What are Tianzhu chopsticks?
In 1972, Premier Zhou accompanied US President Nixon to visit Hangzhou, at the reception banquet, the staff considered the negligence of using ivory chopsticks, Premier Zhou learned that the request was immediately switched to Hangzhou Tianzhu chopsticks, that is, beautiful and reflected the characteristics of the place, the result was very good, many guests asked to take away a pair of Hangzhou Tianzhu chopsticks as a souvenir.
Song Meiling once went to Hangzhou Lingyin and Tianzhu to play, and when she saw Tianzhu chopsticks, she simply loved them, so she bought a lot of Tianzhu chopsticks to bring back to Nanjing, and gave them to the ambassadors' wives of various countries as a national gift. The ladies praised this exquisite small chopstick, and after the Tianzhu chopsticks were taken care of by the picky Song Meiling, they were flown to the world as a decent national gift.
| Wang Liandao (owner ID: Tianzhu Mountain), the inheritor of Tianzhu chopsticks
Some people dream big, such as becoming a great architect, and there are iconic buildings all over the world that you can be proud of. Some people's dreams seem to be very "small", but the significance is far-reaching, for example, the Shou artist I want to introduce to you today- Wang Liandao, his dream is that nearly three hundred years of Tianzhu chopsticks continue to be passed on in his hands.
Chopsticks, is one of the important symbols of Chinese food culture, according to the present about 5,000 years of inheritance history, chopsticks a round, a square, the symbol of the circle of heaven, the symbol of the square, corresponding to the heavenly circle place, the standard length of chopsticks is seven inches and six minutes, representing people have seven emotions and six desires, to show that there is an essential difference with animals.
Sweet bamboo, a path that has been smoked by incense for a hundred years in front of the Buddha
According to legend, the story of Tianzhu chopsticks was spread during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, and the Tianzhu Temple on the Tianzhu Mountain in Hangzhou was famous for its Buddhist victory temple, and the pilgrims flocked to it endlessly, and the incense was very popular. Vegetarian food in the temple is in short supply, and there are not enough chopsticks for meals, so for emergency use, the monks have to cut bamboo into chopsticks for pilgrims to eat.
Because this path of bamboo is cut into bamboo chopsticks, bamboo grows in Hangzhou's Tianzhu Mountain, and "Tianzhu chopsticks" get its name. Tianzhu chopsticks are the intangible cultural heritage of Zhejiang, so far Wang Liandao designed and produced Tianzhu chopsticks still retain the most original production process, adhere to handmade, his dexterous hands and temperature, giving Tianzhu chopsticks natural simplicity, health and environmental protection, original wild product characteristics. A pair of small Tianzhu chopsticks, because of its deep Buddhist origin and solemn cultural connotation, is a clever condensation of the unique cultural landscape of Hangzhou and Jiangnan.
Wang Liandao is the representative inheritor of Tianzhu chopsticks in Zhejiang Province, a master of Chinese arts and crafts, and a master of Hangzhou Tianzhu chopsticks. Born in Hangzhou in 1948, at the age of 6, he went to a private school to study, Mr. Taught to learn characters with a brush, established the interest of life at an early age, studied calligraphy and Chinese painting with the famous calligraphers and painters Wang Jingfu and Wu Jingchu in his adolescence, and then followed the seal engravers Yu Zheng and Master Li Zhao of the Yixi Cold Printing Society to learn seal printing, these artistic accomplishments have laid an artistic foundation for the future inheritance and development of Tianzhu chopsticks.
Wang Liandao said, "Since I can remember, my family has used Tianzhu chopsticks to eat. "It seems that only when eating with Tianzhu chopsticks can you recall the taste of Hangzhou and home in your childhood memories." However, the story of the inheritance of Tianzhu chopsticks begins in the 1980s, when the reform and opening up was just made, as a native of Hangzhou, Wang Liandao, in addition to being busy with his own career, was more enthusiastic about the research and development of famous products in Hangzhou, and he had won seven Chinese patents for ideas such as improving the "Hangzhou Four Treasures".
However, after really contacting the "chopsticks" industry, Wang Liandao found that the difficulties were in it, the Tianzhu chopsticks industry that was once popular in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai has almost withered, and after visiting many local chopstick factories, almost all of them are in a state of suspension or change of career, some only have the name of the factory left related to "chopsticks", in order to save the "endangered" Tianzhu chopsticks, the precious heritage of Hangzhou, Wang Liandao immediately quit his stable job without saying a word, and put all his energy and efforts into the reorganization of Tianzhu chopsticks.
Suffering, the persistence and inheritance of that half life
After some efforts and preparations, in 2006, Wang Liandao reorganized the Hangzhou Tianzhu Chopstick Factory, Wang Liandao said that he was only doing this for "the good things handed down by the ancestors, don't lose them in our generation", because with the rapid development of the times, plastic chopsticks, large bamboo chopsticks, wooden chopsticks and various disposable chopsticks produced by large machinery occupy the market in large quantities, and the traditional handmade Tianzhu chopsticks gradually decline and are once on the verge of extinction.
Wang Liandao, who has a stable income, resolutely invested half of his life savings into the cause of protecting and inheriting Tianzhu chopsticks, and at first he not only faced a situation of several millions of dollars, but also was not understood by his family, because from 2006 to 2009, Wang Liandao did not sell a pair of chopsticks for three years, the fundamental reason was that at that time, he did not put his mind on selling chopsticks at all, but spent all day thinking about improving the process.
