In history, what is the story of Wang Bisheng?

Mr. Wang Bisheng is a representative descendant of the national intangible cultural heritage "Nanjing Gold Foil Forging", known as the last "foil maker" and gold foil painting master by the society and the media.

Gold, one of the rarest and most admired metals, is condensed with extraordinary wisdom and spiritual brilliance when a skilled craftsman hammers a gold ingot tens of thousands of times to create a flake as light as a feather and as thin as a cicada's wing, decorating everything in the world, it condenses extraordinary wisdom and exudes spiritual brilliance, and gathers into a name worthy of being written in history: gold leaf. Nanjing gold foil, thousands of hammers, is the unremitting pursuit of the ultimate beauty, thousands of hammers, is the deep awe of traditional craftsmanship.

Nanjing in May is the best season of the year, in the Xuanguan of Fangshan Cave in Jiangning District, Wang Bisheng, the national inheritor of Nanjing's gold foil forging skills, follows the old practice and comes here to worship his ancestors and recruit disciples. The hall is enshrined, is known as Ge Tianshi of the Eastern Jin Dynasty famous Taoist leader Ge Hong, according to legend Ge Hong is the pioneer of gold foil forging skills, so Nanjing's gold foil artists are enshrined in the Eastern Jin Dynasty Taoist priest as the ancestor, the history of human use of gold foil is very ancient, 1323 BC, the tomb of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun, the use of gold foil, China's gold foil forging skills can be traced back to the Shang Dynasty, Henan Anyang Yinxu, Sichuan Guanghan Sanxingdui and other sites unearthed a variety of gold foil products, The thinnest is only 0.1 millimeters, and the gold leaf pattern of the Shang and Zhou sun god birds unearthed in Jinsha, Chengdu, Sichuan Province has become a symbol of China's tangible cultural heritage. In the smoke and rain of the four hundred and eighty temples and how many buildings in the Southern Dynasties, Buddhism flourished during the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, and Nanjing became one of the centers of Buddhism at that time. Xiao Gang, Emperor Jianwen of the Southern Liang Dynasty, once wrote "Thin Statues of Man-made Zhangba Sandwiched with Gold", which shows that at that time, Jiankang City, that is, Nanjing, was quite common to paste gold for Buddha statues, and the main material used for gold pasting was gold leaf. As a result, Nanjing, where there are many temples, has become a major producer of gold leaf. Today is Ge Tianshi's birthday, Wang Bisheng made this trip to worship his ancestors, and also brought two new apprentices who had just been recruited. In Wang Bisheng's view, choosing this place as the starting point for inheriting the craft is not only to respect the gold leaf craft, but also to let the successors understand the history and culture behind this skill. The work of foiling is very hard, because it is very hard, you have to practice basic skills every morning, row your shoulders, your hands are blistered when you play, and you can't pick up chopsticks when you go back, and now young people basically refuse to learn. Wang Bisheng had a bad fate when he was young, when he was 3 years old, his father died, and he moved to Longtan with his mother after remarrying, and when he was 12 years old, his mother also died, and Wang Bisheng has been living in Longtan with his stepfather. At that time, it was decentralized in 1968, and it was assigned to Yizheng Liujie, and in 1972, it was assigned to the gold wire gold foil factory, and it was he who was in the countryside for four years, because he had no children with this stepfather, because the state had this document, and the only son sent it, and then after coming up in 1971, he was not assigned a job after coming up, and stayed at home for a year, and in December 1972, he was assigned to Nanjing gold wire gold foil factory and apprenticed with the master. Longtan Street, Qixia District, 30 kilometers east of Nanjing, is recognized as the birthplace of gold foil forging skills in Nanjing, as early as the Eastern Jin Dynasty, many families here began to make a living from foil, and almost every family has a small workshop. The male hammer gold leaf, the female weave gold thread, and the sound of the foil hammer within a radius of ten miles. Li Baoxiang said: "In the history of the Longtan area of Nanjing, it was mainly the production of gold foil and gold wire, so before the liberation, it was a family workshop all over this Longtan area, and after the liberation, in 1955, the socialist transformation did not allow