In an exhibition hall in Qinglian Poetry Town, Mianyang City, Sichuan Province, a table of stone-made "Manchu Han Quan seat" comes to life. The creator is 46-year-old Liu Xiaodong, who combines his cooking techniques with playing with stones, using more than 80 kinds of stones, including agate, mud and stone. After spending millions of savings on stones for 9 years, his family once thought he was crazy...
More than 80 kinds of natural stone to create a table of "full han table"
"Steamed lamb, steamed bear paw, steamed deer tail, roasted duck, roasted chick, roast goose..." In the cross-talk "Reporting the Name of the Dish", this passage makes the Whole Han people well-known.
Although the feast is well known, no one seems to have really seen it. However, in an exhibition hall in Qinglian Poetry Town, Mianyang City, Sichuan Province, there are 108 "Manchu Han Full Table" made of natural stones, and each dish is vivid, which makes people call out the magic.
"This table involves more than 80 kinds of stones, such as gem jade, agate, protein jade, volcanic rock, golden silk jade, next door stone, fossils..." Creator Liu Xiaodong introduced that he was not the first person to use stone to create a full table of Han, but other works are mostly made through carving, like him with natural stones for plating is very rare, he believes that playing ornamental stones must first ensure integrity, the value of moving will be reduced.
Talking about the reasons for the creation, Liu Xiaodong explained that he began to learn to cook at the age of 6, and after graduating from high school, he also went to a culinary college for two years, although he did not become a chef in the end, he still maintained his love for cooking.
In 2012, 37-year-old Liu Xiaodong went to Xinjiang for engineering projects and stayed for six years. After work, he found that there are many naturally carved strange stones and jades on the Gobi Desert, some of which are similar to the objects in daily life, which makes him have a strong interest in appreciating stones and collecting, and combines cooking techniques with playing with stones, and began to have the idea of creating a stone version of the Manchu Han Full Table, "The Full Han Seat is a famous dish in China, and only the royal family can eat it before, I think it is both a landscape and a challenge to himself." ”
It cost millions for 9 years to dig stones
During his time in Xinjiang, Liu Xiaodong was completely fascinated by playing with stones. His "not doing the right thing" once made his family think that "he is crazy", but he enjoyed it, and even lost control, almost all of his savings were used to dig up stones, tens of thousands of stones, some small pieces are tens of thousands of yuan, roughly estimated to have millions.
One of the most valuable is the 38-kilogram Gobi protein jade that resembles a cow's thigh in the dish, which cost 50,000 yuan to find a stone, and someone once bid hundreds of thousands of dollars and he was reluctant to sell it.
Liu Xiaodong sometimes goes to the Gobi Desert with the older generation of stone players to find it himself, but going deep into the Gobi Desert is close to hundreds of kilometers and thousands of kilometers, and if there is no sense of direction, it is very dangerous, so he is more inclined to "Taobao" in the market spontaneously formed by the locals. "Every Sunday, I would go to the Strange Stone Market to see if there were any materials that met my creative needs."
He introduced that stone materials like vegetables are unattainable, so it can only be a process of slowly accumulating materials. For example, 6 cages of buns cannot be collected at one time, and it takes a long time to pick them up. The standard of the stone is to make people look like a dish at a glance when they are placed, so it took 9 years from 2012 to get such a full stone feast...
"Just put it out to attract a lot of visitors, a dozen passed on, more and more people know." Liu Xiaodong said that the current booth has just been set up, has not yet marked the name of each dish, the next step is to wait for the customized display cabinet in Beijing, will do the nameplate one by one to mark the name of the dish.
The stone version of "Willing" sold 200,000
Over the years, Liu Xiaodong can't remember how many stones he bought, "there is no specific concept of numbers, box by box to his hometown in Sichuan, each time the freight is hundreds of thousands." In order to create, Liu Xiaodong will constantly read the materials and teach himself geology, minerals, aesthetics, poetry and other knowledge. Slowly, through the arrangement and combination of different stones, five creative fields and directions have been opened up, including text, flower arrangement, sketches, paintings, and dishes, which has also doubled the value of stones and subverted many people's cognition of stones.
