Wu Weiqing

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Born into a family of clay sculptors, he learned the craft from his father from childhood and has a thorough command of the techniques and methods of Dawu clay sculpture. Within the regional tradition and school record of Clay Sculpture in Chaoan, Guangdong: The imagery of the works falls into five major categories. The first is opera figures, specifically the traditional local role types wenshen, wujing, chenjing, dafupi and wencun; the second is opera masks, children's heads, puppet heads and lantern heads; the third is portraits of real people; the fourth is images of gods and Buddhas; the fifth is children's toys, also called 'zajin' (a miscellaneous assortment), such as animals, chubby babies and carp boys. Dawu clay sculpture vividly displays the local folk customs and historical-cultural conditions and is an important object of study for the local culture of Guangdong. Dawu village in Fuyang town, Chao'an County, Chaozhou City, Guangdong Province, is known together with Yangliuqing in Tianjin and Huishan in Wuxi, Jiangsu, as one of the 'three great hometowns of clay sculpture'. The history of Fuyang clay sculpture can be traced back to the first year of the Jiaxi era of Emperor Lizong of the Southern Song (1237), more than 770 years ago. From the middle of the Qing dynasty to the early years of the Republic of China was the heyday of Dawu clay sculpture: clay-sculpture workshops were spread throughout the village, and more than a hundred clay-sculpture artisans emerged, represented by Wu Panqiang.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, Han ethnicity, born in April 1956 in Chaozhou, Guangdong Province. Over more than forty years in the craft he has consistently devoted himself to research on traditional forms, pigments and materials. He excels in making the traditional pigments of Dawu clay sculpture; building on the traditional colours transmitted through generations, he has studied intensively and created a pigment formula that does not fade or crack over time, and by using traditional painting methods he enables his works to retain their colour effects over the long term. For many years he has worked to collect, collate and study materials on Dawu clay sculpture, and has actively promoted it, trained personnel and transmitted the craft, bringing up a group of successors. Within the documented technical tradition of Clay Sculpture in Chaoan, Guangdong: The production process of Dawu clay sculpture divides into five stages: digging the clay, refining the clay, pinching the form, firing the body, and painting. The principal technical means are carving, modeling, pinching, appliquéing, incising, stamping and coloring, with the appliqué, stamping and coloring techniques closely integrated; this gives the craft its outstanding local artistic character and distinguishes it from other folk clay sculptures and from sculpture in general. The subjects of Dawu clay sculpture are drawn either from the plots of Chaozhou opera, from folk legends or chapter-novel stories, or directly from everyday life. However, this precious folk art has never developed into an industry, and under the impact of the market-economy tide its room for survival has grown ever smaller. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Digging, refining, pinching, firing and painting": The five stages of Dawu clay work, in which carving, pinching, appliqué, stamping and painting combine into a distinctive local manner. "Flattening clay into garments": The core appliqué technique of Dawu work, in which clay is pressed into sheets and folded into drapery; Wu Guangrang excels at it. "Opera figures, masks, portraits, deities and toys": Five classes of image: opera figures, masks and puppet heads, portrait figures, religious statues, and children's toys known as zanjin. "Wu Panqiang and the Fuyang heyday": Dawu village ranks with Yangliuqing and Huishan; its craft traces to 1237, and its heyday from the mid-Qing to the early Republic saw over a hundred artists.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

National representative bearer of Clay Sculpture (Dawu Clay Sculpture), a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. Several of his works have won national and provincial awards and have been collected by institutions including the National Art Museum of China; he is highly representative and influential within the field.

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 Weiqing · National Representative Bearer Archive