the existence of private ownership, so the government gathered all these folk artists and formed the Folk Art Gold Foil Society. In 1966, on the basis of the cooperative, the establishment of Nanjing Jinxian Gold Foil Factory, the production of gold foil on the right track, the output has also been increasing, during the Cultural Revolution, under the influence of the "four olds", the production of gold foil was stagnant for a time, until 1972 gradually resumed production, and recruited apprentices. At that time, in 1972, when the batch was allocated to the gold wire factory, there were 17, 4 female engineers learned to cut foil, and 13 learned to beat foil. At that time, the masters in the factory had great hopes for this new group of apprentices, who would use their experience in foil making to carve and polish this group of jade-like young people. About the forging of gold leaf, the earliest written record in China, is the Ming Dynasty Song Yingxing's "Tiangong Kaiwu", in the book recorded the production process of gold leaf, where gold leaf, each gold seven centimeters to make a square inch of gold 1,000 pieces, sticky paving surface, can cover three feet in length and width, where to make gold leaf, after becoming a sheet, wrapped into black gold paper, try to wave the spine into it. The traditional old craftsman will be forging foil skills divided into five elements, such as leaf shooting, dipping, foiling, rising, and foil cutting, and the modern technology has re-sorted out the traditional craftsmanship, and made it clear that it is 12 processes such as proportioning, turning gold, making twists, hitting gold opens, playing plays, promulgating, and cutting foils, and the entire gold foil production process takes about 10 days. The raw material of processing gold foil is mainly gold, according to the needs of various product specifications and different gold content, a small amount of silver or copper is added to the raw material ratio, the ratio of good gold raw materials, put it into the crucible to melt it, after 30 minutes of smelting, the melted gold water is poured into the iron trough of 25 cm long and 3 cm wide, the jargon is called inverted strip. At that time, the branch factory learned to play gold leaf, at that time I had never seen gold leaf, since the gold wire factory saw gold leaf, the master hit this kind of gold leaf is very magical, because at that time to find a job, assign a job seems to be hard-won, in the mind, as if you must learn this job, this craft, learn well, do well.

The bumpy displacement in his early years, coupled with the hardships of going to the countryside for four years, made Wang Bisheng more able to endure hardships than others and work more seriously. Tan Zhushi said: "It's not easy to choose an apprentice, this one depends on the physique, it depends on his shot, some people can't do it, the hand is not long at all, how to fight without a frame, and it is not good if it is too small; If you say another, you must be able to endure hardships, and Wang Bisheng is quite able to endure hardships in this regard. In this way, Wang Bisheng worshiped Tan Zhushi as his teacher, one poured out his money to teach him, and the other was hungry and thirsty, and the obsession of changing his fate made Wang Bicheng's foil hammer more determined. The salary of the first year was 14 yuan, and the second year was 18, when 13 men learned to beat foil with their own batch of people who entered the factory, and there were 10 people who were unwilling to learn because they were too tired and hard. Tan Zhushi said: "In the past, the conditions for playing foil were poor, whether it was hot weather or foiling in winter, and his clothes were taken off, wouldn't he sweat, wrapped in a towel, a book of hammered down, sweat can be squeezed out like water, it should be said that Wang Bisheng can insist, this aspect is still good, there are many apprentices, and finally quit, some people can't bear the hardships, and some people are transferred away." "I also had ideas and didn't want to do this job, because the master was very good to him, like a son, because he suffered when he was a child and his family conditions were not good, so he slowly persevered. After the cooling of the gold bar, with the leaf hammer hammer into a thin gold bar, cut the hammer into 16 centimeters square, as thin as paper gold leaves, the leaf requirements for the leaf clear, hammer fine, dumb sound, not bad scraps, every 120 for "a work". Cut gold leaves, also need to be cut into smaller squares with a bamboo knife, the jargon is called twist, the size of the twist is very strict, the side length is 15 mm, each gold leaf can be cut out of 32 small gold twists, each gold twist will be forged into a piece of gold leaf. "Rowing" is a basic skill of foiling, every morning to practice thousands of times, after several years of practice, in order to achieve the hammer steady, accurate, average requirements. At that time, the master told us to get up at 4 o'clock every morning to row our arms, because after getting up, we sat on the edge of the bed on a bench, and we were not allowed to wear a shirt on it, so we wore a big trousers, that is, we grabbed a handful of chopsticks and sat on the bench. 