Guo Chengyi
Mastery, Signature Works & Repertoire
A man of Han ethnicity, he was born in 1945 in Nantong, Jiangsu. He is a national representative bearer of Kite Making Craftsmanship (Nantong Banya Kites), a first-batch national intangible cultural heritage project, and a Master of Arts and Crafts of Jiangsu Province. Guo Chengyi's father, Guo Wenhe, was the founder of the Guo family kite tradition in Nantong. Learning the craft from his father, Guo Chengyi has practiced it for more than forty years, designing and producing numerous Banya kite works as well as kites in traditional forms. Banya kites are generally fitted with whistles (shaokou), which emit rhythmic sounds when the kites are flown aloft. The painted patterns on the kite faces are finely executed and set off the whistles to mutually enhancing effect, creating a distinctive aesthetic quality and an artistic form unique among Chinese kites. He has published several articles on Banya kites; his representative works include Door Gods (Menshen) and Banya Kites (Banya Fengzheng). At present, Guo Chengyi is engaged by the Nantong Kite Museum, where he continues to research and produce Banya kites and actively passes his skills on to his apprentices.
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。