Sanyi, Taiwan's woodcarving center, looks to outsiders as though it is trying to save itself from becoming home to yet another sunset industry. But local carvers insist that this is merely a period of transition.
If you drive south from Taipei for about 130 kilometers, take the next exit from the Sun Yat-sen Freeway, continue north for a couple of minutes, and roll down your car window, you will almost certainly detect a curious and far from unpleasant scent. Slow down when you see the signpost to Sanyi township and the source of the smell will become apparent--hundreds of wooden articles for sale on either side of the road. Perhaps at this point, like many other people in the past, you will feel the urge to pull over and walk into one of the numerous stores to see if there is anything interesting. You are unlikely to be disappointed, for this is the home of Taiwan's woodcarving industry.
The articles displayed in these stores have a wide range of uses, from chopsticks and glass or cup coasters to huge log tables, from statues of deities to likenesses of animals. The raw materials for all this artistry--most of them imported--include camphor, elm , Chinese cypress, sandalwood, boxwood, and a few others, depending on what the wood is going to be used for. Sandalwood, for example, is good for making furniture because its hardness ensures that the tenon-and-mortise joints stay tight. But its porous surface make sandalwood less than ideal for carving.
The price range is also wide, varying from a few NT dollars to well over NT$1 million (US$35,100). Most storekeepers are more than happy to offer a cup of tea and chat with visitors about their displays or Sanyi's woodcarving industry in general--but be wary if you are serious about buying. One resident who is familiar with the market points out that nowadays a lot of the merchandise on display has been imported from mainland China, Vietnam, or other regions where manpower is cheaper than in Taiwan. In some stores, the first price mentioned by the owner is four times higher than the "real" price at which he is actually prepared to sell. Bargaining usually results in a deal at around half th e originally quoted price. "That makes buyers happy, because getting the seller down to half price is a major triumph in any negotiation," the resident says. "And it makes sellers happy too, because they end up selling at double their bottom-line price." (If the worst comes to the worst, however, it is perfectly acceptable o leave without duying anything, for the Chinese have a saying that friendship will survive the loss of a deal.)
Another short drive brings the visitor to the Museum of Wood Sculpture and nearby Shentiao ("god's sculpture") Village. The museum was established in 1995, and is Taiwan's only government-run museum specializing in the history and art of wood sculpture. Exhibits include a general introduction to the history and process of wood sculpture, Chinese and Western classical and contemporary works, Taiwan wood sculpture, Sanyi wood sculpture, and an exhibition area where Taiwan wood artists may display their work. "The message we want to get across is that woodcarving is not exclusive art that's only within the reach of wealthy people," says Liu Yu-min (劉渝民), the museum's director. "It's been part of our everyday lives for a long time and can easily be appreciated by the average person."
A few steps from the museum is Shentiao Village, a community of some fifty three-story buildings. Many residents live upstairs and reserve the ground floor for use as a workshop. Untreated timbers and tree roots occupy much of a typical downstairs working area. Although chain saws and other power tools have replaced most of the traditional ones, there is no discernible change in the artists' fierce concentration. Visitors are free to step in and watch a sculptor gradually work a timber into a statue. Artists occasionally take a break to chat with visitors, but never try to actively market their work, perhaps out of pride, more probably because most of them work on a contract basis, with galleries and retailers of wooden artifacts providing the raw materials and the sculptors contributing their skills: an arrangement that leaves them little time for personal creativity. "Art may be priceless, but artists can't live on that," says the owner of one of the workshops. "You have to be able to support yourself before you can do anything else."
Supporting itself, in the sense of struggling to stay alive, has been motivating Sanyi's woodcarving industry for a long time. About a century ago, camphor was the area's main 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 called Wu Chin-pao (吳進寶) found that many of these roots had taken on a beautiful appearance, so he took some home and used them as decoration. Later, a Japanese visitor saw these roots, thought they could well find a market in Japan, and worked with Wu to export them. The export of these "natural carvings," as museum director Liu calls them, brought Sanyi profit and encouraged more local people to get interested in the business. In the mid to late 1930s, some residents who wanted to maximize profits started to learn new skills from the Japanese, such as carving animals or figurines. They also set up a large-scale woodcarving workshop, which later also opened a school and thus nurture Sanyi's first generation of wood craftsmen.
But increasing business in first the Japanese and then the mainland markets was soon interrupted by the war against the Japanese (1937-45) and the civil war in mainland China between the Nationalists and the Communists, which only ended in 1949 when the former evacuated to Taiwan. Sanyi sank into the doldrums and stayed there until the early 1960s, when an American journalist came to Sanyi, saw the carvings, and wrote an article about them. Suddenly, Sanyi's artifacts jumped to the top of the list for souvenir hunters, particularly foreign tourists and US military personnel stationed in Taiwan. So successful did the township becom e that on weekends it was not uncommon to see lines of US military jeeps lining the dirt road in front of the wood carvers' stores.
The Japanese market also eventually recovered, and Sanyi's woodcarving reached its peak in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Low manpower costs and hard working carvers meant that Sanyi was able to meet foreign clients' demands on price, quality, and delivery deadlines, and as word of that spread, so the number of buyers increased. "It was all local wood and local manpower, so we made money out of both raw materials and craftsmanship," recalls Huang Kuo-nan (黃國男), who started his career at one of the factories at the age of sixteen and has been carving for more than three decades. "It might be small money compared to what you could make in other sectors, but for a small rural village that couldn't hope to meet the conditions for agricultural or industrial development, woodcarving was just about the only thing we could count on."
