Lead
As a national intangible cultural heritage protection project, Daoming bamboo weaving has become the most dazzling star in China's bamboo weaving culture after generations of inheritance and innovation and sublimation, but with the popularity of industrial products, Daoming bamboo weaving products have gradually declined and have been almost forgotten by the market and local people. Nowadays, under the promotion of the national strategy of targeted poverty alleviation and rural revitalization, the new generation of intangible cultural heritage inheritors led by Yang Longmei, with the strong support of the local government, leads Daoming bamboo weaving to continue cross-border innovation, perfectly combines traditional skills with modern design, re-endows it with new cultural connotations, and explores a characteristic path of intangible cultural heritage protection and innovation of "the government sets up the stage, the enterprise sings, and the farmers participate", injecting distinctive cultural resources into the local rural revitalization and creating a typical model of intangible cultural heritage skills to help rural revitalization. It provides valuable reference experience for the inheritance and innovation of other intangible cultural heritage items and the revitalization of local villages.
Text / Liu Yuhuan, Yu Weijun, Yin Juelin
There is a small town in the junction of the dam, rootless mountain, hilly area and dam area in Chengdu, Sichuan, where the climate is warm and moist, the diverse terrain and fertile soil give the plants a good living environment, especially for thousands of years, absorbing the aura of nature, and the bamboo grows luxuriantly like a fairy. Residents live by bamboo, take bamboo as a tool, live on bamboo for generations, and everywhere presents the peaceful scene of "clear springs on the mountain and downstream, every household weaves flowers", such a beautiful place, is Daoming Town.
According to the records of Huayang National Chronicles, as early as the Qin Dynasty more than 2,000 years ago, the villagers of Daoming Town had begun to plant and use bamboo. Through 2000 years of time, the years have changed, time has passed, and the hard-working and intelligent Daoming people have made bamboo into frames, baskets and other utensils, making bamboo truly a part of people's lives, and slowly giving birth to "Daoming bamboo weaving" featuring three-dimensional bamboo weaving and porcelain bamboo weaving. There are three basic types of Daoming bamboo weaving: flat, three-dimensional and porcelain, and the craftsmen use basic techniques such as thinning, inserting, wearing, cutting, locking, nailing, tying, and sleeve to make delicate bamboo silk and bamboo strips jump at their fingertips to form a variety of bamboo products with rich forms. From ancient times to the present, the bamboo products produced by Daoming are a well-known signboard of bamboo products in Sichuan, not only in ancient times as a tribute, but also in the seventies and eighties, Daoming Town also enjoys the reputation of "the first market of bamboo weaving in western Sichuan". Daoming bamboo weaving was rated as a representative project of national intangible cultural heritage in 2014, and then Daoming Town was named "Hometown of Chinese Folk Culture and Art" in 2019.
However, in the mid-nineties of the 20th century, with the large-scale popularization of industrial products such as plastic products and stainless steel products, the sales market of Daoming bamboo weaving based on product packaging and daily life products has suffered a huge impact. From the original thousands of villagers in the town engaged in bamboo weaving technology to now bamboo weaving has become an activity for the local elderly and women to pass the leisure time, although it enjoys the reputation of national intangible cultural heritage, but the decline of Daoming bamboo weaving has still become an unspeakable pain in the hearts of local villagers and the government.
What to do? Is there a way to rejuvenate Daoming bamboo weaving, a time-honored national intangible cultural heritage skill, and inject new cultural resources into the local rural revitalization? While the local government was struggling to explore, Yang Longmei, a girl born in the 90s, found that this historical responsibility also fell on her shoulders.
Ordered in danger: the "post-90s" inheritor of the bamboo weaving family
In everyone's impression, most of the people engaged in traditional handicrafts are older craftsmen, young people rarely get involved, and has won the first prize of the Sichuan Bamboo Weaving Skills Competition, Chengdu's third "Top 100 Craftsmen" title of the "post-90s" intangible cultural heritage inheritor Yang Longmei led the Daoming bamboo weaving people, opened the prelude to the development of the bamboo weaving industry, and let the world see the young power of the Daoming bamboo weaving people.
Born in Daoming Town, Chongzhou City, Yang Longmei grew up in a family of bamboo weaving, bamboo weaving is the family business of the Yang family, starting with Yang Longmei's grandfather, to her is already the third generation. In the era of the grandfathers, the Daoming people were carrying a flat burden on their shoulders, visiting the mountains and rivers, and selling the bamboo weaving products they had woven by themselves to all parts of the country. For Yang Longmei, bamboo weaving is not only a toy of her childhood, but also a good playmate for her, and it runs through her life. After graduating from university, Yang Longmei, who was born in the civil aviation service class, naturally entered the civil aviation company to work, and other classmates in the class, she just joined the society and yearned for the broad blue sky, looking forward to the outside world, for the bamboo weaving factory at home, Yang Longmei just tried to help as much as possible, and never thought of going home to inherit the bamboo weaving business.
