Chinese folk temples are a cacophony of color and rococo complexity. Animal and human figurines line the curved roofs; supporting beams and pillars are carved with dragons, lions, and intricately painted or carved scenes; wall panels, doors, and windows depict scenes from history, literature, religion, and myth. From the fierce door guards embellishing the entrance to the altar figures draped in ornate robes, temple visitors are immersed in a sea of cultural symbolism carefully and painstakingly crafted, at least in the best temples, by master craftsmen.
The visual motifs and iconography of a Chinese temple are no less complex—or fascinating—than of the cathedrals of Paris or Madria. And because of their complexity, they can be just as difficult to comprehend unless each category of decorative arts is examined individually. An entire treatise could be written, for example, merely by examining the cross beams inside the temple corridors that help support the heavy tiled roofs.
Attached to these beams are decorative panels and other embellishments that display detailed, expertly composed scenes carved from solid wood planks: Two generals on horseback struggle over a weapon in the midst of an intense battle. Another general coolly receives a diplomat sent by the enemy. A wise judge passes sentence on a plaintiff who humbly kneels in repentance. Such carvings not only give temples an aura of richness in honor of the gods worshipped there, but also remind visitors about traditional Chinese values, such as loyalty, patriotism, and filial piety.
Such wood panels portray decorative arts centuries old, arts that have been the province of highly skilled craftsmen for generations. But today, in Taiwan as well as the mainland, the remaining master craftsmen are finding few apprentices dedicated enough to carryon their traditional skills in the face of modern temple builders who find it cheaper and quicker to pour a cement mold than to pay a skilled artisan to fashion a meticulously carved wooden beam. Only in recent years has the public started to realize what may be lost if these crafts are not saved from extinction.
Fortunately, a few model craftsmen are still active as teachers, despite their age. One of the best-known master wood carvers is 91-year-old Huang Kwei-li (黃龜理), who has been wielding his knives, hammers, and chisels for more than seventy-five years. He has created thousands of carvings for more than eighty temples around the island. Although Huang is no longer able to endure the physical demands of temple carving, he continues to make smaller, free-standing pieces that reflect the same techniques and themes. He is also teaching a select group of younger carvers the fine points of the craft.
Born in 1902 to a farming family in Panchiao, just southwest of Taipei, Huang never expected to spend most of his life in temples. When he was nine years old, a flood destroyed the area’s farmland, forcing his family to move to nearby Chungho. At twelve, Huang began attending a private village school, where he learned to read and write. One day, when in his early teens, he passed by the Chiehyun Temple in Panchiao, which was undergoing repairs. The temple had hired a puppet troupe to celebrate the birthday of one of the temple’s gods. The vivid, colorful wooden puppets caught Huang’s attention. “I was curious to know how those lovely figures were made,” he says.
Huang says he soon visited the temple again, but this time he was attracted to the intricate wood carvings that he found throughout the structure. He looked for a long time, struck by how deft and precise the woodcarvers had been. It was not only the carvings themselves that struck him, but the process involved in making them. Right there, Huang made an important decision, then hurried home and begged his father to let him study woodcarving. His father talked to a friend, Chen Ying-pin (陳應彬), a renowned temple designer and carver who was overseeing the repair work on the Chiehyun Temple. At fifteen, Huang was formally apprenticed to Chen.
In those days, apprenticeship involved a lot of hard work that had little to do with actually learning the craft. “For the first year, I had to do all kinds of things: clean, cook, carry water and wood, even carry kitchen scraps from far away to feed the pigs,” Huang says. These chores occupied most of his time and exhausted his energy. “Only late at night could I find time to learn the skills needed to become a carver, like sharpening knives. I had to learn to sharpen twenty different kinds of knives to different degrees of thickness.”
A year later, Huang was allowed to enter a workshop at the temple and began learning the real skills of the craft. “I started with the basic techniques, and carved the less important parts and did the finishing work,” he says. Huang thus became proficient at handling such things as the trees and other landscape or decorative parts of the carvings.
