Taiwan Today

He had spent the first four months of instruction doing nothing but sanding wood, and had looked forward to the moment when he could form his own stone tools from the river rocks.

But when the actual opportunity came, the pain from the blisters on his hands blocked out all romantic visions. He kept at his job anyway, imagining vaguely that someday the reason for all this toil would be revealed, and he would find his reward.

The boy, Chiu Hua-hai, was serving as an apprentice to a woodcraftsman in the small, mountain town of Sanyi, Miaoli County in central Taiwan. He was one of many youths sent away to the famed community to become apprentices by their poverty-stricken fathers for the twin purpose of eliminating an expensive mouth from the family and receiving training in a marketable skill.

Sanyi, a small enclave encircled by mountains, as in years past is still populated by hundreds of woodcraftsmen, long-admired for their impressive artistry.

And today, Chiu is one of Sanyi's best woodcarvers. His skill in delicately shaping camphor and other woods into the likenesses of animals or gods is almost a local legend. Though not all the town's craftsmen have become as well-known, they have collectively helped turn Sanyi into a living monument to the profound beauty human hands can add to wood.

Despite blisters, failed escape attempts, corporal punishments, and sheer tedium, Chiu eventually surrendered to his fate—and in fact learned to love the elegant craft of working wood. It became, in his own words, "an unspoken, mysterious calling that was to guide me for the rest of my life."

Chiu shared a bond of spiritual kinship with other boys who served similar apprenticeship, one that remains strong to this day. Woodcraft for each of them evolved into more than a marketable trade; it became a fine art, which was something the old, surly master had understood all along as he hammered the labor of love into young Chiu.

Huang Kuo-nan, Ko Chin-kun, Huang Juei-yuan, and Chen Ching-jung are all renowned woodworkers in Sanyi who, along with Chiu, had backgrounds in poverty but earned fame and fortune with their craft. Huang Kuo-nan, for example, was brought to Sanyi when only eight years old, just after his father died, and Ko found himself a woodcarver's apprentice soon after a flood swept away his family's home.

But none of the craftsmen would have become adept without the strict training of the old masters. One of the legendary teachers of woodcraft in Sanyi was Li Chin-chuan. About 40 years ago the people of Tunghsiao, a town near Sanyi, planned to build a magnificent Matsu temple for which they summoned the great master Li. His decorations for the temple so impressed the villagers that many of them asked to become his apprentices. Among those apprentices were a few from Sanyi, including Ju Ming, who is now an internationally-acclaimed artist.

Ju, in fact, has served as an inspiration and precursor to artists like Chiu, Huang, and Ko. He departed from carving only traditional Buddhas and gods for family altars and shrines, and embarked on an adventure in originality. Ju developed a highly original art form, which drew as much upon the early philosophical Taoist concept of the "uncarved block" as it did on modern principles of abstract forms. [See FCR, February 1983.] He used as few cuts as possible in his wood sculptures, using the natural beauty of the original wood to add power to his creations. As a result, his wood (and later, bronze) statues depicted the essence, the very spirit, of living beings.

Experimentation breeds more experimentation, and many of the woodcraftsmen in Sanyi have followed Ju's example by developing their own individual styles. Chiu, for example, has stretched his imaginative powers to create a fascinating range of abstract works, such as one called "Worm-eaten, Pesticide-free." Along more traditional lines, he has also carved a chess set to be used in a four-way game, as well as barking dogs and ferocious leopards. He has even tried his hand at still-life scenes.

Huang Juei-yuan specializes in carving very stout human figures, or gigantic landscapes. One piece, entitled "Pressure," is hatchet-marked and massive, illustrating the tension between a young man and his surroundings. Huang wants to express emotions, rather than simply depict objects. He says he always looks for effective mediums through which he can tell the world how a young man thinks and feels.

In contrast to both Chiu and Huang, Chen Ching-jung focuses on humor. He carves gods like Ta Mo, performing comically human actions such as swatting a fly, or picking his ear. When carving human figures, he creates an illusion of clothing by retaining the natural features of the wood, including crags and hollows. In these types of carvings, only the face, or other simple distinguishing features, are clearly formed.

Huang Kuo-nan, on the other hand, has turned to surrealist expression, especially in his work "Illusion." He prefers to use poplar and cypress wood, rather than the traditional camphor. And in a direction different from the other woodcarvers, Huang produces more polished pieces, putting a smooth, almost jade-like finish to his artwork.

Tourists, especially from Japan, stream through Sanyi each weekend to inspect and buy the intricately-crafted woodwork. The town is intersected by only two main streets, lined with gift shops and workshops filling every available space. Despite the remoteness and small size of Sanyi, its history of craftsmanship in wood is lengthy, going back 200 years to a time when the then ubiquitous and fragrant local camphor trees provided—wood for worm-resistant furniture as well as art.

The Japanese played a key part in the international rise of Sanyi, which before World War I was no more than a sleepy town of Hakka villagers with unusual talents. Locals say a Japanese officer visited the area in 1901, and discovered that the impressive carvings were not only fragrant, but resistant to common insect pests. Besides the frag­rance, the officer smelled a potential fortune, and promptly set up a trading concern which eventually managed to corner most of the market in camphor wood products. At the end of the Japanese occupation in 1945, the firm was taken over by an enterprising villager named Liu I-chun, who expanded the business to include sale of camphor wood products to Hong Kong, Australia, the U.S., and various European countries.

