Yang Jianian

01 · Lineage & Regional School

After graduating from senior secondary school in 1982 he learned the craft from his father, and his artistic travels have taken him throughout the northwest. Since 2000, using a secret family formula, he has restored and reproduced more than three hundred national-level painted sculpture artefacts (sets) in several places, and over three years completed the large-scale Daoist cultural sculpture and painted decoration project in the Hunyuan Pavilion on Kongtong Mountain. He has collected and collated a large quantity of precious family-transmitted materials and organised the filming of the television documentary Clay Affection: The Yang Family Painted Sculpture. Within the regional tradition and school record of Clay Sculpture in Longde, Ningxia: Yang family clay sculpture takes Yangpo Village, Wenbao Township, Longde County, Ningxia, as its ancestral home; the family is known as a 'sculpture family'. It began in the twelfth year of the Daoguang reign of the Qing dynasty (1832); the founder sought instruction from many masters and integrated clay sculpture, painting, woodcut, seal carving, papercutting, and pyrography. The fourth generation, Yang Qihhe, and the fifth generation, Yang Jianian, inherited the learning. The works employ round carving, relief, and openwork; they circulate through the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia region and are used mostly in temples and shrines and in folk activities. Longde folk sculpture originated in the Tang and Song periods and matured in the Ming and Qing dynasties; as early as the Shaoxing reign of the Song dynasty, Longde sculpture was already renowned in all quarters. The Yang Qihhe family of Yangpo Village, Wenbao Township, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, famous throughout the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia region and known as a 'sculpture family', is representative of Longde sculpture. Yang family clay sculpture originated in the twelfth year of the Daoguang reign of the Qing dynasty (1832); the founder sought instruction from many masters, absorbed and drew on the strengths of various folk arts, and integrated them, combining clay sculpture, painting, woodcut, seal carving, papercutting, and pyrography into a single whole and initially forming the basic artistic style of Yang clay sculpture.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, Han ethnicity, born in November 1964 in Longde County, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. In recent years he has undertaken intangible cultural heritage teaching at institutions including Ningxia Normal University and Ningxia Polytechnic. Within the documented technical tradition of Clay Sculpture in Longde, Ningxia: Longde County lies in the south of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, at the western foot of Mount Liupan. The production process of Yang family clay sculpture is fairly complex, with more than twenty process steps, including material mixing, clay curing, image forming, and color application; round carving, relief, openwork, and other methods are used in the course of the work. The finished pieces win by their refinement, with vivid colors and exaggerated forms, and they stand as the foremost representative of folk art in the Longde region. With the development of society, Yang family clay sculpture has begun to decline. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Archival Records of Process Steps": The production process of Yang family clay sculpture is fairly complex, with more than twenty process steps, including material mixing, clay curing, image forming, and color application; round carving, relief, openwork, and other methods are used in the course of the work.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

National representative bearer of Clay Sculpture (Yang Family Clay Sculpture), a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. Representative works include Li Bai Goes Down to Jiangnan, Wu Song Beats the Tiger, Horse Shehuo, The Foolish Old Man Removes the Mountains, Children Playing with Zodiac Animals, Chang'e Flies to the Moon and Zhang Fei; he has received numerous honours.

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. Yang Jianian · National Representative Bearer Archive