At first, Huang wanted to learn more than just woodcarving. He also wanted to know how to design and build the main wooden structure of a temple, which demands more hard labor, such as placing beams or pillars. But Huang’s master thought he was better suited for the more refined work of woodcarving, because of his ability at making small figures and his tendency to work with the slow determination of a perfectionist. His master began calling him “Kwei-li,” which means “slow as a turtle and as precise as a principle.” Eventually, Huang dropped his original given name and adopted the new one.
After completing his three-year apprenticeship at eighteen, Huang worked as the chief carver on Chen’s team. After two more years of working and practicing at home, he began receiving his own commissions to do the decorative carving on various temples around the island.
Huang’s early reputation was built through the competitive system that was employed for many temple projects. According to Wang Ching-tai (王慶台), the author of several books on traditional wood carving and dean of the sculpture department at National Taiwan Academy of Arts (NTAA), a temple would often hire two teams of woodcarvers, each consisting of six to ten craftsmen. Each team would work on a separate half of the project, usually on a tight schedule. “In this way, the carvers would do their best and work hard because they knew it would affect their reputation,” Wang says. “Usually only carvers with true talent would take on such a competition.”
At twenty-six, Huang worked as the leader of a team on such a competition for the Wantan Matsu Temple in Pingtung county, southern Taiwan. As the leader, he was responsible for designing as well as carving. His main competitor was a 52-year-old veteran woodcarver. When the work was finished, criticism favored Huang, and he was soon being hired to lead projects allover the island. “The number of temples I have worked on is much larger than most people realize,” Huang says. Most of his assignments involved repair work or reconstruction. Still, Huang usually had the chance to incorporate his own designs and creations into a project. His works can be found on many well-known temples that are also popular tourism sites, including the 200-year-old Tsushih Temple in Sanhsia and the Lungshan Temple in downtown Taipei.
Huang’s work includes carvings for nearly every wooden section of a temple, “In traditional Chinese wooden buildings, almost every part of the structure can serve as a blank space for carving,” explains Wang Ching-tai. “As it developed over the years, each part took on a specific decorative function and became associated with a specific type of subject matter or decoration.” This applies to all the major horizontal and vertical support beams, braces, brackets, and finials, as well as the altar sanctuary. For example, a temple’s “sparrow braces,” the small horizontal beams that help to support longer beams, took on a curved shape, often in the form of an animal, to soften the angular lines of the upper beams.
Many of Huang’s best carvings are those made on the horizontal support beams found just inside a temple’s entranceway, known in Chinese as yuan kuang (員光). He has produced more than one hundred of these carvings, including many of those at the Tsushih Temple. One particularly impressive example of his work is a pair of yuan kuang done in 1920 at the Lin Ancestral Temple in Taichung, central Taiwan.
The two carvings depict ancient legendary battle scenes. In one, a Chou dynasty general fights off seven mountain demons; in the other, three female nature spirits engage two Taoist immortals in battle. The scenes are full of vigorous movement, arms with swords and lances lifted high, faces fierce with anger. Each compositional element leads dramatically across the scene toward the central point of the battle. Such battle scenes are a recurring subject in Huang’s temple carvings, most of them appearing on the yuan kuang.
According to Wang Hung-chu (王宏舉), a research assistant in NTAA’s graduate folk arts program, where Huang teaches, the yuan kuang is an important decorative element in traditional temples. It has often been the place where wood carvers have distinguished themselves, especially during competitions. The scene on a yuan kuang can be viewed from both back and front, giving it a three-dimensional quality. Because of this, it demands great carving dexterity and a delicate touch. The carver must also produce a complex scene with a sense of distance and depth in a small space.
Wang explains how this effect is achieved: “Traditional temple woodcarvers are not familiar with the Western concept of perspective. They base their works on observations of traditional dramatic stage arrangement.” Most often these observations are made at the performances held at temple celebrations. “The experience of watching Taiwanese opera, for example, has deeply influenced Huang’s style,” Wang says. These operas, which are colorful displays of singing and stylized drama, have also helped woodcarvers in portraying various characters. Many of the poses, for instance, are reminiscent of opera movements.
