Today's Women's Daily/Fengwang reporter Jiang Changfa correspondent Yao Xueqin
The left hand is through the grass paper, the right hand is a carving knife, and the carving knife moves up and down the outer edge of the template, and after a while, a complex and delicate grass flower will "bloom" in Zhu Xin's hands.
As the non-genetic inheritor of Yangzhou Tongcao flower production skills, this "post-90s" girl who was born in Hunan and has a quiet and delicate appearance is endlessly chatting about Tongcao flowers.
In the past 15 years, no matter whether it is windy or rainy, Zhu Xin has come to the studio every day to make grass flowers, and he has been sitting for more than ten hours. The flowers she made with Chinese herbal medicine are lifelike, making it difficult to distinguish the real from the fake, and are called "flowers that never wither".
From the age of 20, he began to go north to Yangzhou to contact and learn to make grass flowers, Zhu Xin has been learning art for 15 years, with a total of tens of thousands of works, in 2024, Zhu Xin was rated as the non-genetic inheritor of the city-level grass flower production skills by Yangzhou City, and now, there are less than 10 people in the country.
went to Yangzhou to learn art, what she liked was the "spring and white snow" in the flower industry
In 1990, Zhu Xin was born in a small village in Meihua Town, Dao County, Yongzhou, Hunan. The scene of her mother humming a little song and making earrings under the old locust tree at the entrance of the village has become her deepest childhood memory.
"Girls my age like to jump rope and sing, but I like to make earrings with my mother. Zhu Xin recalled that after going to school, she began to teach herself to do all kinds of handicrafts, and at that time she only thought that doing handicrafts was fun, but she did not expect it to become the enlightenment of her future career.
In 2008, Zhu Xin graduated from Daoxian No. 2 Middle School, studied broadcasting and hosting, and participated in the art college entrance examination. She has loved handicrafts since she was a child, and she did not hesitate to give up the opportunity to go to university.
After giving up going to university, Zhu Xin came to Yongzhou to work. "I have to contact a lot of people and deal with a lot of things every day, and I am always overwhelmed by the huge pressure and complicated information. In her spare time, Zhu Xin seeks happiness by doing handicrafts, and strengthens her handicraft dream.
The turning point came at the end of 2010. By chance, Zhu Xin learned on the Internet that Dai Chunfu, a seventy-year-old folk Tongcao flower craft master in Yangzhou, was recruiting disciples from all over the country, "Tongcao Hua is the 'Yangchun Baixue' in the flower industry, and I liked it as soon as I saw it." Zhu Xin was so moved that she immediately decided to go to Yangzhou to learn art, "At that moment, I discovered another possibility in my life." ”
But soon, Zhu Xin was opposed by her parents. "Xuetong Caohua has no income, and he has to rent a house by himself, and he is in a foreign land, so his parents are very worried. Faced with her parents' incomprehension, Zhu Xin chose to take all her savings and go to Yangzhou after patiently explaining the failures again and again.
Resigned, packed her luggage, bought a ticket - at the age of twenty, she took the fresh and reckless heat of a young man, without informing anyone, set off with her bags on her back, and went to the unfamiliar city of Yangzhou hotly, but she didn't expect that this would be more than ten years.
After apprenticing to the master experienced many twists and turns, after Zhu Xin came to Yangzhou alone, he looked for the address of the master's studio on the Internet again and again, sincere and clumsy. She walked into the 486 intangible cultural heritage gathering area, but did not see the master as she wished, and only found a business card on the table. She called Dai Chunfu to explain her ambition and visited her again and again. Dai Chunfu was moved by her sincerity and agreed to accept her as a disciple after meeting her for the first time. Since then, Zhu Xin has formed an indissoluble bond with Tongcaohua.
After 15 years of studying art, she has gone from "not doing her job" to being an inheritor of intangible cultural heritage
Tongcao flower, a handmade fake flower, is known as China's "never-withering flower", and its history can be traced back to the Qin Dynasty, more than 2,200 years ago. It has a soft texture, elegant tone, both form and spirit, high degree of simulation, and can be fake and real. According to the record of "Yangzhou Painting Boat Record", Yangzhou Tongcao Flower was made in the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, and the Yuanmen Bridge was made in the statue. During the Qing Dynasty, Yangzhou's craftsmen made bold innovations in materials and processes, thus forming a unique Yangzhou Tongcao flower production technique.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Yangzhou Tongcao flower artists innovated in their skills, and brought Tongcao flowers to the world stage. However, with the change of the times, the complex skills of Tongcao were once left out in the cold.
Zhu Xin, who loves flowers and likes to do handicrafts, expresses her love for traditional intangible cultural heritage grass flowers with a craftsman's heart.
Zhu Xintong's increasingly sophisticated grass and flower skills are inseparable from the unreserved teaching of his master Dai Chunfu. Dai Chunfu is a master of arts and crafts in Jiangsu Province, a provincial intangible cultural heritage inheritor, and has been making grass flowers for more than 60 years. "If you can endure loneliness and poverty, craftsmanship is the wealth you have for a lifetime. This is a sentence that the master often says to Zhu Xin. In Zhu Xin's view, the master's teaching to her is not only the inheritance of craftsmanship, but also the inheritance of spirit.
The first obstacle in front of her is that the production process of Tongcao Flower is quite cumbersome, easy to learn and difficult to master.
Among them, the most difficult is to pinch the petals, "Take the chrysanthemum as an example, a chrysanthemum needs to be pinched, kneaded and glued hundreds of petals, each petal must be roughly the same shape, and each petal must have its own posture, and each petal can not have a pinch mark." The flowers and leaves must be carved into molds first, and then pressed with grass. Zhu Xin said that when making, it is also a big difficulty to grasp the degree of water absorption of the grass, which is easy to crush when dry, and will rebound if it is too wet, and it is almost not a fire.
