Xiang Desheng

01 · Lineage & Regional School

Xiang Desheng, Male, Han, from She, Anhui, is a sixth-batch national representative bearer of Huizhou Ink Making Craftsmanship (Ⅷ-73). The tradition is documented in She, Anhui. Within the regional tradition and school record of Huizhou Ink Making Craftsmanship in She, Anhui: Huimo is a unique flower among China's ink-making crafts; it has distinctive features, unique techniques, a great variety of schools and types, and rich scientific and technological content, and occupies an important place in the history of Chinese ink-making. According to extant historical records, the production of Huimo (Anhui ink) can be traced back to the late Tang dynasty, and it reached its zenith through the Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. Among the four great ink-making masters of the Qing dynasty, two—Wang Jinsheng and Hu Kaiwen—hailed from Jixi County, and Hu Guobin, the renowned ink-mold woodcarving artisan of the late Qing and early Republican era, was also a native of Shangzhuang in Jixi County. They were representative bearers of the Huimo ink-making craft during the Qing and Republican periods, and their descendants continue to this day to carry forward the essence of the Huimo craft in the local area.

02 · Mastery & Signature Works

The bearer record for Xiang Desheng is anchored in the documented technical standards of Huizhou Ink Making Craftsmanship in She, Anhui. Within the documented technical tradition of Huizhou Ink Making Craftsmanship in She, Anhui: The invention of ink was a major contribution of our ancestors to Chinese culture and indeed to world civilization. Fine Huimo ink made with traditional craftsmanship has many merits: some is 'as hard as jade, with grain like rhinoceros horn, able to write dozens of scrolls without consuming a fraction of an inch'; some is 'fragrant to the very marrow, its scent undiminished even when ground to the last'; some is 'made from pine soot, with chosen fine glue, pounded with pestle force… leaving no residue in the inkstone'; some is 'hard as stone, grained like rhinoceros, black as lacquer, one spiral worth ten thousand coins'; some is 'so lustrous it can be used as a mirror, so sharp it can cut, its virtue comparable to jade, dense and unyielding. The carving workmanship and the ingenuity of its mounting are all perfectly beautiful.' The Huimo ink-making craft is complex; different schools have their own unique secret techniques that are not passed on to outsiders, and even within one school, different production processes are used for different ink-making raw materials. For instance, tung oil, hemp-seed oil, and raw lacquer each have their own distinctive methods of refining, smoke tapping, cooling, collection, and storage; the construction of the pine-soot kiln, the firing, the timing and quantity of pine-branch addition, the smoke collection, glue selection, glue boiling, ingredient mixing, and compounding each have their own secret formulas. Thus produced, Huimo ink is characterized as light to pick up, clean to grind, fragrant to smell, hard as jade, silent when ground, inky as lacquer in a single touch, and able to preserve its true color for millennia. Representative repertoire, works and technical entries recorded for the project include: "Burning and feeding the soot": Each school treats its raw soot differently, with separate methods for tung oil, sesame oil and raw lacquer, kept strictly within the workshop. "Boiling glue and blending": The ratio of glue to soot decides the weight of the ink; the criteria of lightness in the hand, clearness in grinding and fragrance all begin here. "Pounding the ink cake": Repeated pounding marries soot and glue; hardness like jade and silence in the inkstone depend on pounding it thoroughly. "Casting from carved moulds": The mould fixes the pattern and the elegance of the packaging; Hu Guobin of Shangzhuang was a noted carver whose craft still underpins Hui ink.

03 · Transmission & Safeguarding Status

In 2025, Xiang Desheng was announced in the sixth batch of national representative bearers for Huizhou Ink Making Craftsmanship, with She, Anhui as the declared area. Within the documented safeguarding record of Huizhou Ink Making Craftsmanship in She, Anhui: The project was inscribed in the national inventory in 2006 (batch 1), with She, Anhui as its declared area, and She County Laohukaiwenmoye Co., Ltd. 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. Xiangdesheng (She, Anhui) · China ICH Official Project Archive
2. Xiangdesheng · China ICH Official Archive