However, fate still pushed Yang Longmei to bamboo weaving. In 2013, a fire broke out at home and almost destroyed all the equipment and semi-finished bamboo weaving products, and the bamboo weaving factory suffered heavy losses. So, Yang Longmei quit her job in civil aviation and returned to her hometown, ready to start a new business to inherit Daoming's bamboo weaving skills and revitalize her family's bamboo weaving factory. On the one hand, Daoming bamboo weaving is mainly used to provide bamboo packaging for agricultural and sideline products, but the hand-woven bamboo packaging is not only high cost and low profit, but also falls into the development dilemma that is difficult to be accepted by the market; On the other hand, the loss of Daoming bamboo weaving craftsmen is serious, and they are facing the embarrassing situation of no one to inherit.
Yang Longmei realized that in order to re-tap the market value of Daoming bamboo weaving, bamboo weaving products must be transformed to reconnect with the market, but the core of Daoming bamboo weaving transformation is craftsmen, where to find bamboo weaving craftsmen?
Group development: farmer cooperatives retain bamboo weaving craftsmen
There were tens of thousands of people in Daoming Town who mastered Daoming bamboo weaving skills, but many bamboo weaving craftsmen operated their own handicraft workshops, and no one formed a team to develop collectively, and no one systematically sorted out and summarized the typical weaving techniques and technological processes of Daoming bamboo weaving. After many investigations and exchanges with a number of bamboo weaving craftsmen, Yang Longmei realized that the only way out for Daoming bamboo weaving is to let go of transformation, and the key to the success of the transformation lies in whether the bamboo weaving craftsmen can develop together and jointly make suggestions for the inheritance and innovation of Daoming bamboo weaving. Yang Longmei decided to lead the villagers to transform together, and in early 2014, relying on the Chongzhou Jijun Bamboo Products Factory founded by her grandfather with a history of more than 40 years, she established the "Daoming Bamboo Weaving Qiao Meizi Professional Cooperative", and is ready to use the model of "enterprise + farmer cooperative + farmer" to explore the transformation and upgrading of Daoming bamboo weaving.
After the establishment of the Daoming Bamboo Weaving Farmers' Cooperative, Yang Longmei systematically sorted out and visited hundreds of craftsmen in the cooperative, on the one hand, the bamboo weaving skills of these craftsmen were thoroughly explored and classified, and they were familiar with the technical characteristics and strengths of each craftsman, such as who is good at three-dimensional bamboo weaving, who is good at flat bamboo weaving, and who is good at porcelain bamboo weaving, so that after receiving the project order, you can quickly find the right person to complete the work; On the other hand, Yang Longmei invited skilled bamboo weaving veteran artists to hold bamboo weaving skills training courses, and provided free bamboo weaving technology training to the villagers of the cooperative and the villagers of Daoming Town, so as to cultivate more inheritors of bamboo weaving skills. In order to be able to retain the bamboo weaving craftsmen of the cooperative, Yang Longmei personally visited a number of enterprises to undertake a huge number of product packaging business with meager profits. For example, the cooperative produces more than 300,000 bamboo packaging products for Pixian Douban every year, and thousands of bamboo weaving craftsmen participate in it. In fact, Yang Longmei itself could not make much profit from these products, and even during the epidemic in 2020, the company purchased products prepared by farmers at a loss. As for why this is done, Yang Longmei said, "The core of bamboo weaving is people, and the profit of Pixian Douban packaging box is very meager, but for so many years, I have insisted on doing it, because it is a large amount, and I can drive more people in Daoming Town to participate by doing this, and I want to retain these people."
Cross-border innovation: reshape the vitality of bamboo weaving skills
Enterprises and cooperatives can survive by undertaking orders for the company's product packaging business, but how can they "live better"? Yang Longmei emphasized: "I found that if Daoming bamboo weaving wants to really survive, or even lead the trend as in the past, it needs to make changes in the style of bamboo products. Just when Yang Longmei was still thinking about how to realize the innovation of Daoming's bamboo weaving skills and products, an opportunity for cross-border innovation came.
