Xinhuikuiyi
01 · Historical Records
Over the two hundred or more years from the Qianlong reign to the end of the Guangxu reign of the Qing dynasty, the development of Xinhui palm-leaf art reached its peak. After the 1990s, under the impact of modern household appliances such as air conditioning, palm-leaf fans gradually withdrew from people's daily lives, Xinhui palm-leaf art declined day by day, related enterprises closed one after another, and many inheritors of the craft were forced to change trade.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Xinhui in Guangdong is a historic city of profound cultural foundations; it has been established as an administrative unit for more than eighteen hundred years. The area produces abundant Chinese fan palms and has long been known as the "home of the palm". Xinhui palm-leaf art has a long history: the planting of palm trees and the processing of palm-leaf products began as early as the Eastern Jin dynasty. After more than a thousand years of exploration, the people of Xinhui have fused weaving, embroidery, painting and printing into a single whole, bringing the processing of palm-leaf products to a state of consummate skill. At its height the area under palm cultivation in Xinhui reached 60,000 mu, and annual output of palm-leaf fans reached as much as 150 million; the products were exported to Europe, America and the countries of Southeast Asia. In 1952 the fire-painted fans made by the veteran painter Chen Wan were listed by the state as special handicrafts, and Xinhui palm-leaf art took this opportunity to recover, developing into ten major categories with more than a thousand designs, including patterned mats, flower baskets, seat cushions, toothpicks and tongmao hats. Guo Moruo once praised the palm-leaf fans produced in Xinhui with the verse "A world of cool, produced by hand; finer than a demon's workmanship, excelling nature's own skill; flying across the whole globe, overwhelming the western breeze", giving Xinhui palm-leaf art the highest praise. The inheritor of the Zhao family's fire-painted palm-leaf art gathered several veteran palm-leaf craftsmen and established the Huicheng Palm Township Traditional Craft Development Centre in Xinhui District to carry on workshop-style production of palm-leaf art, but output was very limited.
Fire-painted fans
A red-hot iron stylus burns landscape, flowers and calligraphy into the fan, depth set by the speed of the hand.
Bamboo-sheath fans and three-rib fire fans
Specialities created by the inheritor Liao Huilin, who learned fire painting from Zhao Wenda at sixteen.
Fan palm and a thousand varieties
The palm-rich district redeveloped after 1952 into ten categories and a thousand varieties from mats and baskets to hats and toothpicks.
Guo Moruo's poem on the fan
The poet Guo Moruo praised the Xinhui fan as a cool world made by hand, its craft surpassing nature.
The Zhao family's fire painting
When the trade collapsed in the 1930s and 1940s only the Zhao family kept fire-painted fans alive, later gathering old craftsmen into a workshop.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Xinhui palm-leaf art is centred on Huicheng in Xinhui District of Jiangmen City; the villages along the Tanjiang River such as Tianma, Huancheng and Shuangshui are the main areas of palm cultivation and processing, and the Huicheng Palm Township Traditional Craft Business Centre in Xinhui District is the protecting unit. In former times almost every household grew palms and every family wove fans; the fans were graded and sold after being cut, branded, painted and embroidered, and were shipped by water from Huicheng to Guangzhou, Hong Kong and overseas.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
In the 1930s and 1940s Xinhui palm-leaf art suffered a devastating blow: the bamboo-sheath palm-leaf art, famous far and wide, was lost, and the whole palm-leaf trade fell into steep decline; only the Zhao family still strove to keep the technique of fire-painted palm-leaf fans alive. At present the break in the transmission of Xinhui palm-leaf art has improved somewhat, but the outlook is still not optimistic; protection must be strengthened to ensure the orderly transmission of this traditional craft. Liao Huilin (recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in August 1956, a native of Jiangmen City, Guangdong Province. Master of Arts and Crafts of Guangdong Province. From the age of sixteen he studied the technique of pyrography on palm-leaf fans under the veteran craftsman Zhao Wenda, and has worked in the design and production of palm-leaf art ever since. He was formerly director of the Xinhui Palm-Leaf Craft Products Factory. Twenty years ago he raised funds himself to establish the Xinhui Palm Township Traditional Craft Development Centre, devoting himself to the development and transmission of palm-leaf art. He is a representative inheritor of Xinhui Palm-Leaf Art, an item of national-level intangible cultural heritage included in the third batch. The bamboo-sheath painted fans, three-rib pyrography fans and double-sided embroidered woven fans he has created have won awards such as the Hundred Flowers Award for Chinese Arts and Crafts, been designated as quality products at the provincial or ministerial level, or been collected by the Guangdong Folk Craft Museum.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Liao Huilin 03-1300
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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