In 1995, a farmer in his early 20s in Dingxiang Hongdao Town inadvertently tried to make miniature wood models. He did not expect at the time that this attempt would fill a gap in the domestic handicraft market.
With more than 20 years, he has developed the Shenglong Wood Carving Model Art Co., Ltd., which he founded, into the largest wood model enterprise in China and the largest production base of wood carving ancient architectural model in China - there is no one; the Chinese ancient architectural model museum he created is the first in the country and is currently unique; 95% of the ancient architectural models displayed in museums at all levels in China are from his enterprise. He is committed to excavating and developing the artistic and commercial value of ancient buildings, and has made great contributions to the inheritance and development of ancient building model art in Shanxi and even China, and his works have won numerous awards and titles. "Sheng Long Wood Carving" has always been imitated and has never been surpassed.
Many people know that his name is Liu Xiaochen; more people don't know, Xiaochen has many stories...
01
Earn a living
▲ Yellow Crane Tower
Hongdao Town is located at the junction of Dingxiang, Yuanping and Wutai counties, because of geographical reasons, trade and handicraft industry have always been developed, there are "Hundred Industry Town" and "Hundred Workshops" said. The so-called "hundred workshops" means that there were hundreds of handicraft workshops in the town that year, blacksmith shops, carpenter shops, tailor shops... Some workshops have disappeared forever in the long river of history, such as pi nitro, commonly known as "cooked skin" - the peeled cow and sheep skin tanned into leather. Therefore, the five elements and eight works of Hongdao Town each show their miraculous abilities, and they can skillfully hide the dragon and crouching tiger. The carpenters of Hongdao Town were divided into large wood, small wood and fine wood: or pillars on beams, building houses, or mortise and tenoning, creating furniture; or writing with knives and carving in fine carving.
Born in Hongdao, his later career was inseparable from wood, but Liu Xiaochen's woodmaking skills were not passed down from his family - his parents worked in farming, and his father did some small business when he was idle. When he was a child, one of Liu Xiaochen's hobbies was to use a pencil knife to carve chalk in the classroom and "carve" small animals. However, this is also a helpless move limited to the conditions at that time - boys always have to have a toy and a way to play, right? There doesn't seem to be a causal relationship between this and the industry he later worked in.
After graduating from Hongdao High School, half a year old boy worked as a brick and mud worker on a construction site. After half a year of drying his face, Xiaochen found a business opportunity.
Around Hongdao Town, the former Pingnanbai and Dongshe, Wutai Dongye and Jian'an, at that time, the transportation was inconvenient, and the farmers lacked transport vehicles, and it became difficult to change the white noodles after harvesting corn. Xiaochen and his father combined, invested in a walk-behind tractor, and started a business of "mutual communication" with a "small hair" - buying white noodles from the Hongdao Town Grain Store to the mountains for corn, pulling the corn back to Hongdao to sell to grain dealers to Send to Sichuan, earning some freight and price difference. A bag of flour 50 pounds, can be exchanged for a sack of corn 180 pounds. The two small offspring are both drivers and stevedores, and the small 200-pound sack is carried up and left. Wind meals and camping, early out and late home. Fortunately, the income is not cheap, and the two can earn thirty or forty yuan a day.
The mountain road is rugged, and the headlights will only turn on when the hand-held "three trampolines" are violently fueled. Late one night, the two were tired and sleepy, and they did not step on the accelerator when they turned the corner, and they could not see the road ahead. When I arrived at the front, I found that it was not right, the handlebar was not hit, and half of the front wheel was already hanging on the edge of the cliff. The two broke out in a cold sweat and came back saying that they didn't even dare to do it.
Xiaochen was "idle" at home, idle, bought saw blades, carved knives, and carved something out of wood. The father said that the young man still learned a craft, so he asked Xiaochen to go to one of his cousins. The cousin was an old carpenter in Hongdao Town who could "work all the way" and was "walking" in Taiyuan at the time. After Xiaochen went to Taiyuan to explain his intentions, he did not expect that the foreman of the condition of "not making money and only managing food" did not agree. After the project in Taiyuan was completed, a friend of his cousin's in Hongdao asked him to come back and build five tile houses, and this cousin could decide for himself, so he took Xiaochen to the owner's house. The two nephews made a winter and built five large tile houses with beautiful brick and wood structures.
Carpentry apprentices usually take three years. In the end, it is his own relatives, the uncle will never hide it, and the nephew learns the craft like a sponge to absorb water. This kind of "practical training" opportunity is actually very rare, the new brick and wood structure tile house test compared with the carpenter's process and craftsmanship, Xiaochen experienced one by one. After all, it is a high school graduate, calculating ah drawing, uncle a little bit of nephew will understand. By building these five tile houses, Liu Xiaochen initially mastered the basic skills of carpenters, and Yu Carpenter's line was considered to have entered the door. After the spring, his uncle took a carving in Taiyuan to make a living, and Xiaochen followed the study and did it for half a year. After this single business was done, I had to go home again to "idle".
