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Special plan for International Museum Day on May 18
Museum at the Other Pole (2)
Wong Wai Hung:
The master of bead embroidery who single-handedly founded the "Intangible Cultural Heritage Chain Museum".
Huang Weixiong is a master of Chinese arts and crafts and a representative inheritor of bead embroidery, a national intangible cultural heritage project. His masterpiece "Hundred Cranes" was "out of the circle" because it was unveiled at the Songyuan Hotel in Guangzhou, and has now entered the Guangdong Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage Museum on the bank of Baietan.
While inheriting skills and continuing to create, Huang Weixiong takes the promotion of Chaozhou culture as his own responsibility, and strives to build a hundred masters garden integrating exhibition, research, training, and cultural creativity, providing a communication platform for masters of arts and crafts and inheritors, and showing the beauty of traditional culture to the world.
Chaozhou Hundred Teachers Garden
The Huang Weixiong Bead Embroidery Museum is located on the fourth floor of the Hundred Teachers Garden in Chaozhou City. The museum displays the history and techniques of bead embroidery, as well as more than 400 physical exhibits, Yin Yin tells the changes of bead embroidery tools, the process of Huang Weixiong going to the sea to set up a factory, and his artistic career.
Now he has established chain buildings in Shenzhen and Dongguan, and "every Baishi Garden must have a museum" is Huang Weixiong's goal.
A variety of bead embroidery exhibits in the Wong Wai Hung Bead Embroidery Museum
On the eve of the "5.18 International Museum Day", the reporter walked into the Chaozhou Baishi Garden and the Bead Embroidery Museum, and listened to the master of art talk about the ups and downs of his life and the original intention of keeping art for more than 40 years——
It started with a love of art
I'm Huang Weixiong, and I'm the curator of the Huang Weixiong Bead Embroidery Museum in Chaozhou City, which was established on September 18, 2017. When it comes to the original intention of the museum, I can't help but mention the embroidery that has accompanied me along the way.
For as long as I can remember, life has been inseparable from embroidery. Chaozhou folk are full of various embroidery clubs, my grandmother, mother are embroiderers, I have been exposed to it since I was a child, and I learned embroidery at the age of 6.
After graduating, I initially worked in bead embroidery in a state-owned enterprise, and in 1993, I went to business and founded my own craft company, producing bead embroidery wedding dresses, dresses, shawls and other products, most of which are exported to Europe, America and Southeast Asian countries.
After running the factory for many years, I began to think that in addition to making money, I should always do something meaningful in life, after all, I have always had a love for art.
Wong Wai Hung and his bead embroidery works created at different times
So I began to try to innovate the use of bead embroidery to "paint", to develop the bead embroidery process from a practical decoration to a purely appreciative work of art, and to promote the bead embroidery to declare intangible cultural heritage items. In 2015, bead embroidery was selected into the sixth batch of provincial intangible cultural heritage representative projects, and I also became the representative inheritor of provincial intangible cultural heritage of bead embroidery skills. It was in this year that I began to prepare for the construction of the "Hundred Teachers Garden".
The park has set up a comprehensive hall, a sculpture hall, a ceramics hall, an embroidery hall and a research center, bringing together masters of arts and crafts and crafts to create a cultural exchange platform. Later, the embroidery hall was upgraded and transformed into the current bead embroidery museum.
More than 20 years of experience in running a factory has provided convenient conditions for the preparation of the museum, and I have retained the previous product design drafts, various beads, old tools, and models from different periods. Together with my bead embroidery paintings from different periods, the whole constitutes the exhibition content of this museum.
More than 20 years of experience in setting up a factory has facilitated the preparation for the establishment of the Bead Embroidery Museum
A space that carries the memories of life
We have a collection of beadwork in our museum, all of which were created in different periods.
Bead embroidery work "Rich Changchun"
One of the bead embroidery "Rich Changchun" had a great influence on me. This was designed by my teacher, Hu Guangxu, in 1981, when he was about to move to a new house, and designed this bead embroidery work as a home decoration. When I saw the work, I was amazed: bead embroidery could still do this! The peacocks, flowers, and pine trees in the picture are all embroidered with small beads of different colors.
After all, in the past, bead embroidery was only used as an embellishment on practical items such as clothing and handbags, but this work of the teacher really made my eyes shine, so I fell into deep thought: "In addition to practical items, bead embroidery can be developed into works of art?" So, when I was still studying design at Chaozhou Technician College, I came up with the idea of painting with bead embroidery.
