Duan Sixing

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Born into a Jianchuan wood-carving family, he studied under his father, the Chinese Arts and Crafts Master Duan Guoliang. Within the regional tradition and school record of Wood Carving in Jianchuan, Yunnan: The centers of Jianchuan wood carving are places such as Jinhua Town, Shaxi Town, and Diannan Town in Jianchuan County. There are many carpenter families in Bai villages, and the craft has spread to the Dali, Eryuan, and Heqing area. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, woodware factories and wood carving factories were established in the county, forming a production pattern of enterprises leading household workshops, with products sold to Tibet, Sichuan, Guizhou, and other provinces and regions. The Qing dynasty scholar Zhang Hong in "Diannan xinyu" stated that "throughout the more than seventy counties of Yunnan and the provinces of Sichuan, Guizhou, and Guangxi neighboring Yunnan, those skilled with rule, square, axe, and chisel are, wherever you go, people of Jian[chuan]," which shows that Jianchuan carpenters have long traveled elsewhere to work; lattice doors and window flower panels for temples, ancestral halls, and dwellings are their most common forms of work. The Qing dynasty scholar Zhang Hong recorded in his "Diannan xinyu": "Throughout the more than seventy counties of Yunnan and the provinces of Sichuan, Guizhou, and Guangxi neighboring Yunnan, those skilled with rule, square, axe, and chisel are, wherever you go, people of Jian[chuan].

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, Bai ethnicity, born in August 1973 in Jianchuan County, Yunnan Province. He has mastered the through-carving technique peculiar to Jianchuan wood carving and integrates stone-carving methods with the various wood-carving techniques, forming an artistic character of his own and exerting considerable influence within the trade. His work adheres to the traditional manner, with the entire process completed by hand, and his pieces retain intact the mortise-and-tenon structural character of Jianchuan wood carving, achieving an exquisite, translucent artistic effect. He has trained eight apprentices; he established the Jianchuan County Wood Carving Skills Transmission Institute, where more than four hundred trainees have been taught, including more than sixty people with disabilities. Within the documented technical tradition of Wood Carving in Jianchuan, Yunnan: Jianchuan wood carving has a history of more than one thousand years and has a strong local ethnic character. According to historical records, in the Tang dynasty Jianchuan carpenters undertook the making of the wooden carved components of the Wuhua Tower of the Nanzhao kingdom; in the Song dynasty, Jianchuan wood carving artists once went to the capital to present their art, causing a sensation there. " This shows how numerous Jianchuan wood carvers were at the time and how widespread the craft had become. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Jianchuan wood carving developed greatly. The Great Hall of the People and the Cultural Palace for Nationalities in the capital are both decorated with Jianchuan wood carving. Jianchuan wood carving fully displays the Bai people's high artistic level and cultural refinement, blending their original bold and unrestrained style with the delicacy and exquisiteness of Jiangnan wood carving into one, and becoming one of the important schools of wood carving in China. The cultural environment in which Jianchuan wood carving survives is profoundly traditional: there is not only the "Lu Ban Festival for the Founder Master Carpenters" on the eighth day of the eighth lunar month, which is still widely observed, but also the largest number of carpenter stories, carpenter ballads, and narrative poems in the country, which circulate widely and are of great value for research on the history of the Bai people and the development of crafts. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Woodcarving for the Nanzhao Wuhua Tower": Tang records show Jianchuan carpenters made the carved members of the Nanzhao Wuhua Tower; in the Song a Jianchuan carver performed in the capital to great acclaim. "The eighth-of-eighth Luban festival": The carpenter's festival for the patron Luban on the eighth day of the eighth month still flourishes, accompanied by a rich body of carpenters' tales and songs. "Lattice doors and stone-inlaid furniture": The craft now covers six categories and over 260 designs, from stone-inlaid furniture and screens to lattice doors, architectural fitting-out and small souvenirs. "Pierced openwork and mortise-and-tenon joinery": The national inheritor Duan Sixing commands the pierced openwork speciality and keeps the mortise-and-tenon structure intact by hand-finishing at every stage.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

National representative bearer of Wood Carving (Jianchuan Wood Carving), a fifth-batch national intangible cultural heritage project. His works have repeatedly won national and provincial awards, and he was named one of the fourth batch of outstanding rural talents by the Yunnan Provincial People's Government.

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. Duan Sixing · National Representative Bearer Archive