Chen Heyong

01 · Lineage & Regional School

He loved the traditional residential architecture of Minnan from childhood, and at the age of 16 became a disciple of his grandfather and father, comprehensively inheriting the entire craft process, including architectural plan and spatial design, large-scale timberwork, fine carving, porcelain-shard applique sculpture and the making of apotropaic objects, painting, polychrome decoration and gold leafing. Within the regional tradition and school record of Minnan Chuantong Residential Building Craftsmanship in Xiamenshihuli, Fujian: It is divided into major carpentry (damuzuo), minor carpentry (xiaomuzuo), masonry (niwazuo), painted decoration (caihua), and clay-modeling-and-cutting (duijianzuo) as the principal trades, with the major carpenter as the core. Minnan dwellings belong to a school of Chinese traditional dwellings; while completely expressing the ideas, group layouts, and structural forms of Chinese traditional architecture in both content and form, they also developed their own distinctive architectural rules, embodying rich historical and cultural meaning. The traditional craft of building southern-Fujian (Minnan) dwellings originated in the late Tang, matured by the Song and Yuan, reached its peak in the Ming and Qing, and rose to fame in the late Qing with successive fine works, flourishing for a time.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

Male, Han ethnicity, born in April 1961 in Xiamen, Fujian Province. He is a representative bearer of the fifth batch of national intangible cultural heritage projects in Minnan traditional residential building craftsmanship. He is a technician of Minnan traditional residential building construction. He later went to Shanxi, Anhui and Taiwan as well as Singapore to study and observe, forming his own distinctive mode of expression in Minnan traditional residential building craftsmanship. He emphasizes combining theory with practice and actively carries out exchange activities on Minnan traditional residential building craftsmanship, and he has established the Minnan Traditional Building Craftsmanship Training Centre in Huli District, Xiamen, to cultivate successors. Within the documented technical tradition of Minnan Chuantong Residential Building Craftsmanship in Xiamenshihuli, Fujian: The traditional craft of building southern-Fujian (Minnan) dwellings is a traditional architectural technique formed by the fusion of Central Plains culture, indigenous Minnan culture, and maritime culture; it is mainly transmitted in the Minnan-inhabited areas of Xiamen, Quanzhou, and Zhangzhou in Fujian Province, as well as in Taiwan Province and among the residences of Minnan-origin overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia. The Chen family's hereditary dwelling-building craft of Neicuo in Xiangan, Xiamen, is an important branch of the Minnan traditional building craft. The Minnan traditional dwellings of Xiamen are typified by the "imperial-palace style" (huanggong qi) palatial large-mansion (da cuo) residential type—grand in scale, elegant and graceful in form, ornate in decoration, bright in color, and exquisite and ingenious in detail; they are symmetrical about a central axis, relatively low and open in spatial layout, and adopt a column-and-tie (chuandou) frame structurally. The Minnan traditional building craft is rather exacting: before building a dwelling, a geomancer (dilishi) is invited to survey the site and, using a luopan compass, determine the orientation according to the Eight Trigrams. The depth and width of the house must accord with the "Earth Mother" cunbai measurement, and the height with the "Heavenly Father" cunbai measurement. Afterwards, the master carpenter designs the general plan and engraves on the gaoche (measuring rod) the secret marks for the beam-through, drip-eaves, dougong, and ridge height, and construction proceeds according to the gaoche measurements. Finally, masons, carpenters, and others complete the work cooperatively, placing an "apotropaic object" (yansheng wu) at the center of the ridge top—typically the Wind-Lion Lord, the Tile General, a censer, a phoenix, or a chicken. The plan layouts of the Minnan traditional building craft include the one-dragon form, the three-sided courtyard, the four-sided courtyard, the three-bay, the five-bay, the multi-protecting-dragon form, and the "towel alley" (shoujin liao) form; the roof framing uses a double-curved roof surface, with swallowtail ridges and flat ridges; it adopts a combined post-and-lintel and column-and-tie structural method; and the exterior walls take varied forms such as stone houses, red-brick houses, oyster-shell houses, and brick-stone combined houses. Through this traditional craft, we can perceive the high wisdom the ancients displayed in coordinating and mastering geographical environment, economic interests, and cultural tradition. The surviving Minnan traditional dwellings may be said to be witness to the blood-bonded connection between Fujian and Taiwan, and are moreover one of the spiritual bonds of homesick longing for Taiwanese compatriots and overseas Chinese returning to their ancestral roots. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "The five principal building trades": Building is divided into timber frame, joinery, plastering, painting and cut-paper-moulding trades, centred on the main timber craftsman. "Choosing the orientation by luogeng": A geomancer surveys the site and fixes the trigram orientation; depth and width follow one canon and height another. "Codes cut into the gaochi ruler": The master carpenter cuts codes for beam, eave, bracket and ridge heights into the ruler and builds to it. "Raising the apotropaic object on the ridge": At the ridge centre the builders set an apotropaic figure, commonly the Wind Lion, a tile general, a censer, a phoenix or a rooster.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

In 2018, Chen Heyong was announced in the fifth batch of national representative bearers for Minnan Chuantong Residential Building Craftsmanship, with Xiamenshihuli, Fujian as the declared area. Within the documented safeguarding record of Minnan Chuantong Residential Building Craftsmanship in Xiamenshihuli, Fujian: The project was inscribed in the national inventory in 2014 (batch 4), with Xiamenshihuli, Fujian as its declared area, and Xiamen Huli District Minnan Traditional Jianzhuyingzao Craft Transmission Center as its safeguarding unit. Since the project was inscribed in the national inventory, its declared area and safeguarding unit have carried out documentation, transmission and presentation within the national safeguarding framework. Together, the inventory record and the project archive form the public documentary basis for the bearer’s transmission practice.

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. Chen Heyong · National Representative Bearer Archive