China Witness: Voices from a Silent Generation by Xinran

Author:Xinran
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2009-02-23T16:00:00+00:00

In a Zhengzhou street, 2006, interviewing the shoe-mender, who was at first too shy to be photographed; on the right of the photo are instructions on how to clean your feet.

A woman making chopsticks out of bamboo, Guizhou, 2006.

General Phoebe and her husband, surrounded by memories, at their home in Beijing, 2006.

At the monument to the 4 May Movement, Beijing, 2006.

HUADENG: Yes, if they need props for a performance, or if they want the lanterns for a municipal event, then they pay expenses.

XINRAN: And does what they pay you cover your expenses?

HUADENG: Of course not! For instance, I sometimes make a pair of water-lily lanterns when a young couple get married. It's quite delicate work, but I only charge them fifty yuan for each, or a hundred yuan the pair. If it's the Qin Huai local authority who ask us to make lanterns, we have to drop the price a bit, because although they don't look after us directly, overall you could say that they're on the next rung up administratively, and we can't afford to put a foot wrong. All the same, they don't support us when we really need it. You have to stand on your own feet, and you're very isolated. Don't laugh at me if I say this. Sometimes I don't do any business for three months and don't earn a penny, but you've still got to pay the workers, and you can't not pay the rent, the electricity and the water, can you? Sometimes it's all so hard. I still hope, though, that one day our folk art will get proper public recognition.

XINRAN: Why don't you think you're getting public recognition? When we were doing our research and contacted Jiangsu Radio and got information on folk crafts from national organisations, the first people they recommended in Nanjing were Li Guisheng, and you and your brother, so surely this must imply public recognition? When you talked just now about feeling isolated, I could see how you felt by looking in your eyes. The art of Qin Huai lanterns has been handed down to you by your father and grandfather, so it has a vitality which has survived down the years, doesn't it? So how come, when more people than ever before have been to school, and life is more civilised and modernised, people nowadays have no respect for a tradition which goes back more than a thousand years, and have abandoned it? Why is it ignored by the public, and even by the government?

HUADENG: “Flowers grow in the garden, but you smell them outside it” — that's the kind of recognition you're talking about. Let me put it more simply: China's folk crafts are all exported. In China, the government only start to take a bit of interest if you are famous and you're someone putting your talents to good use. But it's not easy for poor craftspeople to make a difference. The Qin Huai local authority only sat up and took notice of me after my lantern won the national competition and appeared on a postage stamp.

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