Wang Liandao found a way to improve the process, and the famous local teachers and masters all shook their heads and waved their hands to tell Wang Liandao that these processes are difficult to improve, and the previous generation did this. Wang Liandao is not discouraged, he has studied calligraphy, seal engraving, Chinese painting, has been a turner as the director of the metalworking workshop, fiddling with equipment is his old line, more sophisticated glasses and instruments can be done well, he believes that to master the production process is not difficult, the difficulty is how to make disorderly manual production become a standard to follow, so that every pair of chopsticks can let users feel the charm and high quality of Tianzhu chopsticks when they reach the table, Wang Liandao often said a sentence is: "There are no rules, not a square circle." ”
There are many new rules in the chopstick factory, from "allowable deviation value" to "third-party detection", and many professional rules that exist in large factories can be found in the work manual of the chopstick factory. Just a raw material, in the chopstick factory warehouse to see the upper and lower two areas, the lower area is placed through the inspection of small bitter bamboo raw materials, the upper area are unqualified raw materials, if not carefully compared, it is difficult to see the difference between the two layers of bamboo, but for the chopstick factory, the defective product is the defective product, raw materials must be carefully selected.
The masters all say that Wang Liandao's concentration on chopsticks has reached the level of "obsession", take the raw materials, now protected Tianzhu Mountain can not cut bamboo, in order to find the best raw materials, the 60-year-old Wang Liandao turned over more than a dozen thousand meters of high mountains, staying in the mountains for a few days, Kung Fu pays off, after the comparative use of different bamboo, finally chose the natural trail bamboo as the raw material for Tianzhu chopsticks.
In the production of retained bamboo wild green coat, so that the production of chopsticks not only high density, not easy to penetrate oil and easy to clean, so made of Tianzhu chopsticks compared to other materials of the process chopsticks, no longer need paint paint to modify the surface, but also emit a natural and fresh light bamboo fragrance, is the most natural and healthy chopsticks. Wang Liandao said: "This is the wisdom of the old ancestors and the gift of nature, and what I want to do is to bring it to more people and carry it forward." ”
Spicy and small bamboo chopsticks also need to be carefully crafted
A pair of small chopsticks, seemingly simple, but in the process of production but let Wang Liandao not dare to be sloppy, a pair of natural presentation of Tianzhu chopsticks, there are more than twenty processes before and after, from the very beginning of the cutting bamboo (feeding), cutting, selection, cooking, cooling to the branding, grinding, loading, polishing to the final hardcover finished product, completely rely on the hands on the details delicate and precise to hold, all depending on the craftsman's ingenuity and achievements. And the most difficult is the branding, that is, after the designer designs the pattern, it is necessary to imprint the delicate pattern on the small and fine chopsticks, only the pattern on the fire can last forever, antique, but this link has extremely high requirements for the craftsman's manual skills, the gesture is light, the pattern cannot be branded, and the heavy is burned chopsticks.
"Craftsmen give life, and literati give souls." As the fifth generation of Tianzhu chopsticks inheritor, Wang Liandao also skillfully combined his calligraphy and seal engraving talents with the production skills of Tianzhu chopsticks, and after years of hard work, he created many gold medals such as "West Lake Tianzhu Chopsticks • Ten Views of West Lake", "West Lake Tianzhu Chopsticks • Dragon and Phoenix Royal Seal", "Tianzhu Chopsticks • Canal Ancient Rhyme", "Tianzhu Chopsticks • Jigong Blessing", "Tianzhu Chopsticks • Happy Travel" and many other gold awards, accumulatively winning 53 national, provincial and municipal gold, silver and bronze awards.
The "Tianzhu Mountain" trademark has been established as "Zhejiang Time-honored Brand" and "Hangzhou Time-honored Brand", Tianzhu Chopsticks are the key protected varieties of traditional arts and crafts in Hangzhou, and the production technology of Tianzhu Chopsticks has been included in the "Zhejiang Provincial Intangible Cultural Heritage List" and "Hangzhou Intangible Cultural Heritage List", so that "Jiangnan Famous Chopsticks" is expected to reproduce the style of the past.
Salty one more person to use is the best inheritance
The inheritance of Tianzhu chopsticks is the ingenuity of each generation; they must not only inherit the ancient craftsmanship, but also boldly innovate and give new vitality to cultural heritage. So far, the craftsmanship of Tianzhu chopsticks has been passed down to the sixth generation (at present, Tianzhu chopsticks are operated and passed down by Wang Xuqiong, the daughter of Wang Liandao). For Wang Liandao, inheriting the traditional craftsmanship of Tianzhu chopsticks is not only a personal determination and commitment, but also a symbol of carrying forward the heritage of the nation and Hangzhou.
Wang Xuqiong said that in 2009, she took Tianzhu chopsticks to participate in the China Time-honored Taipei Boutique Exhibition, an eighty-year-old man came to the booth in a wheelchair, and when he saw a variety of Tianzhu chopsticks, he was so excited that tears came down: "After so many years, I finally bought the famous chopsticks from my hometown!" It turned out that the old man's ancestral home was in Hangzhou, and after going to Taiwan decades ago, he never saw the Tianzhu chopsticks in his hometown again. These supports have greatly encouraged Wang Liandao, made him feel satisfied and proud, and he will continue to carry forward this traditional craft, so that this pair of lost and regained Tianzhu chopsticks can flourish and endure for a long time.
The association between each generation and Tianzhu chopsticks, the adherence to and re-inheritance of traditional handicraft culture, have continued the history of Tianzhu chopsticks, so that it can regain its new life in the new social form. In today's industrialized and mechanized world, a pair of Tianzhu chopsticks not only condenses all the painstaking efforts and strength of the artists, but also undertakes the mission of trying to use the warmth and ingenuity of hand craftsmanship to awaken people's innocent memory of beauty and nature.