Text/Li Na
#Chinese bamboo weaving craft popular TikTok # This is a pair of hands full of calluses. No measurement tools are needed, it is the scale of making bamboo weaving. The whole bamboo tree, several meters long, is cut in two with a wooden knife, the hands are broken into four, and the sickle is cut into eight... Before the audience's eyes could keep up, the thick bamboo at the mouth of the bowl became hundreds of tough bamboo wires, and the length and thickness were not different. The master grabbed one end and flicked it, and the bamboo wire swung back and forth neatly, like a wave blown by the wind.
1.88 million Douyin netizens liked the video, and 83,000 comments were left in the video message area, most of which praised the craftsmanship of the bamboo weaving master: "Flowing water in the clouds", "Breaking bamboo", "Good kung fu". Some netizens uploaded the video to overseas platforms such as TikTok and received more than 10 million views.
The bamboo weaving master is pan Yunfeng, from Lin'an, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 51 years old. He began to learn art at the age of 14, became a smith at the age of 18, witnessed the decline and decline of bamboo weaving, and finally changed careers at the age of 23. In 2019, Pan Yunfeng regained his old business and made a short video, and his Douyin account @ Chuangyi attracted nearly 5 million fans.
Pan Yunfeng did not expect that the old rural crafts that were once eliminated have now received widespread attention again, as an intangible cultural heritage, so that many people have seen the traditional cultural value. What's more coincidental is that these bamboo weaving arts have gone out of the mountains through short videos and have become popular abroad, becoming an "ancient and mysterious Chinese force" on platforms such as TikTok.
New value in old craftsmanship
Pan Yunfeng's parents divorced from childhood and he followed his grandmother to live in a small mountain village in Zhejiang. In the era of underdeveloped industry, bamboo grew fast and had high strength, and was the main building and manufacturing material, and every household needed bamboo weaving. Bamboo weaving masters, also known as weavers, are a decent enough profession. In the mid-1980s, 14-year-old Pan Yunfeng followed his uncle to make bamboo weaving, and changed three masters successively to learn this craft.
Unexpectedly, the development of industry has made plastics, cement and other more convenient products flood into the mountain village where Pan Yunfeng lives. In the past, the bamboo products that people in the village could not do without everywhere gradually faded out of people's lives.
First, the mats used to dry rice were eliminated, and the floor made of cement could directly dry rice without annual repair. Immediately after, baskets and baskets were replaced by woven bags and plastic. In the end, bamboo mats can be made with machines. The two apprentices brought by Pan Yunfeng only studied for more than a year before leaving, and his master also changed careers.
Pan Yunfeng, who has been weaving bamboo for 5 years, had to give up this craft and go outside to work. He has done all kinds of things. In the second half of the 1990s, he worked as an oil well manager in the oil field at the junction of the three provinces of Shaanxi, Gansu and Ningxia. At the beginning of the new century, the oil well dried up, and he was in charge of staff meals at a hotel in Taiyuan, catching up with SARS.
On June 7, 2008, with the approval of the State Council, bamboo weaving was included in the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage list. At that time, Pan Yunfeng was doing welding maintenance on a pig farm in Nanjing, which was also a handicraft. In 2019, Pan Yunfeng's children went to college, and he decided to return to his hometown to live and work in the dental clinic opened by relatives.
In the blink of an eye, more than twenty years have passed since the abandonment of bamboo weaving. In 2019, Pan Yunfeng inadvertently brushed up a bamboo video of a teacher, and the number of account fans increased from hundreds to tens of thousands within a few days, and many people praised the old craft. Therefore, Pan Yunfeng also registered a Douyin account, named @ Chuangyi, and learned to shoot videos. His idea is very simple, if it goes well, you can accumulate 30,000-50,000 fans, and when you are older, do some bamboo weaving to sell money, it is a job, how much to subsidize some households.
During that time, Pan Yunfeng had to go to work, and only Thursday was on vacation. He went alone to the mountains to cut bamboo, and made bamboo weaving and video shooting in the empty house of the old man's family. At the beginning, he could only upload a video within 1 minute, and he would not edit it, and he could not present the whole process of bamboo weaving, and netizens commented that he "couldn't understand it." To this end, Pan Yunfeng looked for editing tutorials on Douyin, learning to switch lenses, edit videos, adjust the light, find shooting angles, and show this craft that was once "eliminated" to the young people in front of the screen.
In October 2019, the third month of Pan Yunfeng's douyin shooting, his followers exceeded 5,000, which means that he can post videos of more than 1 minute. On October 17, he released a 3-minute video of making pot brushes. After the post, Pan Yunfeng went to work, and when he came back, he found that the video was on fire, nearly 800,000 likes, and the number of fans increased by 50,000 or 60,000 at once. By November, Pan Yunfeng's video of making bamboo baskets was on fire again, with nearly 1.4 million likes.
The number of comments in the comment area continued to increase, and tens of thousands of replies surprised Pan Yunfeng. The intangible cultural heritage value of bamboo weaving is seen by more and more people, and the old craft has become the carrier of traditional culture. Many people asked for the purchase link, some people asked him to open a live broadcast, and bamboo weaving peers took the initiative to contact him, hoping to cooperate together. He repeatedly did psychological construction, thinking that he did not steal and did not grab, so that more people can understand bamboo weaving, and it is always a good thing to use bamboo weaving.
Go overseas and return to life
In 2020, Pan Yunfeng's video works made of bamboo weaving maintained a high degree of popularity, breaking bamboo basic skills, pot brushes, bamboo sieves, parasols, these videos have more than 1 million likes. @Chuang Craft's fans are increasing, and it has reached nearly 5 million. Filming a video has brought a big change to his life. A direct change is that he has also completed his 20-year mortgage.
@Chuang craft More than 1 million likes on multiple videos
After becoming popular, Pan Yunfeng still lived the original life, he rented an old house on the mountain, rode a motorcycle up the mountain every day, made bamboo weaving, and then went down the mountain. The house is shaded, it is inevitable that it is a little wet and cold in winter, and there is a noise of building a new house around, Pan Yunfeng does not care. He learned from friends around him that some netizens had uploaded his bamboo videos to overseas platforms. As of now, on TikTok, the cumulative playback of pot brush videos has exceeded 33 million. On YouTube, his bamboo video collection also reached 2.6 million views.
Foreign netizens do not understand bamboo weaving and are amazed by Pan Yunfeng's works. Some netizens said that these bamboo products are "touching people's hearts" works of art, and some netizens lamented That Pan Yunfeng's "accuracy and speed of movement of the hand are better than machines." "There are also many netizens who upload co-production videos and record their reactions when watching these bamboo videos on TikTok.
With the help of short video platforms, these bamboo videos have become popular overseas and become a window for netizens to understand Chinese culture. Compared with these, Pan Yunfeng is more interested in how to improve the traditional bamboo weaving technique. According to the habits of modern people, he made new products such as mobile phone holders, child seats, cribs, and cervical spine pillows out of bamboo.
Mobile phone holders, child seats, and cribs made by Pan Yunfeng
Pan Yunfeng hopes that through his own efforts, these transformed and innovative crafts can find some place in the current life. It's a long road, and he's going to keep going.