from the experience of the troops
It is said that doing one thing requires perseverance, which is easier said than it is, and it is really difficult to stick to it. You see we stand in a military posture, two or three hours without moving, when running five kilometers across the road, I have to finish running with my teeth clenched, and the troops have honed my tenacity.
I remember a winter Saturday, at one o'clock in the morning. In our sleep, we suddenly heard the wake-up whistle: get ready to practice. In the dark of the night, packing our backpacks and stepping on the snow that was deeper than my waist, we set out in the direction of the mountains. Halfway to the road, I received the order to "sleep in place", and after lying down in the cold snow for a few minutes, I received an order to "urgently assemble". From one o'clock in the morning to four or five o'clock in the morning, we ran through the bare mountains, and it was no longer clear how far we ran, but we remembered that our eyes were full of snow.
Walking back to finally see the barracks, we all thought we could rest, but we received another order: Lie down! Creep forward, target barracks! After climbing back to the barracks, the camouflage uniform on his body was frozen and stood up after taking it off.
It was the night I remembered most as a soldier, and I can't forget it in my life.
The influence of the army on me was soaked in my bones. Doing things and speaking can reflect the style of soldiers. But what my military career has given me is not roughness, but strict requirements for myself. My parents and apprentices all said that I was very demanding of things.
If some of the apprentices' works are flawed, I may use the better parts on cultural and creative products. But I have relatively high requirements for myself, that is, to keep improving, and if there is a flaw, I may dismantle and redo. Like the "Heaven and Earth People" work I was doing, the skirt embroidered on it was actually embroidered, but I felt that it was not enough, this skirt had no highlights, so I tried to embroider it with color gold.
People say that doing a line of love is a line, I think I have to drill a line, I like to drill into it. That's why I said that what I did in the army exercised me, and the troops even folded quilts with edges and angles, and they were more exquisite.
Embroidery is also a real kung fu, a thread and a color, the length of the needle, the thickness, these are professional details. I feel that all the experiences are involved in the dark, I am in the army as a scout to report the direction, if the direction is wrong, the plane will hit the wrong target. I think I've done very detailed things in the past, and that's exactly what embroidery needs.
Zigzag embroidery:
My first store was closed after three months
After retiring from the army, I came to Guangzhou, followed my master and wife system to learn Cantonese embroidery, and learned while working. After 2005, I went everywhere to visit the masters, and my horizons broadened a lot in the process.
The real development of the business was in 2010. When I opened my first store, it couldn't be opened for three months, and no one bought it. A few days before it was closed, a customer in my shop took a fancy to some of the works. He asked me, "Who is the author?" "I didn't understand that the work had to be paid. I replied, "I embroidered it," and the customer didn't quite believe it, so we agreed to meet again the next day and show it to him in person.
In fact, I have some doubts in my heart, afraid that he will not come. But the next day I took out the tools and the silk threads of various colors and began to embroider my unfinished works in the shop. As a result, people actually came, saw my embroiderer on the spot, and said, "Oh! Not bad! "I bought three of my works in one go.
Although the works at that time were sold cheaply and did not have much money, I was confident and I knew that there were still people appreciating my works. It's a great accomplishment to finish a piece myself, but if someone appreciates and buys a collection, it's a higher recognition for me.
Innovation is not easy:
Maybe there is no real "orthodoxy"
My biggest bottleneck is when it comes to transformation. When I started to learn Cantonese embroidery, there were more flowers to embroider, and then I wanted to change my style. Everyone is embroidering the same subject matter, so it cannot form a unique artistic language. The process of finding an artistic language is painful, including the fact that I am still searching and groping.
In 2006, I started experimenting with embroidery on bronzes. At the beginning, how to embroider was not like, with this stitch embroidery works are not good, I will change it, or dismantle it and start over, try to embroider the feeling of thickness and rust. Slowly the feeling comes out, and it is constantly studied and challenged.
In this process, there is no master to lead, no experience as a reference, and can only rely on their own groping. But it was also in the process that there was innovation. For example, I started to use the tic-tac-toe stitch method in embroidery, found it not good to see it, dismantled it, changed the embroidery method on the cloth casually tied, tied out an effect, then continue. It can be said that I have innovations in many stitches, but none of them have names (laughs).
In 2008, the bronze I embroidered had a unique flavor. At that time, some people said that bronze ware was not cantonal embroidery orthodox in terms of subject matter. I was thinking that since I am the inheritor of Guangdong embroidery, then what I embroider can represent Guangdong embroidery, but my innovation is in the forefront.
Everyone is talking about innovation. I think today's innovation is tomorrow's tradition. If you want to carry forward the broad embroidery, if you do not innovate, you can only go down.
I'm embroidering a tiger right now, and it's shocking. Some people say: Xiang embroidery is embroidered tiger, can Guang embroidery be embroidered well? In fact, Su embroidery is also embroidering lychees and kapok embroidered in Guangzhou.
Every era will have its own label, and everyone will have its own artistic language. What I want to do is actually to let Guangxiu go out and let more people know about Guangxiu. As for my work, it is my endorsement, where it will eventually go, I don't know, whether it can eventually become a symbol of Guangdong embroidery, I don't know. Suffice it to say that it certainly became a symbol of my time.
Guangdong embroidery promotion:
As long as it is helpful for the promotion of wide embroidery, I will try it
I want to promote Guangdong embroidery, so that more people understand Guangdong embroidery, so I made some cultural and creative products, such as pen bags, desk lamps, hair cards, brooches, etc., all of which are more than 100 pieces. At the very least, everyone can afford to consume, so that Guangxiu can enter thousands of households.
Traditional art must have a market and bring economic benefits in order to be better inherited. A work embroidered out, many people say beautiful. But what if the market doesn't accept it? Craftsmen cannot drink the northwest wind. We still need to develop more, design more, and integrate the trend of the times. Times have changed, and what reason we have not changed.
There used to be a saying called "wine is not afraid of deep alleys". What now? Scared to death. Canton embroidery is the same, such a good millennium skill, if not to promote, who knows? Therefore, if intangible cultural heritage wants to go global, it must be commercialized and branded.
Now, everyone is slowly starting to cooperate across borders, and when interacting with Tencent and Lamborghini, it is actually a challenge. But I thought that as long as it is helpful for the promotion of wide embroidery, then try it. Why? I want to let the young people today see hope, let them know that the teacher's work can have a good income. Then they will think, I am also as committed as a teacher, there is hope.
Some people say: Teacher Wang, you are getting more and more famous now. I said: No, it is the craft of Guang embroidery that has made me. If you stick to one thing for 27 years, you can too.
How many people are in the choice all their lives. But I can say that I have been persevering all my life. (For more news, please pay attention to Yangcheng Pie pai.ycwb.com)
Source | Yangcheng Evening News Yangcheng Pie
Editor-in-charge | Chen Qian