[Opening Remarks].
** At the symposium on cultural inheritance and development, the general secretary emphasized that it is our new cultural mission in the new era to continue to promote cultural prosperity, build a cultural power, and build the modern civilization of the Chinese nation at a new starting point. The bilingual micro-documentary "Intangible Cultural Heritage with New People" traces the footprints of the thousand-year-old cultural context, tells the story of passing on the torch, perceives the surging tide of the country, and makes intangible cultural heritage shine with new brilliance and shine all over the world in the new era.
Jinling's hometown, Qinhuai Lantern Festival. Walking through the ten miles of flowing colors, seeing the lights of thousands of homes, remembering the charm of the Six Dynasties, and tasting the strong flavor of the New Year.
In the memory of Gu Chuanjing, the young inheritor of the Qinhuai Lantern Festival, the flavor of the New Year is closely linked to the lanterns. Since he was five or six years old, he has been learning to make lanterns with his father Gu Yeliang, and whenever his father starts to get busy for the annual lantern festival, it means that the Spring Festival is approaching.
The charm of the Qinhuai Lantern Festival lies in the lanterns, although the lanterns are small, they are carried in the hands and passed down to be more than 1,700 years of history, known as the reputation of "Qinhuai Lantern Colorful Armor in the World". In the Spring Festival of this year, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the People's Republic of China will "light up the Chinese lanterns" - the first national lantern joint exhibition in Nanjing, and the 38th "Qinhuai Lantern Festival" ushered in more than 150 lantern works across the country. The banks of the Qinhuai River in the sound of oars and lights are writing new brilliance.
The shadows of the lights reflect the past and the present
My family used to live near the city wall, which was a traditional gathering place for Nanjing's lantern craftsmen, and during the Ming Dynasty, up to 500 households made lanterns. Walking in the old streets and alleys on the banks of the Qinhuai River, Gu Chuanjing's thoughts from ancient times to the present, recalling the first time he followed adults to sell lanterns when he was a child.
At that time, it was the sixth grade of primary school, and the sky was just dawning, Gu Chuanjing got on his father's tricycle and rushed to Confucius Temple Square to grab a good position to sell lights, and one stop was a whole day. When he was a child, he liked the traditional style of Qinhuai lanterns the rabbit lamp, "it is as big as forty or fifty centimeters, with wheels under the lamp, which can be dragged on the ground, and there are candles in it, which is very cool on the street." In between selling lamps, he often walked around with his father's rabbit lanterns, and sometimes the candles were blown out by the wind, so he ran to the nearby stall owner to borrow a fire to renew it.
In the 90s of the last century, children ran happily with rabbit lanterns Source: Nanjing Qinhuai District Cultural Center.
In Gu Chuanjing's impression, at first, the craftsmen who sold lamps were only concentrated in the Dacheng Hall of Confucius Temple and the main street around Jiangnan Gongyuan, but later the Qinhuai Lantern Festival became bigger and bigger, and all kinds of lanterns gradually lit up from Confucius Temple to the east of the old gate and the city wall. This year, the Qinhuai Lantern Festival has set up seven exhibition areas and 330 sets of lanterns in Bailuzhou Park and the core scenic spot of Confucius Temple. Year after year, the beautiful Qinhuai lanterns have become a unique Spring Festival scene in Nanjing, and it is a festival memory that is often seen and renewed.
If you don't go to the Confucius Temple for the New Year, it means that you don't have the New Year; If you don't buy a lantern at Confucius Temple, it means that you don't have a good year. Gu Chuanjing said that the Chinese New Year lantern appreciation is a complex that Nanjing people can't give up, and it is increasingly attracting visitors from all over the world, and this custom has been around for a long time.
The origin of Qinhuai lanterns can be traced back to the Eastern Wu period, when they were originally used by the royal family to display lanterns and Buddhas. During the Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties, lanterns gradually flourished among the people. The "Poetry Lantern" of the Eastern Jin Dynasty has said: "Huanghuang idle night light, repair the tree is bright." The lamp shines with the wind, and the wind rises and falls with the lamp. This is the earliest documentary record of lanterns in Nanjing. During the Tang and Song dynasties, the lantern time changed from one night to three nights from the 14th to the 16th of the first lunar month, and then increased to six nights, and the Qinhuai River gradually showed the prototype of the early Lantern Festival lantern market. In the Ming Dynasty, the founding emperor Zhu Yuanzhang vigorously advocated the Lantern Festival in Nanjing, extending the lantern time to ten nights, and there were also new entertainment activities such as lighting water lanterns on the Qinhuai River and taking a painting boat to enjoy the night view.
