Yangpu District is home to some surprising intangible cultural heritages, including a martial art that focuses on force negation, miniature wood carvings and Yangju Opera. Li Anlan explores these treasures and meets some of the people keeping them alive today.

Yangpu District is home to many valued intangible cultural heritages. The list is growing as researchers continue to uncover unique customs in the district worth preserving and promoting.

In 2006, Yangpu started researching into the district’s intangible cultural heritage resources. A year later, 14 made the grade. Since then, some have been recognized as national and city intangible cultural heritages. These include Shanghai dock workers’ songs; Jiangnan si zhu, traditional stringed and wind instrument; and Shanghai hua yang jing, or ballads sung by folk artists while doing paper cutting.

There is a growing awareness to preserve these treasures and local organizations and communities are actively helping the folk artists who pass on the skills and songs to the next generation.

Miniature carvings

A miniature model displayed at the World Trade Center Association (WTCA) Pavilion during World Expo 2010 Shanghai generated a lot of attention.

The model of China’s Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) at a scale of 1:150 measured 18 meters long and 14 meters wide. It included about 2,000 buildings, 12,000 trees and 5,000 figures.

Master Kan Sanxi and his team spent a decade and used nearly 60 tons of different types of wood to complete.

Miniature carvings are an intangible cultural heritage in Yangpu District. It is a traditional art form requiring high skill levels as well as comprehensive knowledge about traditional Chinese architecture and gardens.

Such carvings date back 5,000 years although they have evolved over time.

The attention to detail is astounding. All doors and windows in each carved building can open and close. The artists also need to master ceramics to make  bricks and tiles.

Kan, 64, started learning the skills to make wood and stone carvings from his father and grandfather when he was young. In 1965, he started working with Gong Jiadi (1918-92) while working at Baitong Factory.

With his skills nearly complete, Kan began studying the country’s famous ancient buildings and gardens.

Carving is his life. An exhibition hall needs to be at least 4,000 square meters if all his rosewood carving are to be displayed. He estimates that he has carved more than 1,000 tons of wood in his life. His workshop features only wood, his tools and some basic living necessities.

Now Kan is teaching the tricks of the trade to his 34-year-old son, Kan Jianping. The lack of new talent is leading to a grim situation in preserving the traditional carvings.

Cotton fist

Mian quan, or cotton fist, is a martial arts style that started to spread during the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911). It is one of the most important martial arts in the Shanghai area featuring unique principles of force negation that cannot be found in other styles.

The main principle is to use the spine to create a spiral of torque energy that waves out to the rest of the body.

It relies on the compression of the abdominal muscles and produces energy using dan tian (literally elixir field).

The creator, Meng Guangyin from Hebei Province, was an armed escort in the late Qing Dynasty who learned martial arts. In the 1920s, he came to Shanghai to teach and over time developed his own style.

The current master of mian quan is Sun Hongxi, whose grandfather, Sun Fuhai, (1888-1956) learned this form of martial art from Meng and Sun Changgen (1936-1987).

In 2008, Sun Hongxi founded Shanghai Languifang Mian Quan Club to promote the martial art.

Shanghai added “mian quan” to its list of intangible cultural heritages in 2011. Since then, the martial art and Sun’s club have received more attention.

Yangju Opera

Yangju Opera, now popular in Jiangsu Province, was developed in Shanghai in the 1920s.

It was combined from Xianghuo Opera in northern Jiangsu Province (ËÕ±±Ïã»ðÏ•) and Flower and Drum Opera in Yangzhou (ÑïÖÝ»¨¹ÄÏ•). Popular songs from Yangju Opera including “The Hairdresser” (Shu Zhuang Tai, Êáױ̨), “Count the Clappers” (Shu Ban Êý°å) and “Man Jiang Hong” (The River Is All in Red Âú½­ºì) still resonate today.

As one of the district’s intangible cultural heritages, Yangju Opera suffered greatly during the “cultural revolution” (1966-76). In 1971, Shanghai’s Yangju Opera troupes were disbanded and most of the artists were relocated to Yangzhou in Jiangsu Province. Those who stayed didn’t have any organizations and it was impossible to perform.

Shanghai still has Yangju Opera followers and troupes come to Shanghai to perform every year.

It was recognized as an intangible cultural heritage in 2007.

Xu Shaohua owns a studio in Changbai Neighborhood’s community activity center. Xu has a regular cast of 10 performers including Wang Fengying, Zhu Peizhen and Xie Huatong.

Xu comes from a family of Chinese opera artists. Born in Taizhou, Jiangsu Province, in 1932, Xu was a Yangju opera singer with Shanghai Nuli Yangju Opera Troupe.

When he was four years old, he studied traditional Peking Opera under his father and brother. By the age of 12, he was already famous locally. Two years later he switched to Yang opera. In 1952, he came to Shanghai and started to perform in troupes.

Yangju Opera, also known as Weiyang Opera, now has three major schools of art after decades of development — Jin, Gao and Hua. The artists enriches their artistic expression using elements from martial arts, dance and face painting.

During the recent Shanghai Citizens Art Festival, Xu and his studio gave performances at the Changbai community activity center as well as participating in a traditional opera competition.

Yangju Opera came from a folk culture that first started as street performances. It has absorbed ideas from various folk art forms, giving it a vitality that strikes a cord at the grass-roots level.

Yangju Opera artists are now nurturing the next generation of performers, creating new productions and promoting the art form to a wider audience.