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How much do you know about these rural skills? Get up close to the famous craftsmen of the countryside

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General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that "talent revitalization is the foundation of rural revitalization" and "encourage all kinds of talents to exert their abilities, display their talents and show their talents in the vast world of rural areas, and build a strong talent team for rural revitalization".

Rural craftsmen are important skilled talents to support rural development and construction. In the first half of this year, seven departments, including the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the Ministry of Education, and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, jointly identified the first batch of 273 rural craftsmen in 14 technical categories. Or make exquisite utensils, innovate traditional skills, or inherit embroidery craftsmanship, weave a better life, or cook special food, and retain the taste of hometown...... Rural craftsmen take root in the countryside, inherit culture, drive villagers to increase their income and become rich, and help the comprehensive revitalization of the countryside.

The People's Daily News Edition has launched a series of reports on "Craftsmen and ·Rural Craftsmen" from now on, approaching famous rural craftsmen in the fields of utensils making, embroidery, printing and dyeing, food production, etc., and recording their stories of inheriting intangible cultural heritage skills and promoting the development of rural characteristic industries.

How much do you know about these rural skills? Get up close to the famous craftsmen of the countryside

Data source: Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Layout design: Zhang Fangman

Hebei Quyang County porcelain firing skills inheritor Pang Yonghui

——Hand moves as you like, clay as you like

Kneading, lifting, discharging, closing...... In the innovation studio of Pang Yonghui of Chen's Ding Porcelain in Quyang County, Hebei Province, 51-year-old Pang Yonghui is busy in front of the blank drawing machine. In less than 10 minutes, a piece of porcelain clay turned into a beautiful plum bottle body in his hands.

How much do you know about these rural skills? Get up close to the famous craftsmen of the countryside

Pang Yonghui is pulling the blank. Photo by Tang Di

Pang Yonghui is the representative inheritor of the national intangible cultural heritage project "Porcelain Firing Skills", and has inherited the porcelain firing skills for more than 30 years.

"The porcelain is plain white porcelain, so the initial shape is particularly important." Pang Yonghui said that the birth of a fixed porcelain porcelain needs to go through many processes such as raw material selection, blank drawing, billet and decoration. In all processes, blank drawing is the most critical step in the molding of porcelain.

"Drawing a blank is a slow effort, only by sinking down and practicing diligently, can we smoothly make a beautiful and full body." Day after day, year after year, Pang Yonghui's drawing skills have been continuously improved. Based on years of experience, he developed his own set of specifications, which significantly improved the success rate of blank drawing.

Not only that, in order to enrich the shape and function of porcelain, and integrate more contemporary aesthetic concepts and elements into the traditional fixed porcelain, Pang Yonghui has innovated and developed double-layer blank drawing technology and hollow blank drawing technology. The "Pomegranate Blossom" carved vase with double-layer blank drawing technology and one-time firing at a high temperature of 1300 degrees Celsius has won the design patent of the State Intellectual Property Office, which is one of Pang Yonghui's representative works.

In addition to the breakthrough in blank drawing skills, Pang Yonghui also has another unique skill - "jumping knife".

Wash your hands, stand the semi-dry preform on the blank drawing machine, and after groping up and down to determine the dry humidity and hardness of the mud, Pang Yonghui selects the knife and begins to "jump the knife" to engrave with the rhythm of the rotation of the blank machine.

The vertical knife is like a point, the knife is like a line, the mud falls evenly along the parabola, the knife stops at the line, and the lines ripple. "The 'Jumping Knife' engraving is unaltered, it is done in one go, and each work is unique." Pang Yonghui has created more than a dozen patterns such as dot pattern, net pattern and water pattern through the grasp of the dryness and humidity of the mud and different arcs, and the adjustment of strength and speed, and has innovated and invented the corresponding knife jumping tools, constantly enriching the form of the knife jumping pattern.

In recent years, Pang Yonghui has been committed to promoting the inheritance of skills and helping the development of the porcelain industry. In 2017, Pang Yonghui founded Quyang Dingci Vocational Training School to regularly train Dingci technical talents for the society. In 2020, on the basis of the training school, Pang Yonghui took the lead in setting up the Chen's Ding Kiln Intangible Cultural Heritage Workshop to help the comprehensive revitalization of the countryside by inheriting the firing skills of Ding Porcelain and displaying exhibition and sales ability training. By the end of 2023, the Intangible Cultural Heritage Workshop has carried out 16 sessions of public welfare skills training, training more than 3,000 people, and driving more than 500 people out of poverty and low-income people to work.

