Ethnic Instrument Making Craftsmanship

Ⅷ-124Traditional CraftsmanshipSuzhou, JiangsuBatch 2 (2008)Newly Added Item

01 · Historical Records

Suzhou's instrument-making can be traced to the Spring and Autumn period; the Wu region esteemed martiality, and the custom of beating the earth and sounding drums caused percussion instruments such as drums and qing (stone chimes) to take early form. Thereafter silk-and-bamboo music rose and fell in succession—the sheng (mouth organ), xiao (flute), and erhu following one after another—and the craftsmen's work shifted from sacrifice to the marketplace and the opera stage. In the late Qing and early Republican period, the silk-and-bamboo guilds and instrument shops around Suzhou flourished greatly; the masters in the workshops both made instruments and taught tunes, and once students completed their study they became qin masters or drum masters, passing on the craft together with its lineage.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Chinese ethnic musical instruments have a long and distant history, are closely tied to the cultural life of all ethnic groups, and are an important component of traditional Chinese culture. These instruments have a concise and graceful form, a rational structure, exquisite workmanship, and a pure tone, and have been loved by music lovers of every era. Since ancient times, ethnic musical instruments have been played at folk festivals, weddings and funerals, joyous occasions, and deity-inviting fairs, as well as at the major political, military, and religious ceremonies held by court and government. The craft of making ethnic musical instruments has become an important traditional manual skill of our country, transmitted to the present day with far-reaching influence. Chinese ethnic musical instruments come in a great variety, with superb craftsmanship, renowned at home and abroad. Among them, the making of Zhangzi resonant bronze instruments, Korean ethnic instruments, Suzhou ethnic instruments, the Caifumei drums, and Uyghur ethnic instruments are particularly distinctive. Suzhou's instrument-making has a long history, traceable at earliest to the Spring and Autumn period. The instruments made in Suzhou come in a great variety; the erhu, ruan, guzheng, pipa, and the konghou (harp) and bianzhong (bell chime) once lost and later restored to production are among their representatives. A batch of ethnic instruments named with the character "Su"—the Su flute, Su xiao, Su gong, and Su drum—are especially imbued with Suzhou regional character. These instruments are known for their beautiful and concise form, rational structure, exquisite workmanship, and sweet, pure tone. The Suzhou ethnic instrument craft is superb; the completion of a single instrument requires multiple stages—cutting stock, matching materials, woodworking, carving, lacquering, inlaying, and tuning—while making percussion instruments (resonant bronze) requires the orderly coordination of many processes—material selection, smelting, plate-making, shaping, pitch-testing, lathe-scraping, and tuning—each process having its own independent skill. At present, apart from the sawing, cutting, and matching of wood stock, which have been partly replaced by machinery, most processes such as woodworking, carving, and lacquering still must be completed by hand.

Archival Records of the Production Process

The Suzhou ethnic instrument craft is superb; the completion of a single instrument requires multiple stages—cutting stock, matching materials, woodworking, carving, lacquering, inlaying, and tuning—while making percussion instruments (resonant bronze) requires the orderly coordination of many processes—material selection, smelting, plate-making, shaping, pitch-testing, lathe-scraping, and tuning—each process having its own independent skill. At present, apart from the sawing, cutting, and matching of wood stock, which have been partly replaced by machinery, most processes such as woodworking, carving, and lacquering still must be completed by hand.

Ripping and matching the timber

Timber is sorted by grain, origin and age, since each kind answers the bow differently.

Shaping the body

Plate, neck and pegbox are cut and glued, kept thin, true and seam-free so the tone stays clear.

Carving

Flower, bird and inscription work is cut by hand, even in depth and fluent in line.

Lacquering

Raw lacquer is built up layer by layer, each dried and ground before the next.

Tuning and finishing bronze instruments

Bronze instruments pass through raising, tuning, scraping and final setting, each stage in different hands.

Inlay and pitch-setting

Inlay decorates the instrument while pitch-setting completes it, as with the modified erhu mouth and zheng cavity.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

The division of labor within Suzhou's instrument trade is extremely fine: those who cut and match stock control the wood's nature; the woodworkers shape the body; the carvers work the soundboard and the head; the lacquerers apply lacquer; the inlayers set the inlay; the tuners set the string pitch—an instrument must pass through six or seven pairs of hands before leaving the workshop. The Su flute, Su xiao, Su gong, and Su drum named with the "Su" character are the most local varieties of this area, while others such as the erhu, ruan, guzheng, and pipa carry the forms transmitted all the way from the court.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Over thousands of years of development and transmission, skilled artisans have continuously refined the craft, eventually making it renowned throughout the country. Feng Mingjun (per the official archives of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in August 1936, a native of Suzhou City, Jiangsu Province. Representative inheritor of the craft of making ethnic musical instruments (Suzhou ethnic instrument craft), a national-level intangible cultural heritage item in the fourth batch. Suzhou ethnic instrument-making technician. In 1958 he entered the Suzhou No. 1 Ethnic Instrument Factory to engage in the making and reform of ethnic instruments. After retiring in 1996, he was employed as a technical consultant by Suzhou Ethnic Instrument Factory Co., Ltd. For over seventy years he has devoted himself to the making of ethnic bowed-string and plucked instruments, excelling especially at making the erhu and guzheng. His woodworking skill is superb; he can analyze and study in depth the acoustic effect of membranes of different textures and thicknesses and of woods of different grain, texture, and part. He successively developed the "board-membrane and skin-membrane large sanhu," the gehu, the transposing (damped) dulcimer, the pipa, the square gehu, the three-sided skin-membrane gehu, as well as some ethnic-minority instruments. He once improved the structure of the erhu's front sound-chamber opening, giving the tone a fuller, more powerful quality. He reformed the internal structure of the guzheng, making its tone crisper.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

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