Yao Maolu
Lineage & School of Heritage
The xiao and di flutes of every kind produced by Yao Maolu have won warm acclaim from a great many performers. He invented the chibaxiao, a shakuhachi-style xiao flute, and the sunxiao, and improved such instruments as the two-section di flute and the Yuping bamboo-root xiao. The chibaxiao has been collected by the Guizhou Provincial Federation of Literary and Art Circles and by the Musical Instrument Museum of San Francisco in the United States.
Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire
Male, of the Dong ethnic group, born in 1946, a native of Yuping, Guizhou. National representative bearer of Yuping Xiaodi Making Craftsmanship, a first-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. In 1961 Yao Maolu entered the Yuping County Xiao-Di Flute Factory, where he studied flute-making techniques and worked on letter engraving, carving, and pitch tuning. In 1972 he moved to the flute-making workshop to conduct research. In 1982 he was sent to Suzhou to study the making of two-section xiao and di flutes; after completing his studies he returned to the factory and took dedicated charge of reform and innovation in flute production. In 1988 he became deputy director of the Yuping Xiao-Di Flute Factory, overseeing business and production, and in 1997 he served as director of the factory and secretary of the Party branch of the factory. He actively recruited and trained flute-making personnel. Under the impetus of the flute factory, the number of people employed in flute making across the county grew to about two hundred, and annual output reached more than five hundred thousand flutes. In 2006 he was named one of the "Ten Great Masters of Folk Craft of Guizhou Province."
References & Archival Sources
Representative Items of This Bearer
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。