Every day before eight o'clock, Zhu Xin rushed to the studio, took out a piece of white grass paper, applied it with a wet towel, waited for it to become moderately soft and hard, and began to make petals one by one, or kneaded or kneaded or cut, and finally glued them together with white latex, and the flowers bloomed in her hands.
"It's a lot of work to do it well. For example, making chrysanthemums requires toughness, and it took two months to practice curvature. Fortunately, Zhu Xin has been a "sitting" child since she was a child, every time she sits in the studio for half a day, focusing on the work in her hands wholeheartedly, and she doesn't want anything else, "The traditional skills are more complicated, and the processes are more, you need to insist, if you are too eager for success or too eager for quick success, it will be difficult to do a good job." ”
Zhu Xin is also a craftsman who dares to innovate. She is not satisfied with making traditional flower shapes, but has made bold innovations many times, trying dozens of new flower shapes such as water lilies, hydrangeas, and desert roses. "The traditional flower shape, the master will teach it once, but the new flower shape production is not easy, I have to go to the Internet to find a picture template, and then repeatedly modify and polish, keep improving, until I make a satisfactory work. ”
During the period of learning art, meager income has always been a major problem hindering inheritance, and the reality of making ends meet has actually raised the threshold for learning art. In the first two or three years of study, renting a house in a different place, eating and wearing, Zhu Xin's previous savings were spent, and it was not until he was able to produce works independently that he gradually improved.
The hardships of life are difficult to defeat the tyrannical Hunan girl Zhu Xin. While doing handicrafts to earn money to support herself after returning home from work, she saved money and minimized her personal expenses, "I rent the cheapest house, buy the cheapest vegetables, and am only willing to buy new clothes twice a year, which is painful and happy." ”
"Many young people who entered the studio together have withdrawn, and many have chosen to change careers. "Within a few years, very few people persevered. And for a long time, Zhu Xin had to face the strange eyes of his family and friends, "In their eyes, I am not doing my job." Several blind dates, as soon as they heard that I didn't make money making grass flowers, they turned around and left. ”
But Zhu Xin is a persistent person, and if he recognizes it, he must persevere to the end, "I had a belief at that time, that is, to do Tongcaohua as a lifelong career." ”
With the persistence year after year, in 2024, Zhu Xin will live up to high expectations and become one of the intangible inheritors of Yangzhou City's municipal-level grass flower production skills.
The teaching video has been viewed more than 10 million times, and she has made more people fall in love with Tongcaohua
Compared with other intangible cultural heritage categories, Tongcao flowers are particularly secluded and once on the verge of being lost. How to innovate and develop in inheritance, combine traditional skills with modern life, and let Tongcaohua enter public life through marketization has always been a problem for Zhu Xin.
"I'm going to bring Tongcao back to life. Intangible cultural heritage is not only the inheritance of skills, but also commercialization may be the best inheritance. So, in 2022, Zhu Xin established Yangzhou Tongcao Hua Zhuzhu Intangible Cultural Heritage Communication Co., Ltd., developed a lot of Tongcao Hua cultural and creative products, and produced and sold Tongcao Hua products online through Taobao stores.
In addition to taking the road of marketization, Zhu Xin also used new media platforms to publish videos of herself making Tongcao flowers, which was sought after by many young people.
"Many people have learned about Tongcaohua through our videos, and they are particularly interested and want to learn, but for various reasons, it is not realistic to come to Yangzhou to learn. So, since 2019, Zhu Xin has opened an account on Douyin "Zhuzhu Tongcao Hua", and she has actively promoted Tongcao Flower to netizens all over the country, shooting teaching videos, and promoting the Tongcao Flower handicrafts she made.
What Zhu Xin didn't expect was that in less than three months, her single video had a maximum of more than 2 million views, and the entire "Tongcao Flower Making Tutorial" collection was as high as more than 10 million views. The test of the short video made Zhu Xin popular all over the Internet.
"Short videos and live broadcasts provide a new channel for the inheritance of intangible cultural heritage skills, and the training in making Tongcao Flowers, which could only be carried out in children's palaces and schools before, can now reach all parts of the country through network cables, and even allows many people to make money by learning to make Tongcao Flowers. Zhu Xin said.
The short video brought Zhu Xin a second surprise: she met her current husband Zhou Wenhua. It turned out that Zhou Wenhua's father was Zhou Shansheng, the non-genetic inheritor of Yangzhou wood carving skills. Zhou Shansheng was also trying to promote intangible cultural heritage through short videos at that time, but he was not good at using the Internet, and he often violated the rules of the Douyin platform, so he asked his son Zhou Wenhua to ask Zhu Xin for advice.
Zhu Xin and Zhou Wenhua, both craftsmen, have a lot of common language. In the exchange again and again, their feelings quickly warmed up. In 2020, Zhu Xin decided to entrust her life to this honest guy.
Inheriting intangible cultural heritage, Zhu Xin has also been taking action. In addition to promoting intangible cultural heritage into campuses and communities, and into universities, teaching and research institutions, she also became the instructor of the Tongcao Flower Club in two primary schools in Yangzhou, "allowing children to get in touch with Tongcao flowers and intangible cultural heritage from an early age, which is a particularly good way to pass it on."
Zhu Xin's enthusiasm for Tongcaohua has never diminished, whether it is prosperous or declining, she has always been optimistic about her career. "Today, there are less than 10 people in the country, and I know 6 of them. Talking about the future, this "young school" of Tongcao Flower said that she will continue to explore and strive to improve the level of skills, so that the production skills of Tongcao Flower will go to the world and bloom beautiful flowers that "will never wither".
Editor: Yiren