Since 2015, in order to further enhance the inheritance and innovation of Daoming bamboo weaving, the Daoming Town Government has cooperated with the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts and other art and design units, and encouraged teachers and students majoring in art and design to come to Daoming Town for interviews and inspections, and carry out cross-border innovation on Daoming bamboo weaving. At the same time, in order to further enhance the artistic perception and cross-border innovation ability of the new generation of bamboo weaving craftsmen, the government subsidizes the new generation of intangible cultural heritage inheritors such as Yang Longmei and Ding Zhizhu to study and improve at the Central Academy of Fine Arts and Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts. During the study, Yang Longmei systematically understood the process and method of product design and innovation for the first time. For example, Yang Longmei observed that when designing new products, teachers and students majoring in design will fully involve user thinking in product innovation and design in the process of early user demand investigation, mid-term product design discussion, and final product launch judgment. These learning experiences are particularly shocking for Yang Longmei, "In the past, everyone designed according to their own ideas, and few people specifically investigated what current consumers like."
What's even more shocking is that Yang Longmei felt the artistic charm and value of modern design. In 2017, Yang Longmei, Zhang Lili, associate professor of Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, and He Hongbing, the inheritor of Dongyang bamboo weaving intangible cultural heritage, completed a large-scale public art work - bamboo kaleidoscope, which amazed the entire design week at the 2017 Shanghai Design Week. The bamboo kaleidoscope is a splendid bamboo weaving world composed of 150 lace-like handmade bamboo weaving and 50 colored transparent sheets, which is a collection of 12 classic Chinese bamboo weaving patterns, and each single module is also a decorative painting in the home space. Yang Longmei recalled, "The installation became an instant hit, and the audience liked it very much, and I felt that combining it with modern design was really an effective way to revive traditional craftsmanship."
According to her, "modern craftsmanship needs traditional cultural connotation to precipitate in order to become a classic, and in the same way, traditional craftsmanship also needs to be constantly updated and iterated to meet the aesthetic needs of modern people." In order to promote the cross-border innovation of Daoming bamboo weaving, Yang Longmei first sorted out the traditional skills of Daoming bamboo weaving and found that Daoming bamboo weaving has more than 30 basic patterns, more than 300 extended patterns, plus rich and diverse techniques and natural toughness of bamboo, and the plastic space is very large. Then, Yang Longmei worked closely with teachers and students in art and design, trying to improve the beauty of the works while retaining the traditional weaving skills, and make something that can truly meet the aesthetics of modern people. Yang Longmei thinned the bamboo wire, and then put a cat's eye in the circle to make earrings or necklaces, the style is very novel; Another example is Professor Lu Guoliang's lantern bottoming weaving method, Yang Longmei directly framed the bottom of the bottom with a photo frame, which became a chic painting. Through more than a year of exploration, Yang Longmei led the members of the cooperative to innovate a series of products such as hollow bamboo lamps, bamboo chairs and bamboo stools with a sense of design, multi-layer bamboo racks, as well as more beautiful earrings and ornaments, porcelain bamboo weaving utensils, etc., which gave Daoming bamboo weaving a new life.
Installation art: amplify the market value of bamboo weaving skills
Through cross-border innovation, Yang Longmei was surprised to find that the original bamboo weaving can be cleverly combined with modern design to create bamboo weaving products that meet the aesthetics of young people today, attracting the attention and recognition of more young consumers. However, Yang Longmei also found that even though bamboo weaving can be innovated a lot, it is still a niche product, and there is no way to quantify production and large-scale sales like other mass products, and there is still no way for enterprises and cooperatives to obtain more income from bamboo weaving products. Is there a way to better reflect the market value of bamboo weaving skills? A chance opportunity made Yang Longmei deeply inspired and suddenly enlightened.
In 2016, the owner of Six Senses Qingcheng Mountain made a surprise visit to Daoming Bamboo Weaving to decorate the interior of Six Senses Bamboo Weaving. Although Yang had never been involved in such a design project before, she was able to embed TD bamboo weaving skills into the cultural and natural environment of Six Senses Qingcheng Mountain with her unyielding and willingness to learn, perfectly demonstrating Six Senses' sustainable development philosophy of living in harmony with nature. This cooperation opened Yang Longmei's eyes, it turns out that in addition to being used for daily life or decorative products, bamboo weaving can also be cross-border integration with modern interior design or installation art design and other fields. Longmei is keenly aware that bamboo art installation products can not only reflect the cultural connotation of Daoming bamboo weaving national intangible cultural heritage, but also bring the public a good artistic perception, which may be a practical and effective way for Daoming bamboo weaving to obtain market value.