Sadly, the vast exploitation of cam­phor trees quickly denuded the nearby hills of forests, so wood had to be trucked in from the central mountainous regions of Taitung, Tahsuehshan, Alishan, and Chushan. The problem has become even more severe today. Kuo Chin-kun, who is both woodcarver and owner of the Jeda Giftshop, says: "We are at a critical turning point, and the future may hinge on government policy. Camphor trees were eliminated from the Sanyi area just under three decades ago, and if the ban on felling trees in protected zones proposed by the National Park Bureau goes into effect next year, very few people will be able to afford the cost of importing camphor wood. Only craftsmen whose work possesses considerable market value will survive; everyone else will be out of business."

The rise of the wood carving trade in Sanyi to its forest-depleting zenith began in earnest when WU Chin-pao, a villager from Sanyi, was wandering over a mountain dotted with the stumps of felled camphor trees. The ragged, twisted pieces scattered about looked interesting, so he brought a couple home, polished and painted them, and set them up in the house as decorations. Visitors were startled by the naturally-shaped, almost human-like quality of his creations, and offered substantial sums of money to purchase them. Inevitably, word of the lucrative business opportunity spread among the villagers, and soon nearly everyone was selling camphor trunks. The woodcarving trade exploded, and the local forests disappeared within a few years.

Whatever the future may bring in terms of carving materials, Sanyi's dedicated creative artists will in the meantime continue to hew their paths to greater fame. Chiu, for example, will go to almost any length to get the feel of a subject before he picks up his woodworking tools. As he chews on a betel nut, Chiu speaks in an unpolished country dialect about a work in process: "When I decided to carve wooden crabs, I did just about everything I could to capture their spirit. I swam in the sea and caught them with my bare hands; I ate hundreds of them, and observed them for days at a time. How you feel about things determines how you carve them. I've done the same thing with cattle, dogs, and many other subjects—though I didn't eat the dogs!"

Chiu has been creating art pieces based on nature only for a few years; before that he restricted himself to traditional Buddhist subjects. The new direction was extraordinarily profitable, and it took him from utter poverty to riches almost overnight. Chiu now drives a brand new, gleaming-white sportscar, something most middle-class families in Taiwan could only dream about. But the country boy who used to curse his bruised and bleeding fingers while chipping away at river rocks is still the same at heart. His interests, other than carving, are those of a farmer. And he proudly proclaims he is also the loudest whistler in town.

Huang Juei-yuan, now 30, works during the day at a woodcarving factory, manufacturing items for export. But at night he comes home to his own wood shop, where he labors into the wee hours of the morning. He often sacrifices business interests to produce creative works, and once over-worked himself to the point of serious illness. But it was not serious enough to stop him from grabbing his carving tools the instant he recovered. "I call myself a woodpecker," he says, "a queer bird who pecks out a living—and art—in wood. I've harnessed the essence of fire in my work, and experienced the joy of creation."

Cheng Ching-jung expresses a comparatively modest attitude about his artistry: "I used to shun exhibitions of my work, until one day I took part in a joint exhibition sponsored by the government. Now I realize an artist shouldn't limit his vision to his own neighborhood; he must aspire to national or even world audiences. To this end, I've studied albums of Chinese antiques, and exam­ined art books published by Western museums. The ideas I've picked up are wonderful."

While the woodcraftsmen in Sanyi are doing everything they can to expand, improve, and promote their art, it remains unclear whether or not their efforts will be enough to guarantee the future viability of the craft. Some artists, like Huang Kuo-nan, have their doubts: "It takes at least ten years for an apprentice to learn the craft, and few young people these days have any desire to master this trade. They don't come for the same reasons we did. The economy of rural Taiwan has improved, and most youth have their sights set on a profes­sion that requires a college education. Those who do approach the old wood­carving masters come on their own, but usually stay no longer than six months. They can't take the hard work and discipline. True craftsmanship in wood is no hobby."

Competition among the craftsmen in Sanyi is keen. The moment an innovative form proves popular to buyers, it is copied in massive numbers by all the other gift shops in town. The god of wealth, Ta Mo, cherished by businessmen, can be seen on sale up and down the main streets, along with other well-loved characters such as Chung Kuei, the Chinese ghost-busting deity, and the usual auspicious creatures like carp or goats.

But commercialism has lowered the quality of the art, much to the dismay of purists like Huang Ji-sheng, who owns a local gift shop. He is also concerned that the market for Sanyi's woodcrafts is too narrow-the Japanese market accounts for 70 percent of sales, due in part to some cultural similarities. Most Japanese are familiar with deities and legendary figures such as Ta Mo, Chung Kuei, Kuan Yu, and other characters that are frequently carved in large quantities by Sanyi's artisans. Westerners know next to nothing about these figures, so they show far less interest in the carvings.

"I continually advise the local craftsmen to diversify their themes to attract more customers," Huang says, adding that "variation will do more than improve business, it will also encourage originality and bridge cultural barriers."

Huang says the need for originality is important enough to warrant the creation of a special foundation to sponsor talented craftsmen, and to finance tours abroad for them. Otherwise, he "fears the decline of woodcraft" may be close at hand: "Quite a few of the craftsmen over 30 years of age realize they will have no successor to carryon the trade after they die. Young people today are discouraged by the hard training, and that does not bode well for the future of the art," he says.

With the business side of the situation working against quality, and with a modern society that stresses high-tech professional skills rather than artistic mastery, many observers think the only way the high quality of woodcraft found in Sanyi can be preserved is through government sponsorship. With this form of support, joint exhibitions of works by promising unknown artists would be possible. Currently, the artists themselves rarely have enough money to pursue such ambitious projects on their own.

These days are a watershed in the history of the tiny community, and only time will tell if the craft that has made the small mountain town famous will be able to keep its art alive in the face of rising commercialism. Whatever transpires, be it survival through expanded marketing, governmental support, or the founding of effective artist co-ops, the accomplishments of today's craftsmen in Sanyi will surely evoke admiration for generations to come.