Li Xiangman
Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire
A man of Han ethnicity, he was born in 1944 in Xianju County, Zhejiang. In 1983, Li Xiangman learned from a local man then over eighty years old that the ancient town of Potan had once had a type of lantern of distinctive form, finely made and entirely without a framework, which the local people called the Tang lantern (Tangdeng), as it originated in the Tang dynasty. In 1984, Li Xiangman began the rescue and recovery of the Tang lantern and learned the techniques of making it. Through more than twenty years of effort, he brought the Tang lantern, which had been lost for over fifty years, back into renewed splendor. The craft of the Tang lantern is unique: the completion of a single needle-pricked boneless lantern (zhenci wugu deng) requires thirteen stages of work. The lantern contains no frame at all; it is assembled entirely from sheets of paper pricked with decorative patterns, giving it an elegant form of classical simplicity.
Honors & Recognition
He is a national representative bearer of Lantern Art (Xianju flower lanterns), a first-batch national intangible cultural heritage project.
References & Archival Sources
Representative Items of This Bearer
- Lantern Art Ⅶ-50
- Lantern Art Ⅶ-50
- Lantern Art Ⅶ-50
- Lantern Art Ⅶ-50
- Lantern Art Ⅶ-50
- Lantern Art Ⅶ-50
- Lantern Art Ⅶ-50
- Lantern Art Ⅶ-50
- Lantern Art Ⅶ-50
- Lantern Art Ⅶ-50
- Lantern Art Ⅶ-50
- Lantern Art Ⅶ-50
- Lantern Art Ⅶ-50
- Lantern Art Ⅶ-50
- Lantern Art Ⅶ-50
- Lantern Art Ⅶ-50
Profile
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript. Compiled from official national representative bearer archival records, organized by topic and translated into English. 阅读中文版。