Yan Changwu
Lineage & School of Heritage
He is the forty-fifth-generation inheritor of this craftsmanship. Although, with the continuous advance of science and technology, vacuum salt production has replaced handcrafted salt making, for historical and natural reasons the zhuotong wells of Zigong have been handed down for nearly a thousand years, and production there has never ceased.
Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire
A national representative bearer of Zigong Jingyanshenzuanjizhijiyi (the deep-drilling and extraction craftsmanship for well salt in Zigong), a first-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. At the age of twelve, Yan Changwu learned from his maternal uncle the deep-drilling and extraction craft of well salt in the zhuotong wells of Zigong, together with the complete production process; he is able to carry out as well the skills of the riggers, well-liners, stove masters and derrick haulers. As an inheritor of this craft, he worked tirelessly for nearly seventy years, transmitting not only the deep-drilling and extraction techniques of well salt but also the production methods of every tool used in the zhuotong wells. In 2006, more than thirty items he had made, including deep-drilling and extraction tools such as the windlass, the horn-shaped cart, the flat cart, drill bits, the derrick frame and the impact bar, were displayed on site at the Exhibition of Achievements in the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage in China, held in Beijing. He was once engaged by the Daying County Cultural Relics Management Office as an instructor in the transmission of this craft, actively passing on this precious handiwork to later generations.
Honors & Recognition
A man of Han ethnicity, he was born in 1928 and died in 2009, a native of Daying, Sichuan.
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。