In order to focus on exploring and developing the installation art of bamboo weaving products, Yang Longmei first sorted out and simplified the production process of bamboo weaving products, deleted the excessive refinement of traditional craftsmanship, simplified the complex, and realized the production mode of assembly, semi-scale and semi-assembly line, through the processing of raw materials in the factory, and then the semi-finished products were hand-woven according to customer needs. Secondly, Yang Longmei has established a Daoming bamboo weaving design team that integrates bamboo weaving intangible cultural heritage inheritors, external designers, project demanders and other subjects, and combines the three-dimensional bamboo weaving skills of Daoming bamboo weaving with park art installations, pastoral gardening installations, characteristic interior decoration (hotels, homestays) and other product demands to create a variety of bamboo weaving art products and broaden the application scenarios of Daoming bamboo weaving.
Since 2017, Yang Longmei's team has successively undertaken a series of bamboo art installation projects such as Yangzhou Horticultural Expo, Beijing Yanqing World Horticultural Fair, Chengdu Sancha Lake, Tianfu Greenway Jincheng Lake Park, Chongqing Vanke Jade Park, Chengdu Eye of Longquan Mountain, Chongzhou Rape Flower Festival, Chongzhou Wugenshan Visitor Center, Chengdu Taikoo Li to Hejiangting Street, etc. It is worth mentioning that in 2021, Yang Longmei and her team won the Gold Award for the installation art project of Daoming bamboo weaving and floral landscape designed for the Shenzhen Flower Show in the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Greater Bay Area (see Figure 1). According to Yang Longmei, the shape of the bamboo weaving device of the Shenzhen Flower Show is inspired by the petals of the hibiscus flower of Chengdu and the rolling Longquan Mountains, and the central water feature expresses the grand scenery of Chengdu's "Moist Tianfu", the sun god bird logo and the silhouette of the modern city, respectively, represent the long history of Chengdu and the current construction achievements of the park city. 2021 Universiade".
Empowering Rural Areas: Intangible Cultural Heritage Helps Rural Revitalization
As Daoming bamboo weaving is gradually re-accepted by the market, the Chongzhou Municipal Government and the Party Committee of Daoming Town decided to build a bamboo art village that highlights the intangible cultural heritage of Daoming bamboo weaving and the characteristic living form of "Sichuan West Linpan". The so-called western Sichuan forest pan is a form of rural living environment formed by the organic integration of farmhouse courtyards in the plains and hilly areas of Chengdu and the surrounding natural environment such as trees, bamboo forests, rivers and peripheral cultivated land. The Secretary of the Party Committee of Daoming Town said: "Daoming Town not only has a national intangible cultural heritage bamboo weaving, but also is close to Wugen Mountain, and there is a tourist loop 'Chongqing Road' nearby, which will attract countless tourists when the rape flowers bloom in March every year, and the forest here is well protected and not overdeveloped." In order to fully integrate the natural resources and intangible cultural heritage resources of Daoming Town, the local government and Chongzhou Cultural Tourism Group decided to focus on building Longhuang Village, where the Yanglongmei Bamboo Weaving Cooperative is located.
Where do you start to build a village? The local government invited Chongzhou Cultural Tourism Group and the villagers of Longhuang Village to discuss the rural revitalization plan of Longhuang Village, and after many times of communication and discussion, it was finally decided to combine Daoming bamboo weaving with B&B design and space installation art, and first create a B&B project featuring bamboo weaving to test the market's reaction. At the beginning of 2018, the Daoming Town Government invited the design team of the School of Architecture and Urban Planning of Tongji University to conduct a comprehensive survey of Daoming bamboo weaving and the situation of the western Sichuan forest around Longhuang Village, and cooperated with the bamboo weaving craftsmen of the Yanglongmei Cooperative to jointly create a rural homestay "Zhuli" with western Sichuan characteristics (see Figure 2). The name "Zhuli" is taken from the words and phrases in "Taiping Shi, Zhuli Fangqi One Path Deep" written by Lu You when he visited Daoming's Baita Zen Monastery when he was in Shuzhou (now Chongzhou): "Zhuli Fangqi is one path deep." Silence. The interior and exterior design of the building echoes the bamboo culture of Daoming bamboo, and the green tile roof is in the shape of a ring, representing integration and infinity, reflecting the harmonious coexistence of man and nature.
The original intention of the construction of Zhuli B&B is to provide a platform for communication and exchange for Daoming bamboo weaving, so that bamboo weaving craft can empower rural tourism. Living up to expectations, Zhuli became an instant hit, countless tourists came to Daoming Town to admire the green tile houses hovering in the countryside and fields, Longhuang Village turned into "Daoming Bamboo Art Village", which is not only well-known throughout the country, but also embarked on the highest international exhibition of contemporary art - Venice Architecture Biennale, conveying the beauty of Chinese villages to the world.
