Clay Sculpture
01 · Historical Records
Huaiyang mud dogs, also called "ling gou" (陵狗) or "spirit dogs" (灵狗), are the collective name for Huaiyang clay toys. They originated in Huaiyang District, Zhoukou City, Henan Province, and are distributed across more than a dozen villages in Chengguan Hui Town and in Bailou and Dalian Townships east and northeast of the Taihao Mausoleum, with a history of several thousand years.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Huaiyang was anciently called Wanqiu and Chen; it is the site of Taihao's settlement and one of the important birthplaces of the Chinese nation. The Taihao Mausoleum temple fair is historically known as the "Second-Month Fair" and has a long history. According to the Chenzhou Prefecture Gazetteer, "there was already a shrine before the Han dynasty"; on the second day of the second lunar month, residents go to the Taihao Mausoleum to offer incense and sacrificial animals, a practice that does not cease until the third day of the third lunar month. As important ritual offerings at the Taihao Mausoleum temple fair, Huaiyang mud dogs have been transmitted to the present through ancient religious sacrifices and folk activities, carrying the primordial ancestors' beliefs in fertility worship and totem worship. Huaiyang mud dogs have rich subject matter, centered on dogs and encompassing birds, beasts, insects, fish, and several hundred kinds of animals; their forms are plain and vigorous, visionary and mysterious. They come in four types — primordial, interpenetrating, spirit, and modern — with abstract and distorted varieties such as the nine-headed bird, human-headed dog, human-faced fish, monkey-headed swallow, unicorn, and cat pulling a monkey. The main production process for Huaiyang mud dogs is clay selection, pinching and shaping, air-drying, boiling and dyeing, and color painting. The color-painting tool is a sorghum stalk, called a "rod brush" or "stiff brush"; first white is used to draw the basic outline (form and color features), then red, yellow, green, and pink are applied in dotted and linear patterns. The forms of Huaiyang mud dogs are plain and grotesque, with singular conceptions and color painting on a black ground, displaying the artistic characteristics of mysterious abstraction, exaggeration, and primitiveness. Representative works include "Load-Carrying Turtledove," "Nine-Headed Bird," "Human-Headed Dog," "Ancestral Monkey," "Beasts Mating," and "Totem Pillar." They interweave and merge with the ancient ancestor-worship customs of the Taihao Mausoleum temple fair in Huaiyang, serving to remember the ancestors and honor the merit of the First Ancestor in multiplying humankind; they are vivid testimony to the spiritual pursuits of the people of Huaiyang and possess artistic, social, and cultural value.
Four formal types
Four types — primordial, interpenetrating, spirit and modern — cover hundreds of birds and beasts; famous pieces include the nine-headed bird and human-headed dog.
Sorghum-stalk brushes on a black ground
The painting tool is a sorghum stalk used to sketch the outline in white before dotted and linear patterns are added in red, yellow, green and pink.
The nine-headed bird and human-faced fish
Abstracted creatures such as the nine-headed bird, human-headed dog, human-faced fish and monkey-pulling-cat embody early fertility and totem beliefs.
The second-month temple fair
Chen, the ancient capital of the legendary Taihao, holds the great spring fair where the clay figures serve as offerings commemorating the ancestral founder.
Xu Shuzhang and five hundred forms
Born in 1951, Xu Shuzhang learned from his grandparents at five and has recovered more than five hundred traditional forms and modelling methods.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The mud dogs, also called "ling gou" or "spirit dogs," are distributed across more than a dozen villages in Chengguan Hui Town and in Bailou and Dalian Townships east and northeast of the Taihao Mausoleum, transmitted mainly through social transmission and oral and physical instruction from masters to apprentices. The Taihao Mausoleum temple fair is historically known as the "Second-Month Fair"; according to the Chenzhou Prefecture Gazetteer, "there was already a shrine before the Han dynasty," and on the second day of the second lunar month residents go to the Taihao Mausoleum to offer incense and sacrificial animals, ceasing only on the third day of the third lunar month, so the mud dogs have spread along with the fair as its important ritual offerings. Artists use "rod brushes" or "stiff brushes" made from sorghum stalks, first outlining the basic form in white, then applying red, yellow, green, and pink in dotted and linear painted patterns.
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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Huaiyang mud dogs are transmitted mainly through social transmission and master-to-apprentice instruction, passed down from generation to generation by oral teaching and physical demonstration. They highlight and reinforce ideas of fertility worship, animal worship, and ancestor worship deep in human consciousness, providing vivid case studies for historical and anthropological research. Xu Shuzhang (as recorded in the official inheritor archive): Male, Han ethnicity, born in July 1951, from Huaiyang County, Henan Province. He began pinching mud dogs with his grandparents' generation at the age of five and fully mastered the craft at twelve or thirteen. Repeatedly studying the samples and molds left by his forebears and visiting folklorists in Beijing and Zhengzhou many times, with a persistent spirit of dedication to folk art, he excavated and mastered more than five hundred traditional mud-dog styles and pinching methods. The strange birds and beasts he shapes have singular and unusual conceptions and plain, mysterious forms, always maintaining the traditional styles and flavor of Huaiyang mud dogs. He is a representative inheritor of Clay Sculpture (Huaiyang Mud Dogs), a national-level intangible cultural heritage project of the fifth batch. While engaged in practice, he also emphasizes artistic transmission, continually training newcomers; many of his disciples have become outstanding figures among clay-sculpture artists.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Yu Xianglian 01-0108
- Wang Nanxian 01-0109
- Hu Shen 01-0110
- Wang Xuefeng 01-0111
- Wu Yucheng 03-1251
- Wu Guangrang 03-1252
- Xu Xingguo 03-1253
- Yang Qihe 03-1254
- Nie Xiwei 04-1791
- Shuangyan 05-2622
- Zhu Wenqian 05-2623
- Xu Shuzhang 05-2624
- Wu Weiqing 05-2625
- Wang Dengshu 05-2626
- Hu Xinming 05-2627
- Yang Jianian 05-2628
- Liu Chengyin
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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