The operas are also a valuable source of subject matter since they draw on the famous literary and historical stories that are important in temple decoration. Huang, for example, often depicts scenes from The Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三國演義), a classical novel set in the third century, and The Legend of Deification (封神榜), a historical romance written in the sixteenth century that revolves around a series of military expeditions and is embellished by Taoist and Buddhist legends. Other carvings are de rived from mythology, particularly stories about the Yellow Emperor (黃帝), the legendary first ruler of China.
The books that contain these stories are another important reference, especially the older illustrated versions. Huang has collected many of these books, containing valuable woodblock prints that were brought to Taiwan from Mainland China during the Ching dynasty. In his line of work, Huang says, “reading and imagination are equally important.”
Although worshippers often cannot readily identify the particular episode depicted in a carving, most are familiar enough with these works that they can respond to the basic themes that are expressed, such as patriotism or filial piety. “These messages are deeply entrenched in the audience’s mind,” says Wang Ching-tai. Like the carvers themselves, the public has also been exposed to the stories, characters, and even poses found in temple carvings through watching opera performances, reading popularized versions of classical novels, or even watching prime-time historical dramas on television. Carvings such as Huang’s thus represent another manifestation of traditional teachings as part of the popular imagination.
Huang himself, however, has an especially thorough knowledge of his subject matter. He knows the details of all the characters’ clothing, manners, and personality, as well as the weapons they carry and what kind of animals they ride. With a story in mind, he simply marks on the surface of a piece of wood the positions of the figures, animals, flowers, trees, and birds. Except for teaching purposes, he finds no need to make a detailed preparatory outline in pencil or pen. “My knife is like my pen,” he says. “It closely follows my thinking.”
Huang’s artistic skills are best reflected in his characterization, figure proportions, and especially the scenic arrangement. For each type of scene, Wang Ching-tai explains, there are certain rules to follow. “For fighting scenes, the poses are emphasized,” he explains. “Scenes of singing or slower movement stress the eyes [of each figure]. This helps to differentiate each personality and to create an overall mood.”
A good example of the former is the “J-pose,” a movement taken from Chinese opera in which one leg is bent and dramatically held in the air in mid-stride. In portraying this pose, the figure is often shown in profile or contrapposto to create a more dynamic, exaggerated sense of movement. In literati scenes, the importance placed on the eyes helps reveal the temperament, especially the virtues or vices, of a character. This subtle dramatization demands considerable woodcarving skills. “A literati or a singing scene is the most challenging work,” Huang says.
A temple woodcarver must also consider the placement of the work. Since most of these scenes are near the ceiling, figure proportions must be adjusted to the perspective of the viewer below. The head-to-body ratio of a human figure or god, for example, is one to five. And the figure-to-animal ratio of a person on horseback is one to two. “This makes the carving more substantial and solid, and creates a more appealing visual effect,” Wang says.
Huang has found that adding landscape elements, such as mountains, trees, and stones, can create a more dynamic composition. A woodcarver usually employs a standard method in portraying these elements, he says. For example, the trunk of a tree is hidden in the bottom level of activity, and the branches and leaves are seen on the upper surface, framing the figures. The types of trees and plants portrayed are also standard and include pine, willow, and bamboo. Buildings and towers are also important to the composition as well. “Towers can add depth and serve as the lines that separate different scenes,” Huang says. “They also can make the picture more complete.”
Another important consideration for a temple woodcarver, Huang says, is the Chinese system of five primary elements—metal, wood, water, fire, and earth—known as wu hsing (五行), which is related to the Chinese system of geomancy. “A real master must understand the interactions, complementary or contradictory, among the wu hsing,” he says. For example, if a temple is built close to the ocean or a river, the designer might include more flame-like forms in the decorations, to create a balance between water and fire. Woodcarvers should be knowledgeable about other aspects of geomancy as well. “The location of a temple and the height of the pillars supporting the roof are closely related to the surrounding environment,” Huang explains.
In addition to ornamental architectural decorations, Huang has also excelled in carving free-standing statues of Chinese gods for the temple sanctuaries. One of the best examples of these is a pair of six-foot-tall attendant gods carved in 1929 for the Chaolung Temple in Pingtung county, southern Taiwan. Huang portrayed each of the two figures, Chienli Yen (with eyes that can see one thousand miles) and Shunfeng Erh (with ears that can hear sounds in the far distance), with intense, frightening features and an imposing bearing. He took special advantage of the undulating strips of cloth that traditionally surround these two figures to create a highly dramatic effect.