In 1983, my graduation project was a bead embroidery painting called "Panda", which was my first bead embroidery painting. In 1986, when my friend got married, I created a painting of "Dragon and Phoenix Chengxiang" for him as a congratulatory gift. In 1993, I used the traditional Chinese painting "Meilan Bamboo Chrysanthemum" as the theme to express the techniques of Chinese painting with bead embroidery.
In 2001, to commemorate the 340th anniversary of Zheng Chenggong's recovery of Taiwan, I took Zheng Chenggong's sculpture portrait as the theme, and used bead embroidery to highlight the three-dimensionality and light and shade of the sculpture. In 2006, after Beijing's successful bid for the Olympic Games, I created "From Athens to Beijing", one of which was presented to the International Olympic Committee...... These works document my upbringing and are now on display in the museum.
Huang Weixiong took Zheng Chenggong's sculpture portrait as the theme, and used bead embroidery to highlight the three-dimensionality and light and shade of the sculpture
Whenever I come here and see these masterpieces from different periods, the scenes of those years come to mind. For me personally, this museum is not only a storage space for my personal artistic experience and bead embroidery creation, but also carries my life memories, which can be preserved and continued.
The bead-embroidered masterpiece "Hundred Cranes" was unveiled at the Songyuan Hotel in Guangzhou, and has now "settled" in the Guangdong Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage Museum
More than 20 years of accumulation are fully invested
Folk museums are an effective complement to public museums. As inheritors of intangible cultural heritage, we all very much want to preserve and pass on the skills that we have held on for decades. Since private museums need to be built on their own, it involves several issues such as space, funds, and collections, and fortunately, I happen to have these conditions.
First of all, the site of our office was built after the original factory building was upgraded and renovated. In the past few decades, I have also had some savings, and it can be said that almost all of the funds accumulated in more than 20 years of setting up a factory have been invested in the Baishi Garden and museums.
As for the collection of collections, although there are many samples with a sense of age left in the previous factory, as long as I find a new unique bead embroidery, or a style that is not available in the museum, I will buy it for collection.
At present, the museum area is not large, and in the future, with the increase of the collection, I also want to expand the area, renovate, and integrate some digital multimedia exhibition technology to make the bead embroidery museum better.
Some people say I'm "stupid", how can I "burn money" like this? However, I think it is quite meaningful to set up a museum to better inherit the excellent traditional Chinese culture and let more people appreciate the charm of intangible cultural heritage. In this life, if you can leave something in this world, it is not in vain.
Let the museum become the "standard" of the Hundred Teachers Garden
Baishiyuan was first established in Chaozhou, and after it was completed, I also promoted the brand of Baishiyuan to other cities, which led to the Shenzhen Baishiyuan that opened in 2019 and the Dongguan Baishiyuan that opened in 2023.
I set myself a goal: every Hundred Teachers Garden must have a museum, which is "standard".
At present, there is a comprehensive intangible cultural heritage museum in Shenzhen Baishi Park, which is registered with the Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism. In addition to embroidery, the collection also includes more than 50 intangible cultural heritage categories such as ceramics and wood carvings, most of which are from my collection. Dongguan Baishiyuan is also improving the application procedures for the "intangible cultural heritage museum".
We set up public welfare platforms such as folk museums to attract more people to visit and stimulate their understanding, awareness and love for intangible cultural heritage. This is also the biggest gain of running a museum, and it is the source of my inner sense of gain.
The ceramics hall in the Chaozhou Hundred Teachers Garden
The carving hall in the Chaozhou Hundred Teachers Garden
At present, the Bead Embroidery Museum receives an average of more than 10,000 visitors a month, and more than 100,000 people a year, more than half of whom are research groups. In addition to bead embroidery, there are nearly 20 experience courses such as paper-cutting, colored porcelain, clay sculpture, and hand-drawn pots.
Over the past six years, more than 200,000 students have participated in the training.
Students visit the Bead Embroidery Museum (photo provided by the interviewee)
Whenever I see the students who come here to visit and study, see their curiosity and thirst for knowledge, and hear their admiration for the traditional national arts and crafts, I feel that it is too rewarding to open a museum, and so much effort is worth it!
Planning|Deng Qiong, Hou Shuwang, Zhu Shaojie
Co-ordinator|Literature and Art Zhong Zhenbin
Written by Zhou Xinyi, literature and art
Photography: Zhong Zhenbin and Liu Chang
Editing|Wang Jiongxun
Poster design|Yu Zitao
Editor: Literature and Art