Chuantongmuchuanzhizaojiyi
01 · Historical Records
The wooden boat was an important tool in the life, travel, and labor of people in the ancient water towns; over a long course of practice, a distinctive wooden-boat-making craft took shape and has been transmitted to the present day. In the late 1980s, more than 270 households in the whole town of Zhuhong were engaged in wooden-boat making, producing about ten thousand boats a year.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
This craft is complex in content and numerous in process steps; the boats it produces are simple and dignified, light and nimble, sturdy and durable. With historical development, the uses of wooden boats gradually expanded from agricultural, ferry, inland-river, and coastal fishing applications to the fields of transport, commerce, and mail transport. Within Zhuhong Town, Xinghua City, Jiangsu Province, rivers, lakes, and creeks crisscross—a typical watery marshland—and the wooden boat became an important implement in people's daily life. Zhuhong wooden boats use aged fir with a tough, resilient texture as the main material, and iron nails, hemp fiber, lime, and tung oil as auxiliary materials; the entire production process includes more than a dozen steps such as material selection, preparation, cutting, proportioning, splitting planks, sorting planks, joining planks, hull assembly, hemp caulking, and oiling, each carried out entirely by hand—a complex craft of great difficulty. The boats produced have shallow draft, great buoyancy, and high load capacity. Putuo District of Zhoushan City faces the East China Sea and has a developed fishing industry. Over a thousand years, countless skilled craftsmen for building and repairing ships have emerged on Putuo Island, among whom the Cen family wooden-boat workshop is a representative. The Cen family has built wooden sailing boats remarkable in both quantity and variety, mainly series such as large antique wooden sailing boats, fishing boats, and replica antique boats. Its manufacturing process mainly includes sixteen links such as design, lofting, laying the keelson, and fabricating the bottom shell; the tools used in boat building, such as the dragon saw, seam-pulling saw, and long and short hammers, are quite unique. Because of the changing times, steel fishing boats have been increasingly popularized and promoted. Under these circumstances, traditional wooden-boat hand workshops keep shrinking and the boat-making craft is gradually being lost; inheriting, protecting, and further developing the wooden-boat-making craft has become an urgent matter.
Recorded Craft Procedures
This craft is complex in content and numerous in process steps; the boats it produces are simple and dignified, light and nimble, sturdy and durable. Zhuhong wooden boats use aged fir with a tough, resilient texture as the main material, and iron nails, hemp fiber, lime, and tung oil as auxiliary materials; the entire production process includes more than a dozen steps such as material selection, preparation, cutting, proportioning, splitting planks, sorting planks, joining planks, hull assembly, hemp caulking, and oiling, each carried out entirely by hand—a complex craft of great difficulty.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Zhoushan's Putuo, facing the East China Sea, saw its fishing industry give rise to another strain of wooden-boat craft: the Cen family wooden-boat workshop mostly builds large antique wooden sailing boats, fishing boats, and replica antique boats; in method it begins with design, then lofting, the third step being laying the keelson, then fabricating the bottom shell, with all sixteen links of the whole boat interlocking. Cen Guohe began building boats independently at twenty-one, later founded Zhejiang Cen Family Wooden-Boat Culture Development Co., Ltd., and over decades has trained more than thirty apprentices, of whom about ten still practice the trade. Compared with Zhuhong's river boats for farming, ferry, and fishing, the Putuo strain places more weight on rigging and seaworthiness.
Other submitting regions for the same item: Chuantongmuchuanzhizaojiyi.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
At present, Zhuhong's wooden-boat making has shown a decline; the town's workers specializing in boat production number fewer than 70, and the annual output of various small wooden boats has dropped to around 4,000. Apart from fast sailing speed and good safety performance, the sailing boats built by the Cen family wooden-boat workshop also possess high artistic value; their beautiful shapes and exquisite decorations often leave a deep impression. Cen Guohe (from the official archival records of the associated inheritor): Male, Han ethnicity, born in January 1956, a native of Zhoushan City, Zhejiang Province. Representative inheritor of the fourth batch of the national-level intangible cultural heritage item, Traditional Wooden-Boat-Making Craft. Traditional wooden-boat-making technician. At twenty-one he began building boats independently. He founded Zhejiang Cen Family Wooden-Boat Culture Development Co., Ltd., establishing a Guohe Wooden-Boat Craft Hall that integrates the science, education, research, and production of ancient sailing boats. Over the decades he has continuously taken on young apprentices and absorbed new strength; from the 1980s to the present he has trained more than thirty apprentices. These apprentices can all build boats independently, and about ten of them work in the trade. In 2018 he received the "Best Cultural Heritage Practice Award" of the Sharjah International Cultural Heritage Award in the United Arab Emirates.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Zhou Yonggan 03-1402
- Cen Guohe 04-1900
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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