Whatever type of temple work a carver is undertaking, Huang believes three abilities are essential: “the abilities to design, to follow through on a central idea or theme, and to present one’s works for public criticism.” Huang also thinks that a good woodcarver must be able to envision an entire work, including every detail down to fingers and hair, before taking up a knife. “Carving is the last step,” he says.
In recent years, Huang has worked on smaller-scale carvings, mainly small statues and decorative screens in highly polished camphor wood. Although these are not meant as temple decorations, they portray the same types of subject matter. These include the popular sea goddess Matsu, and the gods of happiness, prosperity, and longevity, a well-known trio that often adorns temple roofs. Chinese literary and historical sources also continue to inspire Huang’s current work. He does not express any great loss at having given up temple work since his eightieth birthday more than ten years ago. “I can carve what most interests me now,” he says.
Nevertheless, Huang continues to play a special role in efforts to maintain the craft of temple carving, especially since he began gaining widespread recognition about thirty years ago. From 1964 to 1974, he had his first teaching stint as a woodcarving instructor at the National Taiwan Academy of Arts. He was awarded the position despite not having a graduate degree—or even a high school diploma—a rare achievement at colleges in Taiwan. What he did have was the recommendation of the well-known painter Lee Mei-shu (李梅樹), who had directed the Tsushih Temple reconstruction project, where he discovered Huang’s talents.
Huang has received other honors in recent years as well. In 1985, he was among the first group of traditional artists and craftsmen to earn the Ministry of Education’s Arts Heritage Award. He was also awarded by the ministry as one of seven folk arts masters in 1989. This year, Huang was recognized with his first gallery exhibition, which included examples of his recent free-standing sculptures and about fifty photographs of his best temple works. After opening in Taipei in October, the exhibition traveled to four other locations around the island.
Currently, Huang is again teaching at NTAA in the school’s master of folk arts program, set up in 1991. Four experienced temple woodcarvers were admitted to the three-year program, the first of its kind in Taiwan. But although he has these four students, Huang does not have any formal apprentices. In fact, he is aware of the difficulties in passing down the traditional arts to the younger generation and is worried about the decline of his craft.
“The education system is not favorable to the survival of traditional arts,” he says. Even for those studying woodcarving at NTAA, the time allotted to actual carving practice is limited. For undergraduate students, there are only two to three hours of class a week. In a two-year program, a total of only sixteen days are devoted to hands-on work. “Some students may be intelligent and have a talent for carving,” Huang says, “but it’s a pity there is no time for them to get more practice.”
Practice and hard work, he contends, are important not only to develop skill, but also one’s creativity and powers of observation. He believes this involves more than simply following a good master: “Imitation is important in the early stage of learning, but later, one has to use the imagination to really achieve anything.”
Huang fears that younger people to day are not willing to put in the effort—and accept the low pay—that is part of becoming a proficient woodcarver. “In our time, we earned one hundred [NT] dollars a month,” he says. “But we got from the work something beyond money. There was a sense of accomplishment. Now young people are not satisfied even if you pay them six hundred dollars [US$22] a day. And they are less willing to go through the slow process of building up a reputation.”
The modem temple construction system, Huang says, also cannot accommodate true craftsmen in most cases. It simply is not economically feasible to allow the time needed to create high-quality woodcarvings. Many of the temple parts that once provided a showcase for carvers are now made from cement molds. The small amount of traditional work still being done is mostly for reconstruction and historical preservation projects. Huang’s students at NTAA are among the handful of traditional wood carvers left on the island, and the school is not sure it will be able to continue the program next year.
At ninety-one, Huang is still eager to help pass on his craft, but he knows he cannot accomplish the task alone. He hopes that the government can set up competitions, exhibitions, and grant pro grams as incentives. “To preserve the traditional arts,” he says, “the government must provide strong support for those who perform their skills well.”