Song Weidong, the inheritor of Ming-style furniture making skills in Suzhou City, Jiangsu

——A tenon and a tenon are quaint and exquisite

Song Weidong, the inheritor of Ming-style furniture making skills in Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province, took a hammer and beat it continuously, and the mortise and tenon joints were tightly embedded together, without glue or nails, and a Ming-style chair was combined with these mortise and tenon joints. In the Sufu Mahogany Craft Factory located in Guangfu Town, Wuzhong District, Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province, all kinds of wood are turned into Ming-style furniture such as chairs, tables, cabinets, couches and beds through drying, cutting, making, lacquering and polishing.

How much do you know about these rural skills? Get up close to the famous craftsmen of the countryside

Song Weidong is doing woodwork. Photo courtesy of the interviewee

Zhang Han of the Ming Dynasty recorded in "Song Window Dream · Hundred Workers": "Wu is beautiful and beautiful...... The Quartet is expensive Wu ware, and Wu Yi works in the instrument. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, due to the participation of some literati in appreciation and design, Su Zuoming-style furniture formed the characteristics of "ancient, elegant, refined and beautiful".

"The mortise and tenon joint is the key to Ming-style furniture." Song Weidong told reporters that with the same tenon and tenon, some furniture can only bear more than 10 kilograms, and some can bear hundreds of kilograms. As an apprentice, Song Weidong often had to undergo this training - he slammed the head of the chair to the ground, and although the wood was broken, the mortise and tenon joints were to remain intact.

Song Weidong has been making Ming-style furniture for nearly 40 years, and has made great efforts in the mortise and tenon process. He held a piece for the reporter to see the shape of the opening, "This opening is not a rectangle, and the bottom is tightened to increase the bite force of the tenon." "Due to the differences in materials, textures and utensils, different mortise and tenon structures have their own combination methods, which is what makes the mortise and tenon process unique.

Song Weidong introduced that it only takes 8 minutes to assemble a chair with a finished mortise and tenon joint, but the whole production process takes a long time. The wood has to withstand two years of wind and sun before it can enter the processing process, and the lacquer and sanding process alone has to be repeated 20 times, which takes a month.

"Good Ming-style furniture must meet the aesthetic requirements of users." Song Weidong said. Over the years, he has visited many museums and constantly improved his aesthetic ability. He is not satisfied with copying the works of the ancients, but constantly innovating. In terms of color, he experimented with color-block design, etc., to make the furniture more fashionable. In terms of practicality, he improved the seat depth, back height and fit of the chair in line with the principle of ergonomics, so that it can better adapt to the living habits of modern people.

In Song Weidong's factory, many of the people who do the work are local masters who have studied with him for many years, and the factory has played a leading role in absorbing local employment and helping villagers increase their income. In 2017, Song Weidong was awarded the "Three Belts" expert of local talents in Jiangsu Province. In 2023, the Sufu Mahogany Craft Factory he founded was also awarded the "Wuzhong District High-skilled Talent Training Contribution Award".

As an inheritor of intangible cultural heritage, Song Weidong spared no effort to promote Ming-style furniture. In 2021, he was hired by the School of Industrial Design of Suzhou Vocational and Technical College of Arts and Crafts to provide technical guidance to students on a regular basis.

Zhang Xiaolian, the inheritor of lacquer art in Zhuxi County, Hubei

——Ingenuity is unique, lacquer color streamer

As soon as the sky was bright, Zhang Changquan, a villager of Shibanhe Village, Zhuxi County, Shiyan City, Hubei Province, carried a bamboo basket on his back and plunged into the lacquer forest. I saw him use his hands and feet together, climbed up the trunk of the tree, took out the lacquer knife, cut a crescent-shaped inlet in the bark, and pierced the lacquer cocoon under the mouth, allowing the milky white lacquer to flow into it slowly.

"The price of raw lacquer is more than 300 yuan per catty, and the cutting technique is also very particular. Zhang Changquan said that in recent years, driven by Zhang Xiaolian, the fourth-generation inheritor of the intangible cultural heritage of lacquer art in Zhuxi County, they have innovated raw lacquer harvesting techniques and tools, and the efficiency of lacquer cutting has been continuously improved. He goes up the mountain to cut lacquer from June to September every year, and works in the lacquerware workshop the rest of the time, with an annual income of 60,000 yuan, his life is getting better and better, and his family even buys a car.

