Past Issues

Carving on Impulse

• Byline:JIM HWANG
• Publication Date:12/01/2009

Double Ballet Camphor 171 x 132 x 39 cm Honorable mention, 2009 Taiwan Miaoli International Wood Sculpture Competition (Courtesy of Tseng An-kuo)

An overwhelming urge pushed Tseng An-kuo to Sanyi 28 years ago and has made him a well-known wood sculptor today.

“While I was watching it, I thought ‘Wow! This is it,’ and I started packing,” recalls woodcarving artist Tseng An-kuo of a television program introducing Sanyi, Taiwan’s woodcarving capital. “I asked my elder brother if he could take me there, and we jumped on the first train to Sanyi the next day.”

That was some 28 years ago, when he was 16. Today, Tseng has become one of Taiwan’s top woodcarving artists. He has won many awards including first prize in the traditional crafts category of the 2007 Taiwan Crafts Awards, which, formerly known as the National Crafts Awards, are Taiwan’s highest honors in the handicrafts field. Tseng has also represented Taiwan to demonstrate traditional carving in international woodcarving fairs in Germany and mainland China.

Born to a farming family in Shuishang Township, Chiayi County, Tseng had never been interested in school, nor had he performed well in any of the subjects except art. So after graduating from junior high school, he decided he was going for the job market instead of further education. The boy, however, did not have any idea of what kind of work to do until he saw the television program. “It looked fun and seemed to have something to do with art, which was the only thing I liked at school,” Tseng says. “For the most part, though, it was a decision based on impulse.”

As Taiwan’s woodcarving capital, Sanyi, a township located in Miaoli County, northern Taiwan, naturally has a long history in the industry. About a century ago, camphor wood was the area’s main natural resource. When camphor trees were cut down, their roots were left in the earth, and rain or landslides would gradually cause them to be exposed. A Sanyi resident found that many of these roots had taken on a beautiful appearance, so he took some home and used them as decorations. Later, a Japanese visitor saw the roots, thought they could well find a market in Japan, and worked with locals to export them. The export of these “natural carvings” brought Sanyi profit and encouraged more local people to get interested in the business. In the mid to late 1930s, area residents who wanted to maximize their profits from the wood trade started to learn new skills from the Japanese, such as carving animals or figurines, and set up many woodcarving workshops.

Floras Wedding Cypress 88 x 126 x 63 cm Finalist, 2009 Yulon Woodcarving Innovation Awards (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)

Business was soon interrupted by the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937−1945) and then the Chinese civil war. It was not until the early 1960s—when an American journalist came to Sanyi, saw the carvings and wrote an article about them—that the creations of the town’s artisans suddenly jumped to the top of the list for souvenir hunters, particularly foreign tourists and US military personnel stationed in Taiwan.

The Japanese market also recovered, and Sanyi’s woodcarving reached its peak in the 1970s. Low labor costs and hard-working carvers meant that the local industry was able to meet foreign clients’ demands on price, quality and delivery deadlines. The income might have been small change compared to what people could make in other sectors, but in a small rural village that did not meet requirements for agricultural or industrial development, woodcarving was just about the only thing Sanyi residents could count on. “It seemed everyone was doing something related to woodcarving. Even children and housewives were helping paint or polish the carvings,” Tseng recalls of his early days in Sanyi.

The year was 1981 and what Tseng saw then was one of the last glimpses of a prosperous Sanyi, which was seriously impacted after 1979 when the United States severed formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan and withdrew US military personnel. When Tseng and his brother started to visit woodcarving craftsmen and shops, trying to find someone that would take the younger boy as an apprentice, they were advised to search in other directions since the woodcarving industry had already passed its peak. Tseng did not give up and finally the owner of a woodcarving handicrafts shop agreed to give him a place to stay while he searched for a teacher.

The wait was not long and Tseng was soon taken to a craftsman who carved animals. This first master, however, did not really show his new apprentice what woodcarving was about. “He gave me a carving knife and told me to find some leftover wood to start by myself,” Tseng says. “What did I know about anything? So I got bored in a week or so.” Fortunately, the shop owner who took Tseng to that craftsman visited again and then introduced him to another craftsman, Tseng Jun-ming, who was carving Japanese-style statues of gods.

Jellyfish Elm 95 x 35 x 35 cm All of Tseng’s works are carved from a single block of wood instead of gluing parts together. (Courtesy of Tseng An-kuo)

Woodcarvings for the Japanese market are basically done via a factory assembly-line approach, meaning that different craftsmen work on different parts or stages of a statue instead of one craftsman carving it from head to toe. The reason for this production process is, as Tseng An-kuo explains, to meet the Japanese preference for uniform products and higher production efficiency. “All that mattered was carving as many things as possible as fast as possible in order to fill the orders on time,” he says. “Woodcarving workshops were basically factories that cared about productivity rather than art and creativity.”