One day, I happened to see a photo of Datong's "Nine Dragon Wall" from a book. Itching for a moment, he carved a tiger according to the cat. When encountering difficulties, there was no one to advise, and the information at that time was not developed, and it was completely self-inflicted. It was engraved intermittently for half a year, and only a "semi-finished product" was produced. I really have no confidence, and I can't bear to give up.
Another odd job. This time it was baked omelets at a cake shop in Hongdao Town. At that time, the equipment was backward, and it was baked for a month, and my hands were full of blisters. Ten fingers are even heart, and I can't do it if I want to.
Returning home to recuperate, I was bored and turned over books, and I saw a photo of Yingxian Muta in a book. At that time, Xiaochen did not understand the internal structure of the ancient building, nor did he know what a miniature model was, let alone what was the proportion of miniature. I just think that if you use small wooden sticks and small wooden blocks to insert a "miniature version" of the wooden tower, its difficulty should be less than carving the "Nine Dragon Wall". He did not expect at all that the turning point of his fate and the beginning of his life's career would begin with these wooden sticks and small wooden blocks...
02
Do towers
The raw materials of ancient buildings, China is mainly wood, and the West is made of stone beams and columns as the basic components.
Shanxi is "the treasure house of ancient Chinese architecture". The existing wooden buildings before the Song and Liaojin dynasties account for 75% of the country, and the only 4 remaining Tang Dynasty wooden buildings in China are in Shanxi. Historically, ancient buildings have borne the brunt of the change of dynasties, earthquakes and fires, and man-made destruction. Therefore, the ancient buildings that have survived to this day are non-renewable and precious.
Built in the second year of Liaoning Qingning (1056), the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda in the Yingxian Buddhist Palace Temple is the only surviving wooden pagoda in the world that is the oldest and tallest wooden pagoda in the world. The tower is 67.3 meters high, and the bottom floor is 30.2 meters in diameter and has a flat octagonal shape. The overall structure of the whole tower is made of wood, and not a single iron nail is used. A total of 54 kinds of bucket arches are applied throughout the tower, which is called "Chinese Ancient Architecture Bucket Arch Museum". Its tenon structure is rigid and flexible, and this energy-consuming and shock-absorbing design even exceeds the technological level of modern architecture. Yingxian Wooden Pagoda is known as "the most typical example of wood structure in the world and the most valuable coordinates in the history of Chinese architecture".
Now it seems that the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda is really a "gift" given to Liu Xiaochen by the heavens. However, when he made the first "miniature version of the YingXian Wooden Tower", he did not realize this at all.
Purchase a tool such as push planer and hand saw. What wood is used? There are many fruit trees planted in Hongdao and the surrounding countryside, and the large timber of fruit trees such as pear trees is cracked as furniture, and villagers only use it as a rolling pin. After pruning the thick branches, the people made firewood. Xiaochen picked up some and was just working on it.
It is said that Liu Xiaochen at that time was "ignorant and fearless" or "a stupid boy sleeping in a cold kang all by firepower", in the absence of examples, no data, and no one to point out, this later life "squeaky" will start. Sometimes, a part is not necessarily successful ten times, and the first "tower" he makes, thousands of large and small parts. After half a year, the first "miniature version of yingxian wooden tower" came out since there was a Yingxian wooden tower.
Make the first one, Xiaochen is still not finished, and then make the second. After all, I am skilled and have taken many detours less. Two months later, the small wooden towers were assembled with greater precision and smoothness than the first. Repeatedly looking at this pair of exquisite and transparent small wooden towers, Liu Xiaochen's sense of achievement exploded, but he completely ignored a problem - this half a year, but he did not earn a penny.
The village's latecomers who were the same year old were busy earning money to marry their daughters-in-law, they had been tinkering with it for so long, pouring countless efforts into it, giving people away must be reluctant to give it, Dingxiang estimated that no one would buy it, where can it be turned into money?
03
Sell towers
Xiaochen's father was running to Taiyuan for three days at the time—buying bean crops from the Hongdao town area, loading them in his pockets, putting them on the roof of the bus to Taiyuan to sell them to the grain wholesale store. Maybe someone in Taiyuan wants this thing?
On this day, Xiaochen got up at less than five o'clock in the morning, put the second small wooden tower in a cardboard box and tied it with thin hemp rope, and bumped all the way to the provincial city for more than three hours. He thought on the car, we should belong to the "handicrafts", so when I arrived in Taiyuan, I saw the store with the word "handicraft" on the door. After entering a few, people said that they had not seen it, did not know what this was, and did not receive it.
Stayed with my father in a small inn. His father handled business during the day, and Xiaochen carried a cardboard box around Taiyuan. On this day, I came to the Shanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Store next to the Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau, only to see the words "Receive and sell handicrafts and cultural relics replicas" on the window. Shanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Shop? This head is also too big. He didn't hold out much hope, and went in to open the cardboard box and take out the tower and put it on the counter--there are dates and no dates and three poles.
