Kaiping Town Hao Mud Chicken: Innovation in Inheritance Intangible Cultural Heritage Craftsmanship Comes to Life

In the past, at the end of each lunar year, traders from Heshan, Taishan, Enping, Xinhui and other places would drive to Haohao, Shuikou Town, Kaiping City, to buy mud chickens for sale. In the 1980s, the craft was on the verge of disappearing. The reporter came to Zhenhao Village to explore the story behind the mud chicken.

Reporter Huang Fuying: (Blowing chicken) "The mud chicken rings, happiness and auspiciousness!" "What I'm holding in my hand now is a specialty product of Kaiping, Zhenhao mud chicken. So how exactly is this mud chicken made? What's the story behind it? Today we specially came to the Zhenhao Mud Chicken Cultural Center in Kaiping to learn the production of mud chicken.

"Zhenhao Mud Chicken" is a municipal intangible cultural heritage of Jiangmen, which has a history of more than 200 years. During the Spring Festival, making mud chicken is the side business of the whole village of Zhenhao Village. But with the development of the economy, the mud chicken gradually has no market.

Feng Yongyong, non-hereditary heir of Kaiping City: In 2016, there was an intangible cultural heritage exhibition hall in Kaiping, and the staff knew that I was a person from Zhenhao Village, and asked me to come back to help them make 20 mud chickens. I finally found a very old set of utensils in an old man's house, and I made 20 mud chickens based on my father's memory.

Since then, Feng Yongyong has begun to integrate Zhenhao mud chicken into various cultural and creative goods, spreading the "mud chicken" culture to locals and tourists, and more and more people know about mud chicken and fall in love with mud chicken.

Ms. Lu, a villager in Hao Village, Shuikou Town, Kaiping City: In the 70s, mud chicken was not often found in daily life, and we didn't have money to buy it until the New Year, so we had more feelings for it as soon as we saw it, and when we saw it, we wanted to play and blow it.

However, Feng Yongyong also said that the birth of a mud chicken is not simple, and it has become a problem to revitalize the mud chicken.

Feng Yongyong, non-hereditary heir of Kaiping City: Because the production of mud chicken is to dig mud from the field, use a hammer to hammer mud, hammer the mud to have softness, we will use the mold to make it by hand, after making the mold embryo, it will be dried in the sun for three days, and then we will go to the bamboo forest to cut bamboo, because the sound of the mud chicken is mainly based on the bamboo pipe inside, the inner diameter of the bamboo basket should be very smooth, and the requirements are very high, otherwise the sound will not be good.

Feng Yongyong believes that the most important thing to do a good job in inheritance is to stimulate the interest of the younger generation in "mud chicken". In recent years, he has held mud chicken painting competitions with primary and secondary schools many times, allowing students to participate in the production of mud chickens for individuals to create "their own mud chickens". Jiangmentai reporter Huang Fuying reported.