Xiong Yinghua

01 · Lineage & Regional School

In 1971 he studied wood carving under Chen Xinwang, his wife's uncle, and from 1974 he devoted himself to wood carving at home while taking on and teaching apprentices. Within the regional tradition and school record of Wood Carving in Tongshan, Hubei: Its subjects include the traditional opera stories of the local Han opera and tea-picking opera, as well as folk literature such as novelized romances, myth and legend; there are themes depicting scenes of daily life, such as the fisherman, woodcutter, plowman and reader, landscapes, and love between men and women; and there are symbolic patterns rich in auspicious meaning. Tongshan wood carving has a long history; from the Wei and Jin dynasties through the Song and Yuan periods, with the introduction of Taoist and Buddhist culture, its works were predominantly religious.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, Han ethnicity, born in August 1951 in Tongshan County, Hubei Province. He has taken part in the restoration or carving of woodwork in more than twenty timber dwellings and ancestral halls, among them the Xiong family ancestral hall in Tongshan, the Cheng family old residence and the pseudo-classical houses on Jiugong Mountain. His work Yongquan Yue Li (The Spring Gushes and the Carp Leaps) was shown in the Hubei intangible cultural heritage exhibition China-Russia Bonds, Jingchu Style in Moscow, Russia, and his research, Tongshan Wood Carving, was included in the Hubei intangible cultural heritage series. He has long taught apprentices at the Tongshan wood-carving base and has trained more than sixty to date. Within the documented technical tradition of Wood Carving in Tongshan, Hubei: Tongshan wood carving is one of the schools of Chinese folk wood carving, circulating in Tongshan County in southeastern Hubei Province and the surrounding area. Tongshan County lies at the junction of Hunan, Hubei and Jiangxi provinces, anciently part of the land of the "Three Miao"; its territory is densely forested and produces many kinds of timber, providing abundant resources for wood carving. Tongshan wood carving's technical system is built on a carving method centered on relief together with techniques that exploit the wood's own grain and color; its compositions are full and bold, its layers rich and fine, its images realistic and lifelike, its workmanship meticulous, and its style fresh and elegant. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, Han opera and tea-picking opera drove the development of Tongshan wood carving: opera stories and characters began to appear as wood-carving subjects, deep relief and multi-layered openwork techniques emerged, and the carving skill matured steadily. The principal process steps of Tongshan wood carving are drafting the design, preparing the material, transferring the drawing, rough blocking out, fine carving, and sanding and waxing. The carving subjects are rich, drawing chiefly on traditional themes beloved by ordinary people, with a strong local flavor and regional character — "pictures full of drama, never tiring of the sight." Its works are grounded in practicality and suitability, rooted in the needs of ordinary people, and fall into three main categories: architectural decorative carving, furniture carving, and wood-carving ornaments and religious objects. In carving technique it borrows scattered-perspective composition, with flat relief as the mainstay, coordinated with line carving, incised carving, relief, openwork, openwork relief, round carving and double-sided openwork carving; it combines line and plane, retains flat areas appropriately, leaves small patches of ground, and stacks layers one by one for a lofty, layered effect, bringing out the grain and streaks of the wood. The forms are vivid and simply archaic, the cutting broad and forceful, the lines fluent, the layers rich and fine; near and distant views overlap without becoming muddled, and the theme stands out clearly. Tongshan wood carving reflects the level of productive development in different historical periods and mirrors the social relations and folk customs of the people of Tongshan; it is the accumulated deposit of the cultural ideas and aesthetic tastes of generations of Tongshan wood-carving artisans, records the local history, culture and ancient, simple folkways, and has considerable social and cultural value. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Archival Record of Process Steps": The principal process steps of Tongshan wood carving are drafting the design, preparing the material, transferring the drawing, rough blocking out, fine carving, and sanding and waxing.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

National representative bearer of Wood Carving (Tongshan Wood Carving), a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. In 1996 he founded the Xiong Family Wood Carving Factory in Jiugongshan Town, where he trains successors while concentrating on the carving technique of the Tongshan kanchu, the traditional display cupboard.

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. Xiong Yinghua · National Representative Bearer Archive