Wu Chuwei

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Wu Chuwei, Male, Han, from Dongyang, Zhejiang, is a fourth-batch national representative bearer of Dongyang Wood Carving (Ⅶ-43). The tradition is documented in Dongyang, Zhejiang. Within the regional tradition and school record of Dongyang Wood Carving in Dongyang, Zhejiang: It is mainly distributed across the townships and towns of Dongyang, extending to neighboring counties and cities, and has spread into Jiangsu, Shanghai, Jiangxi, Anhui, Fujian, Guangdong, Hubei, Henan, Jilin, Sichuan, and Chongqing, as well as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao, reaching as far as Singapore, Thailand, Mongolia, Albania, and Canada. The Lu family tomb and the tomb of Shu Yuanyi — a jinshi (successful imperial examination candidate) and chancellor of the Yuanhe era of the Tang dynasty — were both robbed in the early 20th century, and finely carved funerary wooden figurines were unearthed from each, showing that already before the Taihe era of the Tang dynasty, Dongyang wood carving had developed to a certain degree. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, Dongyang wood carving was widely applied to the decoration of architecture and furniture, forming a complete set of techniques and a mature style. Still extant are Ming-Qing ancient buildings such as the 'Suyong Hall' of the Lu Residence, the 'Wuben Hall' of Baitan, and the 'Yijing Hall' of Mashangqiao, as well as furniture such as the 'Thousand-Labor Bed' (qiangong chuang) and the pieces of the 'Ten-Mile Dowry' (shili hongzhuang). The 'Renyi Factory' opened in Hangzhou in 1914 was the earliest manufacturer of Dongyang wood carving, which subsequently developed step by step toward Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, and other places. After the 1950s, factories for producing Dongyang wood carving were also established in various parts of China.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, Han ethnicity, born in March 1946 in Dongyang, Zhejiang Province. A senior arts and crafts artist and a Master of Chinese Arts and Crafts. In 1962 he joined the Dongyang Wood Carving Factory. In 1972 he became director and chief designer of the Yuyang Wood Carving Arts and Crafts Factory, and later founded the Dongyang Municipal Wood Carving Arts and Crafts Factory. In 1990 he pursued further studies at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts. His wood carving is highly skilled and stylistically distinctive, and his designs and executed works have won high praise from the profession. He created several hundred outstanding works. Among them, Mei Kai Er Du (Plum Blossoms Bloom Twice), Yan Yu Hong Chuan (Red Boat in Misty Rain), Chun Lian (Spring Love), Nezha Nao Hai (Nezha Stirs Up the Sea) and Cao Cao Zeng Pao (Cao Cao Bestows a Robe) were selected as state gifts, while Meng Li Shui Xiang (Water Village in a Dream), Hong Lou Shi Yun (Poetic Rhyme of the Red Mansion), Chun Jiang Hua Yue (Flowers and Moon on the Spring River) and Bai Hou Xi Chun (A Hundred Monkeys Sporting in Spring) won more than twenty gold and silver awards at exhibitions at various levels. Within the documented technical tradition of Dongyang Wood Carving in Dongyang, Zhejiang: Dongyang wood carving is named after its geographical association with Dongyang. Dongyang City lies in central Zhejiang, in a setting described as 'three mountains enclosing two basins, two basins holding two rivers'; it has much mountainous land and little arable land, and in former times droughts and floods alternated along the two rivers to the north and south, causing suffering to the people, who were forced to make a living by their crafts. Dongyang wood carving is one of the more outstanding of these crafts. According to the Kangxi New Gazetteer of Dongyang, during the Taihe era of the Tang dynasty the brothers Feng Su and Feng Ding of Fenggaolou Village, Dongyang, served successively as Minister of Civil Office and Minister of Works; of their residence it is said that 'the painted balustrades of the high tower dazzled the eye, and the corridors below stretched nearly half a li'. The surviving statues of Sudhana (Shancai Tongzi) and Guanyin Bodhisattva, carved in the second year of the Jianlong era of the Song dynasty (961), are of an elegant and dignified form, fully demonstrating the level and style of Dongyang wood carving at that time. At the beginning of the 20th century, Dongyang wood carving began to shift from folk architecture and furniture decoration to the production of crafts for export. Traditional Dongyang wood carving is ornamental carving, dominated by plane relief; its types include thin relief, shallow relief, deep relief, high relief, multi-layer stacked relief, openwork double-sided carving, saw-cut openwork, full-ground carving, colored-wood inlay carving, and round-log relief — rich in layering yet retaining the basic character of plane decoration. Its coloring is light and clear, with no dark lacquer applied, preserving the natural grain and color of the wood; of an elegant style, it is known as 'white wood carving' (baimu diao). Dongyang wood carving selects its materials strictly, mostly using basswood, white peach wood, camphor wood, and ginkgo wood. Its craft falls into two categories — freehand carving without a drawn design and carving after a drawn design — both emphasizing originality and 'painterliness', and both of high artistic value. In the past twenty years, people's lives have changed enormously; traditional wood carving is no longer used to decorate modern buildings, and Dongyang wood carving's consummate and exquisite manual skill, ingenious and lively conceptions, and rich traditional content have lost the environment on which they depended, gradually declining. Young people today find it hard to devote themselves wholeheartedly to traditional techniques, so there has emerged a phenomenon of practitioners with unrefined skills and widespread attrition. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Suyong Hall and the thousand-work bed": Ming and Qing halls such as Suyong and Yijing survive with the thousand-work bed and bridal sets of furniture. "White wood carving": Plane relief in many depths, left unpainted to show the natural grain, earned it the name white wood carving. "The Renyi factory": Opened in Hangzhou in 1914, Renyi was the earliest workshop, later extending to Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore. "Feng Wentu's thirteen techniques": Feng Wentu created half-round, self-shaped and bark carving and was first to codify thirteen Dongyang techniques.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

He is a national representative bearer of Dongyang Wood Carving, a fourth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. He has undertaken architectural decoration projects for the Beijing Academy of Forestry, the Shanghai International Convention Center, the Shanghai Municipal Government and Hangzhou Hu Qing Yu Tang, among others, and these have been very highly acclaimed.

04 · Associated Heritage Item Dossier

05 · Fellow National Bearers Lineage

National representative bearers recorded under the same item code, ordered from the first to the sixth batch. Batch order is not a teacher–student relationship.

06 · Archival Sources & Bibliography

1. Wu Chuwei · National Representative Bearer Archive