Tseng’s first job on the “assembly line” was carving the hair and the small “dots” on Buddha heads. “Repeating the same thing over and over wasn’t really fun, but it was important for building my patience, which is the basis of carving,” he says. He then progressed to carving swords and other small items the statues were holding after about a year, but did not advance to carving the rough shapes or faces—the two most critical parts of the process. These jobs are usually done by senior craftsmen or masters, who do not think it necessary for their apprentices to learn the techniques. Tseng began to feel that there was little chance of being given the opportunity to learn these skills in Sanyi, no matter how well he performed in his assigned jobs. Being part of an assembly line was not what he saw himself doing for the rest of his life, either, so he went to Tongxiao in Miaoli County to learn the initial shaping and then to Taipei to learn the carving of faces.

After learning these aspects of statue carving, Tseng returned to Sanyi and started his own workshop in 1988. To compete against carving “factories,” Tseng realized he needed to be different. “If I wanted to stay in business I knew I’d have to establish my own style,” Tseng says. With his statue-carving techniques, Tseng began to carve figures of Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy. Rather than creating statues for worship, his idea was to carve Guanyin statues for display and ornamental purposes. So instead of carving the “standard” statue of Guanyin that most people are familiar with, Tseng combines his with the features of the original wood. He may, for example, carve the upper part of a tree root into the upper body of Guanyin and then blend the carving into the natural surface of the lower part of the root. Tseng’s tree-root Guanyin statues became so popular that they started a trend in Sanyi and in no time, every artist there was carving something out of tree roots.

Shifting Market

While a large quantity of similar, competing wood sculptures was killing the domestic market for artists like Tseng, exports also became difficult as most foreign buyers had already shifted from Sanyi to mainland China and Southeast Asian countries to take advantage of their even lower labor costs. In fact, many Sanyi storekeepers have since set up trading companies to import wooden articles. “Most clients here in Taiwan, while accepting wood sculptures as home displays, don’t see them as art,” Tseng says. “Price is often the major factor in deciding whether to buy an item for display, not artistic achievement.” When it comes to price, an imported product that is carved from the same wood with the same level of expertise as its Sanyi counterpart costs only half the price of the locally produced work. Following the philosophy of “If you can’t beat ’em, you might as well join ’em,” many Sanyi woodcarving workshops moved to places with lower costs, taking their master craftsmen with them. According to Tseng, there are at most 50 local craftsmen still working in Sanyi, which currently has a population of around 17,000. By comparison, during its peak around 20,000 people lived in Sanyi, with most of the adults involved in the wood and carving trades.

Spring Orchid Elm 35 x 85 x 30 cm Finalist, 2006 National Crafts Awards (Courtesy of Tseng An-kuo)

But there was one positive spinoff from all this: Craftsmen had time to think seriously about the industry and its future. After pondering such issues, Tseng decided upon the approach of creating works with new subjects that had not been done by others. He settled on orchids. “I like plants and I have them right in the backyard of my workshop,” Tseng explains of his choice of subject matter. “It seemed only natural for me to carve them.” The orchids also seemed to be liked by competition judges. A butterfly orchard he created won the silver medal in the 1999 Taiwan Woodcarving Art Competition, while a carving of an orchid from the Dendrobium genus won the gold medal in the same competition the next year and a similar work won him the first prize at the 2007 Taiwan Crafts Awards.

In the area of raw materials, elm has been one of Tseng’s favorite woods. He notes that there are many different kinds of elm and believes the local species is the best. While he did try carving pieces from imported elm, he found it unusable.

Two Kinds of Knives

Tseng admits that his main purpose for attending as many competitions as possible is for the prize money. Relying on such an unstable source of income, as well as the occasional order from collectors who are willing to pay more for local pieces, however, was not enough for him to support a family. So in 2001, Tseng and his wife decided to open a restaurant near Sanyi’s old train station. Business was OK, but the high turnover rate for chefs kept Tseng from concentrating on his art, as in between chefs, he had to put down his carving knives and pick up the kitchen knives.

Tseng feels very lucky that the days of shifting between carving and cooking ended about a year ago, as his wife did not want to see him struggle between the two professions and sold the restaurant. The family’s main source of support is now provided by Tseng’s wife, who works as a primary school substitute teacher. In fact, such income difficulties are actually faced by most Sanyi sculptors, who can only make ends meet by doing side jobs. Some, for example, bake Hakka teacakes in a corner of their stores, while others do contract work or apply gold leaf to imported statues of gods.

When Tseng first came to the township 28 years ago, he did not know anyone there. Nor did he know that until 1953, the township was named Sancha, which means a junction where three roads meet in Mandarin. That geographical convergence no longer exists, having long ago been replaced by new roads. Neither do many of the sculptors who worked in Sanyi after Tseng first arrived still live there, while some others who remain there seem to be facing another juncture, wondering whether they should go on carving, get another job or just move elsewhere. But for Tseng, such a choice has never existed, for the impulse he first felt 28 years ago is still going strong.

Write to Jim Hwang at jim@mail.gio.gov.tw