Text/Yu Xue Anchor/Xiao Xian
Source/Reader, Issue 21, 2021
Image from the web
My friend Lao Xia worked for a gold company, because he knew that I had worked in the museum, especially liked the gold and silver jade in traditional culture, so he issued an invitation to let me experience at close range how he and a group of colleagues worked in the company's ancient goldware workshop, how through the traditional ancient art manual craftsmanship, a piece of gold lumps into ingenious gold tools.
As soon as I entered the workshop, I was surrounded by all kinds of gold objects, which were either delicate, or primitive, or wrapped in layers of filigree, or sparkling with jewelry and diamonds.
Because the design patterns, manufacturing processes, etc. are closely related to traditional Chinese culture, although they are all gold products, they have completely faded the brilliant and dazzling metallic feeling of gold, but give me a feeling of warm color, flashy but not dazzling, expensive and not obvious.
"The ancient filigree inlay gold craftsmanship is an intangible cultural heritage, which comes from the palace office and has been passed down in Beijing for nearly a hundred years. We took the mantle from the craftsmen of our predecessors and came from Beijing to the ancient city of Yueyang after several turns. There is no shortage of skilled craftsmen here, and it is basically 10 years to start in this business, and it is not uncommon for 20 or 30 years. Some are even family heirlooms of tongzi gong, one hand is connected to the craftsmanship of several generations. ”
Enter a filigree studio.
Four craftsmen are working together to make golden cicadas.
The golden cicada is only 5 centimeters long, the body of the cicada is simple and unremarkable, but the pattern of the wings is extremely complicated.
I couldn't help but get close and watch closely.
A master surnamed Liu is focusing on a 3-centimeter-long cicada wing as thin as a piece of paper.
The index finger of his left hand gently fixed the cicada wing, and the right hand used tweezers to select the gold wire veins of about 2 mm in length and as thin as a hair from the box, clamped it and made a "dragonfly point water" action on the special glue bag, and then glued these veins one by one.
During this time, his whole body was almost stationary, and his bowed back could not see the ups and downs of breathing, leaving only his right hand and eyes to cooperate precisely.
"We are more similar in temperament, slow and axis. Lao Liu has been a cicada wing for 5 years, and I have been polishing the cicada body for almost 5 years. "Master Xiaowen next to Master Liu showed me his proud right hand - because of the use of filing tools for many years, the fingerprints on the 3 fingers of his right hand have been worn out and cannot be seen clearly.
In Xiaowen's words, the 4 of them do not like to be lively, nor do they like to join in the fun, and are used to sitting on the cold bench.
"Some people find happiness in many things, we find happiness in one thing."
"Looking for something happy, looking for trouble is almost the same!" The movement of Master Liu's right hand slowly stopped, and he was vaguely heard to breathe softly, and then use forceps to remove the veins that had been glued before.
He raised his head and said, "Old Sun, help me play a song by Xu Wei, I just won the lottery, I have to slow down." ”
A cicada wing has 300 veins, and it takes 4 to 6 hours to make a pair of such wings.
A skilled craftsman like Master Liu can't make a few pairs a day.
As long as one vein is not fully combined with the wing bone, it can only be completely removed and redone.
This kind of "winning" situation is very common.
"Through the dark years, I also felt wandering, when you looked down, you found the road under your feet, the free world in your heart, so clear and lofty..."
In the filigree workshop, Xu Wei's soothing but resolute singing echoed, relieving the craftsman's momentary frustration.
It is said that this song was dedicated by Xu Wei to Master Xuanzang, and the blue lotus flower symbolizes hope, freedom, eternity, peace...
Looking at these craftsmen who pursued the ultimate skill, my mind flew out at once, as if I saw a moving picture of the three Tibetan masters on the way to the west, facing the yellow sand outside the Yumen Pass, braving the scorching sun of Gaochang City, wading through the Peacock River, and crossing the Yuexue Mountain, in order to pursue the ideal in their hearts, and searching up and down...
In the Seiko Workshop, Master Fu Lao Xia is showing his "hammering" skills to the little apprentices behind him.
Old Xia looks like Sven Wen, who has been doing this business for 15 years, and is a family heirloom craft.
Making the two classic instruments of dragon and phoenix brand and pumpkin pot is his specialty.
He held a small hammer in his right hand and a rough gold bowl in his left, beating rhythmically.
"It's not hard, it's just a hammer and a hammer." The difficult thing is the mood, to be stable and peaceful.