A staff member of the shop came over, took up the small wooden tower and looked left and right, and said to Xiaochen, "You have never seen anything like this in our shop, but I am personally quite interested." You put down what we can consign and sell to you for money – how much are you going to sell? ”
The name of the store was big enough, and Xiaochen was convinced. How much does it cost? He really hadn't thought about it. At the moment, I did a total of two months, calculated 10 yuan per day, and the material cost was negligible, so I wanted 600 yuan. The man didn't bargain either, just said you go back and wait.
Things are put down, but the heart is empty. I didn't have the heart to do anything else, so I helped my father sell miscellaneous beans and run to Taiyuan. At that time, he had just bought a bicycle, and as soon as he arrived in Taiyuan, he rode to the provincial cultural relics store. After running seven or eight times, every time I entered the store, I saw the small wooden tower still there pestle in the distance, and I was disappointed once.
This day I went again, and before I stepped into the store door, I saw that the place where the tower was swinging was empty! Before he could speak, he saw the staff member take out a wad of 10 yuan bills tied with rubber bands from the counter drawer: "Someone bought it, give you money..."
Liu Xiaochen was momentarily in the clouds and fog, ecstatic, as if in a dream. Hobbies can really turn into money - he has not earned so much money, but he used to work hard, this time with his own craftsmanship! When interviewed, Xiaochen said that the impact of earning 60,000, 600,000 and 6 million yuan later was not as good as the 600 yuan in the summer of 1995.
As for who the shop sold the small wooden tower to and how much money it sold, people did not say it, and he did not dare to ask, and only after a few years did he accidentally know.
The good thing isn't over yet. The staff member offered to order another 10, or consignment, sold for money, did not make an advance payment, and demanded three to five months to complete. Liu Xiaochen was overwhelmed by joy at that time, and signed the contract without thinking.
04
Receiving disciples
After returning to Hongdao, Liu Xiaochen woke up—one was done for two months, and ten would take a year and a half no matter how fast. This contract was also signed, and the head "buzzed" a little bigger.
After calming down, thinking about the plot, the work is slow, one is to fight alone, and the other is that the parts processing are manual. He thought of using a machine, but there was no readily available on the market. So I thought about making a small chainsaw myself, and used the motor of the old electric hair dryer as a power. Small chainsaw cutting thin wooden sticks, small wooden blocks save time and effort, and the work efficiency is increased by more than 10 times.
At that time, it was three volts, and the heat in the house was really bad, and Xiaochen put the "workbench",which was actually a writing desk, to the door. Cool breeze, vultures are complacent and sweaty. Some neighbors came and saw it, and said to him: You are too busy to come alone, that kid who finished junior high school has nothing to do on the street every day, how about giving you a hand? It doesn't matter if he is paid or not, as long as he is no longer "mixed with society". Xiaochen said come and try it? In this attempt, five or six little apprentices came.
There are too many people, how to deploy? Xiaochen divides the work of several people according to the process, the pipe of the unloading, the cutting of the pipe, and the "railway police each manage a section". The advantage of this is that each person only learns one link, and it is fast to get started and practice makes perfect. This model worked well and has been used ever since. The division of labor and cooperation has accelerated significantly. The first order for the production of 10 wooden towers was not only completed in only 4 months, but also the level of technology was significantly improved. After getting Taiyuan, the store received all the orders, and successively sold out for almost a year, and then the second batch of 10 orders.
After the second batch was sold, Xiaochen learned that these small wooden pagodas had been taken away by the Ying County Cultural and Tourism Department. Because there was no similar product in China at that time, things were scarce and expensive, and several pieces should be sold abroad, and one piece sold for up to 1,000 US dollars!
05
Leap
▲ YingXian Wooden Pagoda
In 1997, in order to celebrate the return of Hong Kong to the motherland, the Shanxi Provincial Cultural Relics Bureau was commissioned to make a three-meter-high "Yingxian Wooden Pagoda" as a gift. After the drawings and plans came out, the Cultural Relics Bureau selected the top craftsmen in the province to participate in the work, including Liu Xiaochen. Spending three months with these skilled old craftsmen, Liu Xiaochen's eyes were wide open, and he had a deeper understanding of the internal structure of traditional Chinese ancient buildings, and more comprehensively grasped the functions and production methods of the components of ancient buildings such as mortise and tenon, bucket arch, finches and cornices.
Previously, the "miniature version of the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda" he made was considered "imitation" - there was no precise microfilm ratio, and the mortise, bucket arch, finches, cornices, etc. only sought to resemble. Since then, the wood model of Shenglong wood carving has been "copied", although there is only a one-word difference, but before and after has been completely two concepts - "reproduction", that is, one hundred percent, is the original. The components of the building are scaled down, but each one is the "specific and micro" of the original part - the bucket arch, which is selected between the beam and the column to bear the load, and the load of the eaves is transmitted to the column through the bucket arch; As far as the production of ancient architectural models is concerned, this is actually a qualitative leap.