The popularity of the Zhuli project has given the Daoming Town Government, the Cultural Tourism Group and many bamboo weaving craftsmen and villagers of Yanglongmei Cooperative full confidence, and they have begun to focus on building a bamboo art village. The government and Chongzhou Cultural Tourism Group are responsible for the ecological restoration and protection of the western Sichuan Linpan of the Bamboo Art Village, the unified planning and adjustment of the western Sichuan dwellings, and the improvement of the local infrastructure and bamboo weaving installation art, which not only creates the living environment of the Bamboo Art Village with the characteristics of the western Sichuan Linpan, but also combines the local rape flower planting base to create a natural landscape of "appreciating rape flowers in spring, planting rice in summer and harvesting rice in autumn". In addition, in order to truly enhance the market attractiveness of the national intangible cultural heritage of Daoming bamboo weaving, the local government and the Central Academy of Fine Arts jointly established the Sichuan Chengdu Traditional Craft Workstation in 2018 to improve the quality of local villagers from the five aspects of "training, stationing, introduction, publicity and transfer", guide the development of bamboo weaving industry, and gradually form a model of mutual cooperation between social groups, local residents and the local government. At the same time, we will carry out "double education and double training", so that craftsmen and college students can grow together, and promote the integration and innovation of bamboo weaving skills and modern design. Relying on the intangible cultural heritage innovation platform built by the government and the Academy of Fine Arts, a group of new generation inheritors such as Yang Longmei, Ding Zhizhu, and Hongmei have been stationed in the bamboo art village to carry out continuous cross-border innovation and upgrading of Daoming bamboo weaving, and established the Daoming bamboo weaving exhibition hall and experience hall, which provides a rich and diverse intangible cultural heritage bamboo weaving experience activities for local tourism, and injects the charm of intangible cultural heritage culture into the rural revitalization of the bamboo art village.
In order to increase the in-depth experience of tourists, on the basis of intangible cultural heritage experience, Chongzhou Cultural Tourism Group first operated some catering and cultural and creative activities, such as creating a tavern, big tree coffee, traditional life aesthetics pavilion, art exhibition hall, homestay, nature research camp and other formats for tourists. With the increase of tourists in Zhuyi Village, the enthusiasm of local villagers has increased greatly, and many villagers have begun to start their own businesses, creating a variety of cultural experience activities such as country houses, farm stays, taverns, batik experiences, etc., injecting diversified industries into rural tourism. In April 2018, Ma Xi, a young Chinese poet and a contracted writer of Ba Jin Academy of Literature, opened a "Sanjing Academy" in Daoming Bamboo Art Village. Feng Wei, a young man who has worked in Chengdu for many years and likes handicrafts, also came to the Bamboo Art Village to create the "Zunsheng Courtyard", a folk handicraft life experience hall dedicated to "reviving the life aesthetics in traditional culture and spreading a healthy and interesting lifestyle".
At present, the bamboo art village has been divided into the "wild luxury hotel, Zen courtyard restaurant" area, folk homestay area, bamboo art workshop area, land art area, new shared life fifth space, international work camp, and gradually explored a "intangible cultural heritage culture + cultural and creative base + rural tourism" model, constantly promoting the integrated development of bamboo weaving industry and cultural tourism industry.
The future is promising: everything is on the way
With the painstaking management of Yang Longmei and the strong support of the local government, Daoming bamboo weaving has been successfully transformed from a traditional intangible cultural heritage skill that was almost forgotten by consumers more than ten years ago into a national intangible cultural heritage with high market value, which can increase the income of local farmers and help rural revitalization. For the future development of Daoming bamboo weaving, Yang Longmei clearly realized that the inheritance and innovation of bamboo weaving skills is the key point for the bamboo art village to achieve rural revitalization, but there are still many problems in the inheritance and innovation of intangible cultural heritage.
Can the craftsmanship of the veteran craftsmen be passed on from generation to generation? Are there young people who are willing to take on the burden? For the difficulties and challenges that Daoming bamboo weaving is currently facing, Yang Longmei is worried, but also confident. She sees it very clearly and is convinced that as long as she adheres to the industrialization of the bamboo weaving industry, the market for bamboo weaving will become bigger and bigger, the employment return will be higher and higher, young people will voluntarily devote themselves to this cause, and the future of rural revitalization of Zhuyi Village will be better and better.
About the Author | Liu Yuhuan: Lecturer, School of Economics and Management, Southwest Jiaotong University;
Yu Weijun: Master student, School of Economics and Management, Southwest Jiaotong University;
Yin Juelin is an associate professor at the School of Economics and Management, Sun Yat-sen University.
Editor-in-Charge | Gao Jingyang ([email protected])
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