"The hard thing is time. Knocking a hundred hammers is simple, knocking ten thousand hammers is very difficult, and knocking ten thousand hammers also has the mood when knocking a hundred hammers, it is even more difficult.
"Take this golden bowl, the shape of the instrument should be round, stable, uniform, and positive, the lines should be smooth enough, the feel should be warm, and the ten thousand hammers should be knocked down, and the strength of the first hammer is no different."
"No work, no trace, this is kung fu."
Indeed, it is not easy to repeat simple things, to repeat things with heart, to be exquisite and extreme.
A hundred times, a thousand times, a million times...
Repeating the same thing, the same action, the same idea, can make a real craftsman.
What a true craftsman has to do is to cross his own pass, cross his own river, and cross one mountain after another in his heart.
In the words of the apprentices, Lao Xia's craftsmanship has nothing to say, and being a person is a role model, "skeletonizing", "hammering", "engraving", these important traditional ancient legal gold crafts, he never hesitates to teach young people.
When Lao Xia was doing work, he would play music.
"At first, it was not like this, and it was said that a master chef randomly put a classic ancient song when doing ruyi, who knew that he accidentally got the inspiration for creation, and finally won a grand prize.
"From there, I started up, passed on ten, ten to a hundred, and the music and songs were about to become the tradition of our company, the old shop gold craftsmen."
Lao Xia showed me a pumpkin pot that could show his "hammering" and "engraving" skills, "When making the instrument type, add a little of your favorite melody to it, this is where the mystery lies."
He named one of his most proud pots "Evening Wind Kettles".
This pot, the body of the pot takes the shape of eight petals of a pumpkin, and the abdomen is small and round.
The handle of the pot is made into a random twisted melon vine, and the vine decorates the body of the pot, and the button resembles a melon, which is melon-shaped.
It shows both craftsmanship and literati interest, which is really a good pot.
"Vapor cloud Mengze, wave shake Yueyang City."
In the ancient city of Yueyang in the middle of summer, the vast smoke of Dongting Lake has not yet seen a corner, and the heat wave on the face has already taken the lead, just like throwing a person directly into the cage drawer to steam and roast.
Under the scorching sun, flowers and leaves have lowered their eyebrows, and even the mountains in the distance have become shadowy because of the water vapor that shakes the city.
"Coming to Yueyang, Yueyang Tower is a must."
Coming out of the factory, Lao Xia repeatedly offered to accompany me to Yueyang Lou.
Before ascending the building, Lao Xia invited me to stay at the monument pavilion, and he said that the inscription here was of the same origin as his "engraving" technique.
Then tell me about the thickness, correction, and echo of the lines.
In the end, it always falls on the truth of the engraving.
Casually chatting about what the workshop had seen, Lao Xia said, "Master Liu is a stuffy gourd.
You don't have to say, his best at really making gourds, he made 'Fluke Bandai filigree gourd', compared to the golden cicada, the process is more complex than several times, you need to have the ability to weave filigree patterns by hand.
It is said that in order to practice the art of weaving flowers, this guy knitted sweaters when he returned from work. ”
We walked and talked and climbed to the highest point of Yueyang Tower.
Here you can finally avoid the sun, listen to the waves at the window, and enjoy the beauty of the cave garden.
Lao Xia said, "Guess which sentence in "Yueyang LouJi" is my favorite?" ”
"When people in the world mention this article, it is either the feeling of home and country that 'worries before the world and is happy after the world', or it is the state of mind of 'not being happy with things, not being sad with oneself.'"
"Take our group of people, since we came from Beijing to the shore of Dongting Lake, the situation in this is really 'leisurely heart meeting, wonderful and difficult to talk to Jun'.
"Sometimes reason doesn't work, because everyone understands the truth, and some things have to go beyond the truth to have meaning."
"It's one thing to know that you can be a master in this line, but it's another thing to be able to sit on the cold bench for decades, eat ten times the suffering of ordinary people, and finally become a master."
Old Xia Nai murmured and spat out a sentence softly, "WeiSi people, who am I with..."
I know that this is lao Xia's answer.
"The curtain does not move the sunset late" "When the lake and mountains are about to twilight", the sunset slowly sinking in the west spreads on the lake surface, half cold green and half red.
The evening wind swept through the cave garden, starting at the end of the green apple and soaring upwards.
<h1 toutiao-origin="h1" > Author: Yu Xue, Source: Reader Magazine, No. 21, 2021. </h1>