Foreign buyers kept the woodcarving workshops busy, but the downside was that carving whatever buyers wanted did nothing to help Sanyi build a distinctive local style. "In those days, all that mattered was carving as many things as possible as fast as possible, to meet foreign orders on time," Huang says. "We were basically factory workers who cared about productivity instead of art and creativity. Anything that sold was good carving." But lower production costs were Sanyi's principal advantage over the competition, so things became difficult in the mid 1980s, when the NT dollar underwent a sharp appreciation in value. Foreign buyers turned to Southeast Asian countries and the Chinese mainland.
The domestic market held out little help either, thanks to the departure of US army personnel after the United States severed formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, and a corresponding decline in the numbers of inbound tourists. Local collectors rarely came along, because woodcarving was and still is considered by most people as a craft rather than an art. But there was one positive spinoff from all this: Craftsmen at last had time to think seriously about the industry and its future.
"Like all the craftsmen of my generation, I was facing a career crisis," Huang says. "When there was no work, I had the time to figure out that if I wanted to stay in business I'd have to establish my own style, rooted in my own life experiences." Since then, most of his output has been inspired by Hakka culture or the island's rural life. "The outward appearance of a work of art can be copied and skills can be imitated, but the spirit is what stands out," he says. "Other craftsmen or artists can carve something that looks identical to mine, but it won't be in the same style, and I can't carve a piece with a mainland Chinese feel to it, because I haven't had the life experiences of a mainlander."
Compared with Huang, it seems that Sanyi's younger generation of wood sculptors are adopt ing a more liberal approach when it comes to expressing their ideas. Tseng Wu-lang (曾武郎) calls all his pieces, without exception, "Beautiful Overcoat and Meditation." He started sculpting when he retired in 1984 after ten years as an ir force sergeant. In his works, he combines various bits of wood to form, say, a Buddha's head or a female body, but with a hollow inside, which gives the work an abstract look. "The hollow, standing for meditation, is the idea I really want to express," he says. "The surface combines several woods, representing a beautiful outer garment or covering, and that's the medium through which I make my idea come to life."
Other Sanyi wood artists have different styles and ways of expressing their ideas, but they all have one thing in common--they want to promote wood sculpture as an art form, not just a craft. So far, however, they have not had a great deal of success. "Most clients here in Taiwan still can't accept wood sculpture as art," say s museum director Liu Yu-min. "Therefore, price is often the major factor in deciding whether to buy, not artistic achievement."
He backs up his point by reference to statues of gods and goddesses, some of the most common artifacts to be found in Sanyi's stores. An imported product, 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. "For worshipping or for conferring blessings, a god carved on the mainland or in Vietnam is as functional as a Sanyi one," Liu says. "If you're an average consumer, which one are you going to buy?"
On the basis that if you can't beat 'em you might as well join 'em, Sanyi storekeepers have set up trading companies to import wooden articles, and even businesspeople from out of town compete in that aspect of the trade. "They come when business is good and leave as soon as it turns bad," Liu says. "Making money is their main goal. They're not bothered about the survival and development of the local woodcarving industry."
But certainly not all stores are willing to become mere trading enterprises. Wu Yu-min (吳裕民), a wood carver and the fourth generation owner of a seventy-year-old family store, insists on selling pieces created by local craftsmen and artists. He does not agree that promoting woodcarving as art is a viable solution. "It's impossible for every family in Taiwan to appreciate art and collect expensive artistic woodcarvings," he says. "For me, a piece that you're comfortable with, that touches your emotions at some point, is a good piece."
Wu admits that whether or not woodcarving is a genuine art, occasional orders from collectors who are willing to pay more for local pieces are not enough to support any artist. Most Sanyi sculptors, young or old, can afford to spend only part of their time creating artifacts and must engage in other occupations to make ends meet. Wu Yu-min bakes Hakka tea cakes in a corner of his store, the sculptors based in Shentiao Village do their contract work, and Tseng Wu-lang spends a lot of his time painting or gold-plating imported items. "I wanted to become a full-time artist, but it didn't take me long to realize that art couldn't make me a living," Tseng says. "If you're thinking of supporting yourself by creating artworks, forget it."
None of which means that local artists are giving up the fight. "Competition isn't a bad thing, because it can force the industry to better itself," Wu Yu-min says. "So rather than going into a decline, I think the local industry is experiencing a transformation." But, in the eyes of local craftsmen, that transformation ought to happen in an environment that is fair to them. "The government should protect woodcarvings through tariffs," Huang Kuo-nan suggests. "When our higher manpower costs are evened out by tariffs, quality becomes the only factor left in the equation. I can't complain if I lose because of poor quality, but it isn't fair to let price instead of quality decide the future of Sanyi." Given the government's current policy of liberalization and internationalization, however, museum director Liu Yu-min believes the chances of protecting local woodcarving through the imposition of tariffs is small. Sanyi is going to have to rely on itself.
Whether in terms of art or commerce, Sanyi is still the first name that comes to mind when the subject of woodcarving is brought up in Taiwan. Few people know that the township was once named Sancha, meaning a junction where three roads meet. That geographical convergence no longer exists, having long ago been replaced by new roads, but when visitors come to appreciate the concentration of artists at Shentiao Village or negotiate the price of a mainland-carved God of War, it seems that the township is again at a junction: Will business, art, or some road in between lead Sanyi through its painful transformation?