Architectural Painting
01 · Historical Records
The dizhang (ground coating) and oil-finishing craft is a traditional repair technique that took shape alongside official-style (guanshi) building construction. Qing-dynasty official construction divided the base treatment of timber members, oil finishing, and polychrome painting into separate trades: the painting-and-lacquer work (youqi zuo) and the polychrome work (caihua zuo). Craftsmen mixed tung oil, pig's blood, and brick ash to prepare dizhang materials and built them up in layers on the surface of timber members, forming a protective coating that both strengthened the members and kept out damp. In Northeast China, the repair of historic buildings developed, on this basis and in combination with local temple polychrome painting, methods suited to the cold climate.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The dizhang (oil-finishing) craft uses self-boiled tung-ash oil proportioned with pig's blood, adjusts working hours according to the sunlight, and insists on not working during the hottest (fu) days of summer. It also uses vermilion (yin zhu), which resists ultraviolet radiation, together with self-made tung-glaze oil, mixed and then brushed on, thereby ensuring the quality of maintenance and repair of ancient buildings. In the course of repairing the polychrome painting of historic buildings in Northeast China, the maintenance methods employed are more flexible. When restoring the official-style polychrome painting of the Shenyang Imperial Palace and the temple polychrome painting peculiar to the Northeast, artisans drew on the strengths of the three great official polychrome styles and made improvements in the materials, techniques, and other steps. Over a long period, historic buildings repaired with these techniques have remained in sound condition to this day. The dizhang process emphasizes building up in layers and drying in shade. The ash coats are pressed and polished coat by coat from coarse to fine, and finally a tung-glaze oil finish is applied, giving the timber surface a smooth, dense plane and providing a stable base for the subsequent polychrome painting. The materials and steps used in Northeast historic repair must be adjusted with the season and the sunlight, so that the ash coats neither crack nor peel.
Tung-oil ash and pig's blood
Home-boiled tung-oil ash is blended with pig's blood, applied by the light and never in midsummer, with UV-resistant vermilion and home-made tung-oil glaze.
Fusing three official styles
Restoring the Shenyang Palace and northeast temple paintings, craftsmen fused the three official systems, improving materials and methods while keeping buildings sound.
Strengthening and preserving timber
The craft strengthens and preserves the main load-bearing timbers, stabilising the whole building, and forms one decorative branch of traditional Chinese building repair.
Layered plastering and oil sealing
The ground is plastered in layers, dried, ground from coarse to fine and finally sealed with tung-oil glaze to give painting a stable base.
The Tairan repair school
Transmitted through Shenyang's Tairan school of historic-building repair, it pairs site work with classroom teaching to pass on material and scheduling knowledge.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The Northeast historic-building dizhang (oil-finishing) and polychrome-painting craft is a technique for strengthening and preserving the principal load-bearing timber members of buildings and stabilizing the structure as a whole. It is one of the decorative schools of traditional Chinese building-repair craft. The Northeast historic-building dizhang (oil-finishing) and polychrome-painting craft is distributed across the three provinces of Liaoning, Jilin, and Heilongjiang. Its most important practical settings are the repair of official-style and local polychrome painting at the Shenyang Imperial Palace and at temples throughout the Northeast.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Architectural Painting · Architectural Painting · Architectural Painting · Architectural Painting · Architectural Painting.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
The dizhang (oil-finishing) and polychrome-painting craft stabilizes the whole building chiefly by strengthening and preserving its load-bearing timber members; it is the decorative school of historic-building repair in the Northeast. Its transmission relies on institutions such as the Tairan Historic Building Maintenance School in Shenyang, which train craftsmen by combining project repair with classroom instruction, passing on together the experience of mixing dizhang materials and scheduling the process steps according to sunlight and season.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Li Yunyi 03-1302
- Li Shengbin 03-1303
- Hao Yanming 05-2705
- Chen Jinde
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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