Master of woodcraft achieves his masterpiece
Print Edition
FOR Minhang folk craftsman Wang Zhenhua, 58, one work can become the hallmark of an entire artisan’s career.
After six years’ effort, he proudly displays what he calls his masterpiece — a wood replica of the Qiniandian, or Palace of Prayer for Good Harvests, in Beijing.
This pièce de la résistance contains 7,108 parts, all joined by mortise and tenon without a single nail or any glue. It is about 50 centimeters high and oozes realism. Windows and doors open, and the window frames display delicate carving.
The replica is now displayed at the Minhang Cultural Gallery, where it is attracting many visitors and much admiration.
“People can appreciate the beauty of mortise and tenon joints, which are so fascinating in an ancient timber structure,” said Wang.
He primarily used ebony in the structure because it is resistant to warping. The wood was polished by hand, and no paint was used. Wang said he didn’t want to diminish the beauty and quality of the natural wood.
“A perfect mortise and tenon joint doesn’t need any glue,” said Wang. “Most of these kinds of replicas that you see for sale in markets are glued together, and they have no value at all.”
In China, the mortise and tenon joint is called the Lu Ban lock, named after Lu Ban (507-440 BC), a Chinese carpenter and engineer. The technique was widely used in ancient Chinese construction and later spread to Japan. Hundreds of parts joined by the technique don’t come loose unless the wood decays.
Wang was fascinated by woodworking since the age of 16, when he started studying carpentry on his own. After graduating from college, he took up a career as an engineer but never lost his love of wood structures.
He read the works of architect and scholar Liang Sicheng (1901-72) to teach himself how to scale structures and make mortise and tenon joints.
In the 1980s, while visiting Beijing, Wang drew sketches and did measurements of the Palace of Prayer for Good Harvests.
But his attempts to duplicate the structure on a miniature scale were fraught with frustration. He had to discard his first three versions.
“I drew the design on the software CAD and had to revise the data multiple times,” he said. “Each attempt took me six to 12 months.”
Mortise and tenon requires great accuracy to get the “tongue” of the mortise to perfectly fit the “hole” of the mortise.
Utilizing the right tools is essential to that accuracy, Wang said. He bought his tools from local markets and modified them as needed. Wear and tear on tools can lead to failures. Wang said one of his files broke after being used to make about 2,000 parts, and he had to discard the whole project because no two files produce the same effect.
The most frustrating element of the work, according to Wang, resulted from a data error in the official records of the palace. In 2011, when Wang had finished making all the parts for the replica and started to connect them together, he was stymied because something seemed to be missing.
“At that time I just failed in a business and had no money to go to Beijing to measure the palace again,” said Wang. “So I had to spend months working on the data by referencing a photo.”
Eventually, Wang discovered that the official data about the stairs in the palace were wrong. He called a friend in Beijing and asked him to measure the stairs for him.
“By then, measuring wasn’t allowed there anymore,” Wang said. “So my friend was shooed away by security guards.”
Nevertheless, Want finally got the data he needed and started the whole project over from scratch.
“For five years, people who knew me thought I was crazy, except for my wife and son, who always believed that I would one day succeed,” said Wang. “They made a good bet.”
His “masterpiece” has been valued at more than 10 million yuan (US$1.47 million), but Wang isn’t interested in selling it.
“I want it to be in the museum so that more people can come and appreciate the great carpentry heritage of this country,” he said. “Mortise and tenon is not something that people see much today, but it is a shining example of human knowledge.”
One might think the completion of such an undertaking would be enough for Wang to go into retirement and rest on his laurels. Not so.
He plans another four replicas: Anji Bridge, the world’s oldest still standing stone arch bridge in Hebei Province; the Yellow Crane Tower, a 1,000-year-old classic Chinese pagoda in Hubei Province; the first Communist Party Congress conference site in Shanghai; and the Palace Museum in Beijing.
“I’ll make the grand Palace Museum my last work,” said Wang. “Then I can rest.”
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