46 years ago, Wang Bisheng, like these young people, practiced Sanjiu in winter and Sanfu in summer, and with every stroke, he pinned his hopes for a better life in the future. In 1975, after hard study, Wang Bisheng became a regular worker and officially became a worker in the gold foil and gold thread factory, and his salary rose from 18 yuan to 33 yuan. The production of black gold paper is the core process of gold leaf production, and black gold paper has to receive more than 50,000 hits in the process of forging foil, so its quality directly determines the quality of gold foil. Li Baoxiang said: "This gold foil production, the original use of black gold paper is in Shangyu, Zhejiang, the amount of gold consumption, the quality of gold foil is relatively low, trachoma more, then I don't want to do it myself, want to buy ready-made, go to Japan, go to Germany, this Japanese simply don't sell to you, then the Germans agree to sell, their impression of 8,000 yuan a piece, after getting his hands on it, he is actually used, has been eliminated This scrap product deceived him once, and the scrap product can't hit the gold foil at all. So in this case, we also know that it is impossible to count on foreign imports, and we can only rely on our own wisdom to research and develop. "The chemical composition of Ugin paper is complex, and it is not easy to develop a new type of Ugin paper. We claim to have developed thousands of times, thousands of times, of course, the development of the formula in this, there are indeed some tricks, and some things that you can't even think of want to go into, which has made us successful in the research of gold leaf paper and new ugin paper. At that time, after they brushed this black gold paper, they handed it over to us to beat the foil to test, according to the malleability of this hammer and two volumes of hammering, or the gold foil stuck to the paper, or not long, or trachoma, and then we told our opinions to the factory, the factory and then to make a family, and then add the formula, and then give us a beating. In 1998, the new type of black gold paper for the production of gold foil was successfully developed, the new black gold paper can withstand high temperatures of more than 100 degrees Celsius, and withstand 200 to 2.5 million times of repeated hammering, the gold foil is thin and uniform, there is no trachoma, and the yield is very high. The new type of black gold paper is cut into 10 centimeters square, the jargon is called "Jin Kaizi", all Jin Kaizi should be placed in the oven at 90 degrees Celsius for three hours, for "kang fire", the so-called gold Kaizi, is ready to beat the gold twist with paper. After the gold opening is done, you need to immediately dip the finished gold twist with your fingers and put it layer by layer in the center of the black gold paper that has been burned by the kang, and every 2048 layers is one work. In the whole production process, the gold leaf needs to be hammered twice, the first time is to open the gold twist, the jargon is called "beating the gold open", after the beating of the gold twist carefully with bamboo pieces to pick up, put into the whole piece of black gold paper, the jargon is called "open the child", the paper package is also 2048 layers, commonly known as "family life". The finished household should be put on a baking bed at 80 degrees Celsius and heated for about an hour and a half, which is called "kang kang" in the jargon. After the first beating, the side length has been extended from the original 15 mm to about 90 mm, and the thickness has been reduced from the original 10 microns to 1 micron, but this has not yet met the requirements of the finished gold leaf. "Playing the play" is the core link of the gold foil forging technique, and "playing" is the Nanjing dialect and the meaning of the end. Unlike most crafts, "playing" requires two people to cooperate and cooperate to complete, one person at the top and one at the bottom, holding a push hammer on the top and weighing about seven pounds, and a guard hammer weighing about five pounds.