In modern times, the development of lanterns was once silent. Until the founding of the People's Republic of China, Qinhuai lanterns turned a new page. In the Spring Festival of 1977, the Confucius Temple resumed the lantern market for the first time, and in 1986, Nanjing resumed holding the annual Qinhuai Lantern Festival, which has continued to this day.
Ming Dynasty ancient painting "Shangyuan Lantern Color" (detail).
When it comes to the Qinhuai Lantern Festival, people often think of a painting drawn in the Ming Dynasty "Shangyuan Lantern Color", in the bustling street market, hanging with different shapes, lifelike lanterns. This year, the Qinhuai Lantern Festival takes this ancient painting as the theme of creation, reproducing the Aoyu lantern that steals the dragon ball and leaping over the dragon gate shown in the painting, and restores the "Aoshan Cathay" lantern group with the giant Ao carrying the overseas fairy mountain, with the blessing of scientific and technological elements, it gives people an immersive feeling. Spanning more than 600 years of time and space, the grand scene depicted in the past is re-reflected on the banks of the Qinhuai River. The "Dragon in the Sky" lantern group created by Laomen Dongnei coils the dragon body into 24 bends, corresponding to the new arrival of 2024, walking under the swaying dragon's belly, as if walking through the colorful sky.
Shangyuan Lantern Festival originated in the Ming Dynasty, is the symbol of Qinhuai lantern color armor in the world, this year our lantern festival as a whole as inspiration, both the integration of the north of the 'magnificent', and the south of the Yangtze River 'small jasper', is an attempt of Qinhuai lantern cross-border integration. Gu Yeliang, who served as the artistic director of this year's Qinhuai Lantern Festival, said.
Choose an art to inherit the thousand-year-old context
As the night approached ten o'clock, Gu Chuanjing was still immersed in his father's lantern factory to study a traditional lantern in the shape of a flying dragon. In the middle of winter, the factory building supported by the tin roof adds to the cold, and after sitting still, his feet begin to freeze numb, which he has long been accustomed to.
Gu Chuanjing and his father Gu Yeliang studied the art of making lanterns.
A factory carries too many memories of Gu Chuanjing's youth, and it also makes him have complex emotions about the lanterns, while fascinated by its brilliance, there are always different surprises when he goes to see the lamps made by his father on the eve of the Spring Festival every year; On the other hand, I can't help but complain that the lanterns take away too much time from my parents. He remembered that his mother was always wearing a thick cotton jacket and sitting at the table by the dim light to frame one lamp after another, and his father was the last to leave the factory. When he was a student, Gu Chuanjing often waited for his parents at home alone, until he heard the key turning, and he could sleep peacefully.
His father, Gu Yeliang, began to learn lantern skills with his father at the age of 8, and later worshiped under the famous lantern artist Li Guisheng, and engaged in lantern creation for more than 50 years. In the 80s of the last century, Nanjing resumed the Qinhuai Lantern Festival, and Gu Yeliang, who was 24 years old at the time, participated in it, and has not fallen behind since then. Now, his son Gu Chuanjing has also joined the ranks of lantern making, "From seeing and thinking, through the hand-tied system into reality, the more I do it, the more I devote, I feel integrated into my father's world." ”
Qinhuai lanterns can be called a collection of a variety of intangible cultural heritage skills, and every step has knowledge. Gu Chuanjing said that taking the classic lotus lantern of Qinhuai Lantern as an example, it needs to go through 62 processes to make the bamboo and paper transform into lifelike lotus. To become a lantern craftsman, you must not only be able to split bamboo and tie the skeleton and other wood work, but also master the knowledge of painting, calligraphy, paper-cutting, dipping and dyeing, and more importantly, have the research energy and artistic imagination that are not afraid of hardship.
After going to university, Gu Chuanjing began to formally contact the production of lanterns, while following the master in the factory to learn how to make lanterns systematically, while following his father into the university campus, as a simultaneous interpreter, to show the intangible cultural heritage charm of lanterns to college students, when preparing the English display courseware in the early stage, Gu Chuanjing for the first time fully understood the development history of Qinhuai lanterns after several ups and downs, thousands of years of continuous development, and deepened his interest in lantern making.
