Lantern Art
01 · Historical Records
Chaozhou festival lanterns are transmitted across the broad area under the jurisdiction of Chaozhou City, Guangdong Province. Festival lanterns are indispensable to local folk activities such as the Lantern Festival and parade-and-parish-festival processions, and the two major categories of screen lanterns and hanging lanterns took shape in such settings: screen lanterns mainly depict opera and stories of historical figures, while hanging lanterns are mostly used for year-round decoration at the fronts of halls and doorways.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Chaozhou festival lanterns are transmitted across the broad area under the jurisdiction of Chaozhou City, Guangdong Province; with a long and deep-rooted history, they are a treasure of China's folk art treasury. The screen lantern is a comprehensive sculptural light screen combining colored binding, painting, embroidery, clay sculpture, and cutting and engraving. Its principal subjects are opera and stories of historical figures, accompanied by pavilions and towers, landscapes and gardens, and animal images, all made into screen-by-screen scenes and then fitted with lighting for effect; one scene per screen, each exquisitely beautiful. Among Chaozhou folk crafts it ranks as a product of the highest quality. Hanging lanterns use frames of rattan, bamboo, wood, and metal strips, covered with silk paper, silk and damask, or glass; poetic and pictorial designs are then painted in color on the surface, and ornaments such as tassels, mother-of-pearl inlay, bead strings, and brass sheets are inset as the form requires, presenting a classical and elegant style. The Chaozhou festival lantern craft is intricate; the making process generally includes conception, binding the armature, mounting and backing, decoration, and assembly, with different varieties differing somewhat in materials and process. Chaozhou festival lanterns have a distinctive style and strong local character; as an important component of festival and sacrificial activities, they occupy a position in Chaozhou culture that cannot be ignored. With the intensification of social change, the development of Chaozhou festival lanterns faces many problems. At present, traditional folk customs in the Chaozhou area are gradually fading, leading to a steady decrease in platforms for displaying festival lanterns; old lantern artists are advanced in years, and young people are unwilling to inherit the traditional craft, leaving lantern making in a situation where the old are passing and the young are not coming; and the use of Chaozhou festival lanterns is strongly seasonal, so practitioners cannot make it their main occupation, causing research, development, and innovation of lanterns to lag behind.
Screen lanterns with opera scenes
The screen lantern combines coloured tying, painting, embroidery, clay modelling and cutting to depict operatic and historical scenes.
Rattan frames and inlaid ornament
Hanging lanterns use rattan, bamboo, wood and metal bands, covered with silk paper, gauze or glass and inlaid with tassels, shell, beads and brass.
Design, framing, mounting, trimming, assembly
The craft proceeds through design, frame tying, mounting, trimming and assembly, the stages varying with the type of lantern.
Liu Yaosheng's carp lantern
Born in 1960, Liu Yaosheng is known for carp lanterns and for using electric devices to make moving lanterns.
Lin Hanbin's large figure screens
With over fifty years in the craft, Lin Hanbin specialised in large figure screens with individualised opera make-up.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Chaozhou festival lanterns fall broadly into two major types: the freestanding screen lantern of colored binding, and the painted hanging lantern.
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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
All these factors have plunged Chaozhou festival lanterns into endangered difficulty, and they urgently await rescue. Lin Hanbin (recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): He has been engaged in lantern design and making for more than fifty years, with rich experience; he is especially skilled at designing and making large screen lanterns of human figures, with attention to the individualization of characters' facial makeup. He is adept at setting off lanterns with pavilions, towers, flowers, plants, and trees, making them richer and more lifelike. He attaches great importance to collecting precious physical materials concerning Chaozhou festival lanterns - historical photographs, manuscripts, facial makeup designs, and the like - has organized and compiled a body of valuable documentation, and works hard to teach apprentices and pass on the craft, cultivating successors. Male, Han ethnicity, born in February 1930, died in June 2009, from Chaozhou City, Guangdong Province. Representative inheritor of Lanterns (Chaozhou Festival Lanterns), a third national-level intangible cultural heritage project. His works have participated in various exhibitions at home and abroad and have won prizes. Liu Yaosheng (recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in November 1960, from Chaozhou City, Guangdong Province. After graduating from middle school in 1978, he learned the craft from his father and took up lantern creation; that same year he entered the Chaozhou Special Arts and Crafts Factory, where he worked on lantern creation and guidance. He is especially skilled at making carp lanterns. The festival lanterns he makes are finely crafted, with well-balanced density and spacing and rational composition; the themes are mainly opera stories, and the figures are vivid and true to life. He uses electric tools to make various movable lanterns, making the lanterns more vivid to view. He attaches importance to collecting and organizing materials on the traditional Chaozhou festival lantern craft and has been engaged as a lecturer by several schools, teaching students about lanterns. Representative inheritor of Lanterns (Chaozhou Festival Lanterns), a fifth national-level intangible cultural heritage project.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Li Xiangman 01-0114
- Chen Weiyan 01-0115
- Li Zhuqin 01-0116
- Cai Binghan 01-0117
- Yang Zenggui 01-0118
- Zhang Jinpei 03-1260
- He Weifu 03-1261
- Chen Baihua 03-1262
- Deng Hui 03-1263
- Lin Hanbin 03-1264
- Yang Yurong 04-1793
- Ma Yuanliang 05-2631
- Wang Xiaowen 05-2632
- Wang Rulan 05-2633
- Hu Jinlong 05-2634
- Lin Shunkui 05-2635
- Xu Qianshen 05-2636
- Zhang Juntao 05-2637
- Zhang Shuqi 05-2638
- Liu Yaosheng 05-2639
- Li Banghua
- Chen Dizhen
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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