How much do you know about these rural skills? Get up close to the famous craftsmen of the countryside

Zhang Xiaolian is introducing lacquerware. Photo courtesy of the interviewee

Zhuxi County has a long history of planting and producing lacquer. Since the mid-to-late 80s of the last century, affected by the substitution of chemical coatings on the market, the development of Zhuxi's lacquer industry has stagnated, and many lacquer craftsmen have changed their careers. Seeing that the villagers guarded the good mountains and rivers but could not get rich, Zhang Xiaolian, who worked in Shenzhen, felt very uncomfortable, and in 2008 she decided to resign and return to her hometown to start a business.

"Raw lacquer has the characteristics of acid resistance, high temperature resistance, oil resistance, etc., and is a high-quality coating for the production of furniture, which has better performance than general chemical paint and is more environmentally friendly, but the lacquer tree has a long growth cycle and a low yield." Zhang Xiaolian, 44 years old this year, told reporters that her ancestors were lacquer craftsmen for several generations, and she has been thinking about how to improve industrial efficiency and make raw lacquer truly become a "golden paint" to help farmers increase income.

After Zhang Xiaolian returned to her hometown, she searched for old lacquer craftsmen everywhere, and on the basis of summarizing many years of production experience, she improved the tools such as the foot piers of the lacquer craftsmen climbing trees and the lacquer knives used to cut lacquer, and successively led the villagers to develop four lacquer industry cooperatives. In 2020, Zhang Xiaolian opened a lacquerware workshop at the Shibanhe Tourist Service Center in Zhuxi County, engaged in mortise and tenon lacquerware furniture customization.

In the lacquerware workshop, Zhang Xiaolian is engrossed in painting a bowl, and under the constant rubbing of her index finger wrapped in sandpaper, the beautiful pattern composed of the cross-section of the lacquer layer and the gold leaf is gradually revealed, which is quite ingenious. "We innovate lacquer art decoration techniques, use raw lacquer harvested in different seasons for different lacquer production processes and scenes, control temperature and humidity, and make lacquerware with bright colors and lacquer streamers, which are well received by the market." Zhang Xiaolian introduced.

In order to make the industry bigger and stronger, it is necessary to further extend the industrial chain and increase added value. Zhang Xiaolian has joined forces with Zhuxi County Lacquer Museum and other institutions and business entities to jointly broaden the business scope of the lacquer industry, and has formed cultural and tourism projects such as lacquer production cultural and creative experience, rural sojourn, and lacquer art training. Today, the tourist service center has achieved annual sales of more than 3 million yuan, driving the average annual income of 30 surrounding farmers to increase by 5,000 yuan.

"We will continue to inherit and carry forward the Zhuxi lacquer art culture, and strive to build a rural cultural tourism theme area." Zhang Xiaolian said.

Quick comment: Rural craftsmen empower the comprehensive revitalization of the countryside

(Author: Chang Qin)

According to incomplete statistics, there are currently more than 130,000 rural craftsmen in the country, more than 2.3 million people have been directly trained, and more than 4.6 million farmers have been employed and increased.

It is an important mission of rural craftsmen to inherit excellent local culture, traditional skills and craftsman spirit. Through the establishment of rural craftsman workstations, famous teacher studios, etc., to carry out the inheritance of masters and apprentices, cultivate traditional craft professionals, and effectively inherit, protect and carry forward the excellent local culture, skills and craftsman spirit.

Improving the level of skills, enhancing innovation ability, and enhancing brand value are important goals for cultivating rural craftsmen. Through study and training, optimization of creation, marketing, etc., promote the creative transformation and innovative development of traditional skills and skills, and improve the visibility, reputation and influence of rural craftsmen.

Serving farmers, serving the countryside and serving the society is an important responsibility of rural craftsmen. Support rural craftsmen to lead the establishment of characteristic industries, establish and improve the mechanism of linking agriculture with agriculture, etc., promote the development of rural characteristic industries, drive the masses to steadily increase income, and provide strong support for the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas.

Talent revitalization is the basic support for the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas. According to the plan, during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, 100 rural master craftsmen and 1,000 famous rural craftsmen will be cultivated nationwide. All regions and departments should take the cultivation of rural craftsmen as an important part of the revitalization of rural talents, clarify the cultivation mechanism and incentive measures of rural craftsmen, conform to the growth law of local talents, cultivate a team of rural high-skilled talents, and provide talent guarantee for the development of rural characteristic industries and the promotion of farmers' employment and entrepreneurship.

How much do you know about these rural skills? Get up close to the famous craftsmen of the countryside

Source: People's Daily 2024.10.16 Page 6

People's Daily reporters Shao Yuzi, Yin Xiaoyu, Fan Haotian

Editor: Zheng Jianlong

Source: People's Daily's WeChat public account