Gu Chuanjing remembers that when he first learned to make lanterns, "he was a bit of a master and a little bit of a master, and he was all focused on how to innovate the shape of the lanterns and how to transform the two-dimensional drawings into 3D reality", so he thought of using the three views he had learned in the architecture major. "At first, I thought it was very simple to make a lamp, so I took the wire and went to look at the concave shape of the picture. But not long after the start of construction, Gu Chuanjing tasted frustration, and the master in the factory told him that it was very rigorous to make lights, which position to dot, and how much the specific length needed to be accurately measured, so he was given a task to make 200 circles.
When 50 hands are tired, 100 hands are basically unable to move, and the pure blind bend behind, the yield is less than 10% at that time. The master told him that taking a 10 cm circle as an example, the preparation should be 10 cm by 314, so as to ensure that the curved circle will not be deformed.
After graduating from university, Gu Chuanjing engaged in construction monitoring, and insisted on coming to the lamp factory every day after work to help study. In the factory building of more than 700 square meters, a large family of relatives went into battle, and a series of steps such as lantern design, material procurement, production, installation, and maintenance were assigned to six families, including the small family formed by Gu Chuanjing.
Qinhuai lanterns are used in ancient times for modern use
In the Spring Festival of 2020, when Gu Chuanjing and his wife were about to welcome a baby rat, Gu Chuanjing thought of using lanterns to give a gift to the unborn child, and created two sets of animated character lanterns with his childhood memory "Shuke and Beta", and unexpectedly gained a lot of love that year.
An abstract style zodiac cow lamp made by Gu Chuanjing.
Since participating in the production of lanterns, Gu Chuanjing has continued to try to innovate the shape of the lanterns with his own understanding, integrating ancient buildings and mythological stories into them, creating semi-relief lanterns in the form of comics, reproducing the moon god Changxi in the "Classic of Mountains and Seas", and also trying to integrate the Western painting style to make an abstract style of the zodiac cow lantern.
Although his father, Gu Yeliang, appreciates the younger generation's courage to break through and innovate, he still has his own insistence on tradition. He often told Gu Chuanjing: "The inheritors of intangible cultural heritage must see people, things, and life, and the inheritance of Qinhuai lanterns from generation to generation is closely related to the lives of ordinary people. ”
This perception comes from Gu Yeliang's experience in promoting Qinhuai lanterns overseas. Since 2006, when the Qinhuai Lantern Festival was included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage lists, Gu Yeliang, as its national inheritor, has taken on the mission of making lanterns "go global", and has lit lanterns in foreign countries for eight consecutive years to celebrate the Spring Festival with the locals. He was particularly impressed by the gift of a hand-made lotus lantern to the mayor of Leipzig, Germany, who praised "paper things can be made so exquisitely". The love of overseas friends for lanterns made Gu Yeliang deeply realize the connotation of "the national is the world".
Gu Yeliang has been a lamp all his life, and when he was young, he was a blockbuster when he was exhibited with a set of innovative crane lanterns, and was invited to become the master of Nanjing Confucius Temple Craft Lantern Factory. Subsequently, he continued to study the artistic expression of Qinhuai lanterns, replacing the bamboo strips for making skeletons with iron wires, replacing cotton paper pastes with silk cloth and silk yarn, replacing candles with LED lights, and integrating sound, light, electricity and other art forms to make Qinhuai lanterns "live".
Over the past decades, Gu Yeliang has witnessed the growing prosperity of the Qinhuai Lantern Festival, in the early days of Nanjing's resumption of the Lantern Festival, it was only in the core scenic area of Confucius Temple, and then gradually extended to the Qinhuai River and the Ming City Wall, thus realizing the three-dimensional exhibition of "water, land and air".
During the Spring Festival this year, Gu Yeliang spent a reunion with his family for a long time. There are three large lotus lanterns hanging in front of the star gate of Confucius Temple, which were created by the Gu family before the festival. When visiting the Lantern Festival, Gu Chuanjing deliberately took his father and son to take a photo in front of the Lingxing Gate, Gu Chuanjing's son is called Gu Wannian, this name pins the hope of the family, "The Qinhuai Lantern Festival can be passed on until ten thousand years and ten thousand generations." ”
The lights and the moon look at each other from afar, and the world is a good day. The lanterns on the cruise ship are woven into a dream-like bright night scene, and the flavor of the New Year of Nanjing City flows in the Qinhuai lanterns, and finally falls in everyone's heart.
Some of the information is provided by the Cyberspace Administration of the Nanjing Municipal Party Committee).