Tell the story of the intangible cultural heritage of the south of the canal - the Tianzhu chopsticks recorded in the Gongshu Intangible Cultural Heritage Series

Trail bamboo, branding patterns, wearing a golden hat...

In the memory of many old Hangzhou people, when they were young, the standard on the table was a pair of chopsticks made of fine bamboo, which seemed ordinary, but had a special name - Tianzhu chopsticks.

It is soaked in the soup water of Hangzhou Laodizi, which complements the taste of Hangzhou cuisine; it is called the Four Treasures of Hangzhou with Zhang Xiaoquan scissors, Wang Xingji fan, and West Lake silk.

The history of Tianzhu chopsticks can be traced back to the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, it is said that there were more temples around Tianzhu Mountain at that time, the incense was exuberant, there were more people who entered the incense and worshiped Buddha, and there were more people who ate vegetarian food, and the bowls and chopsticks were not enough, so the monks cut down the small bitter bamboo on Tianzhu Mountain according to local conditions, cut off the small bitter bamboo on Tianzhu Mountain, and cut it off to be used as chopsticks. This kind of small path bamboo, which is cut into bamboo chopsticks, grows in The Tianzhu Mountains of Hangzhou, from which "Tianzhu Chopsticks" got its name.

In the Guangxu years, there was a man named Pan Sansi, who branded flowers on the chopsticks, some patterns on the steel plate, and used the rolling of the hand to add pressure to make the flat pattern appear on the Tianzhu chopsticks. Pan Sansi is the first generation of Tianzhu chopsticks.

Tianzhu chopsticks can only be made by hand, including a series of complicated processes such as material selection, saw bamboo, buried blanks, grinding heads, sanding, branding, polishing, punching, glazing and so on. Among them, the branding flower is the most difficult, the prepared branding steel plate is heated to a preset temperature, and the branding master must have superb skills in the branding process, and the fast branding cannot be patterned, and the burnt chopsticks are slowed.

The production of Tianzhu chopsticks, pouring in the painstaking efforts and ingenuity of craftsmen, was once all the rage and was regarded as a symbol of occasion, status and grade. However, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with the rise of fast food culture, a large number of wooden chopsticks, bamboo chopsticks and disposable chopsticks swept the market, and Tianzhu chopsticks, a handicraft that combines practicality and artistic beauty, were suddenly pushed to the realm of Weigu.

In order to ensure that Tianzhu chopsticks do not die, many Hangzhou people silently insist, including Wang Liandao, the fifth generation of Tianzhu chopsticks, and Wang Xuqiong, the sixth generation of heirs. With the efforts of the inheritors, tianzhu chopsticks, a canal intangible heritage, are gradually waking up and returning to the homes of ordinary people in Hangzhou with an elegant appearance.