For example, he said that spelling out words with stones requires knowledge of calligraphy; flower arrangement must understand the meaning of each flower, and the color structure blank must present both artistic conception and look vital. "In total, I have created more than 300 works in 5 directions. There are more calligraphy classes, there are forty or fifty pieces. ”
Among them, the use of natural stone strips to create a little bit of writing is the most difficult, because the most complex dish, as long as the material collection is complete, with some auxiliary materials can be processed in a few days, and he feels that the most time-consuming and energy-consuming is a piece of calligraphy and painting made of stone. It is not only necessary to learn traditional culture, but also to understand the true meaning, spirit and charm of calligraphy, and each "point, apostrophe, and pinch" is selected from thousands of stones.
At that time, some people did not agree with his style and route, and later through insisting on research, learning, thinking and exploration, they gradually formed their own style, and there was a painting that was "willing" to sell for 200,000 at a high price.
Spell "Chinese Dream" and "Don't Forget the Original Heart" gift
The stone characters are derived from calligraphy and are separated from calligraphy, Liu Xiaodong spent more than three years in order to create 20 words of "Tianxingjian, Gentleman with Self-Improvement; Terrain Kun, Gentleman with Virtue", from 2016 to 2018, often studying works all night. And this work is also the one he thinks is the most difficult and the most satisfying.
He introduced that the stone used is a very rare scarlet mud stone in the Lop Nur area, and the sound emitted when colliding is like steel, "It took 2 years and 7 months to collect the stone strips alone, because the length of each piece is very exquisite. It took half a year to create. "At the beginning of the study, in order to achieve the overall sense of coordination and fluency according to the natural shape of the stone strips, a work had to be constantly changed hundreds of times, and it was possible that a word would take from 1 to 3 days.
Liu Xiaodong, who returned to his hometown in Jiangyou, Sichuan Province, from Xinjiang after 2018, specially made a yard, and since then has had more time and space to create, place and present various works, creating "not forgetting the original heart" in 2019, spelling out the "Chinese Dream" in 2020, and posing "Serving the People" in 2021...
Playing with stones is not for selling for high prices more in the continuous cultivation of the mind
Because Jiangyou is Li Bai's hometown, Liu Xiaodong's creation is naturally inseparable from Li Bai, so he used stones to stitch together a "portrait of Li Bai" and the word "wine immortal"! At present, these works are displayed in his private museum, "the whole museum is more than 300 square meters, set in the scenic area, and now only about 1/6 of the works are displayed for tourists to visit for free." ”
As for the final destination of the "Full Seat of Manhan" and other exhibits, Liu Xiaodong said that "at present, there is no price tag for the full seat of Manhan, and only when it comes to meeting talents who are really willing to buy, they can talk about the price." However, it does not take money as seriously, and it will still be sold when you meet people who are related. ”
In the exhibition hall, next to a fruit plate containing grapes and pears, there is a clear mark of 3.5 million yuan, "All-natural agate, very precious, is not placed in the full table of Manchuria, but is placed separately." Liu Xiaodong said that the list price does not represent the real price, each work itself can no longer be copied, is unique, can not be simply used to represent the value with numbers, even if there are buyers are reluctant to sell.
"A jasper Buddha, someone once came to the door 5 times and tried to exchange it for a house in Chengdu, but I refused." Sometimes, he said, prices are only used as a warning to let viewers know their preciousness. "Museums are more about passing on a culture, and after so many years of tempering, there have been changes in psychology, and no matter how much money there is, it is a bowl of rice."
Today, in order to collect stones, he goes to Inner Mongolia or Xinjiang two or three times a year. And his family's love for him has gradually improved.
Because of his hobbies, his works give him a sense of spiritual satisfaction, after experiencing his father's illness and death, family breakdown and other things over the years, the perception of life is more and more, and the continuous creation is more like the process of cultivating the heart, "My current mentality is very peaceful, I can learn a lot of philosophical things, I think the perception of life is the ultimate soul of artistic pursuit." ”
Text/Beiqing - Beijing headline reporter Song Xia
Source: Beijing Toutiao Client