It is bizarre to come on an entirely disorderly room in so modern a building as the white-painted residence of the Symphony. Stones creeping from the doorstep spotted the floor, a bed, chairs, a low cabinet, and even the tables. Dust motes flew in the air on our entrance, some growing so tired that they decided to rest on the furniture. A man putting on a peaked cap, and wearing a loose fitting jacket and a pair of blue jeans, was beckoning to us from the far end of the room. We were hesitant. His workshop was occupied by the army of rocks, leaving no room to accommodate us. But he hopped over the rocks, grinning from ear to ear: "Come in. I have been expecting you."
One of our photographers entered the room and put down her instrumentalities, and we found that it was impossible to fit in another guest. While we were chitchatting with his wife, also barred from the room, some young musicians came and went. I believe they must have grown accustomed to Chao Chin-chu's special hobby. They said hello to us and left us in peace.
Inside the workshop, Chao was smoothing a rough slab with a file. He placed two finished ink-slabs on the table and encouraged me to "caress" them. "One of them originated in mainland China; the other from the riverbed of Erhshui in central Taiwan. Compare the quality of the two. The latter is much softer and smoother," Chao said. I hob-nobbed at his table, fingered the stones, nodded my head, and ambled back to the corridor.
Chao then carried a huge ink-slab, weighing 60-odd kilograms, to a public bathroom. He placed it under a special washing tank, turned on the tap, and rubbed the surface of the slab with a piece of emery cloth amid the running water. He then picked up a more finely ground abrasive paper and further polished the slab. We couldn’t help asking him: "Don't you think the cold water and the weight of your huge rocks are harmful to your violinist's fingers?" Chao shook his head: definitely.
Filling in our picture of this unique figure, we re-surveyed his home. Outside the building, electric saws and drills were scattered amid the rocks. A huge ink-stone—evenly carved and with a heart in its center-stood solitary on the green lawn. "I don't want this piece. It's too symmetrical, too neat," Chao remarked.
The small courtyard of his house is also a workshop. A drilling machine, his own brainchild, stood by a trove of huge rocks. To show us the process of his work, Chao picked up a chisel and hammer and began to fashion a new slab. Crushed stone particles jumped out from under his chisel. He put on a pair of glasses to protect his eyes. Concluding his demonstration, and before entering his lobby, Chao lifted a hemp sack to reveal a huge ink-slab weighing 120 kg. "This is not for sale. I intend to send it to the National Museum as a gift," he explained.
Asked how a violinist happened to channel his life onto so different a track, Chao explained: "Besides playing the violin, I am a practitioner of Chinese calligraphy. A Chinese proverb reads: 'If you want to set your work right, you must first polish your tools.' I knew that the rocks near Erhshui were top raw material for ink stones. But local inkstone makers were mass-producing them as handicrafts and selling them to the Japanese at low prices. I believe this commerce to be unjustifiable. We should not wholesale our cultural treasures. For me, the yan-tai must be a work of art."
The inkstones may emerge in traditional form.
He elaborated further: A work of art must express its author's own language. Pai Chu-yi, a Tang Dynasty poet, said in a poem entitled Green Stone: "The stone is mute, I am speaking for him." For Chao, a good ink-slab must retain the natural shape of the rock. "Nature is beauty. My principle is to carve as little as possible. The pond and cover of an ink-slab must harmonize in shape with the natural form of the rock," Chao said.
As a result, instead of excavating a shallow pond in an ink-slab, Chao wants to dig as deep down in the rock as possible. And instead of smoothing and polishing the raised border of the slab, he keeps its natural craggy shape and grain.
He did not reach this point of view all at once. Five years ago, when he first tried his hand at this art form, Chao went along with traditional shapes. He would vividly carve out a water buffalo, a bunch of grapes, even landscapes, on the rim of the slab. Such work was very time-consuming. In one of his early masterworks, Chao carved several bamboo trees in fine detail. The work is so explicit that each small leaf is visible. And scattering amid his bamboo grove are a cowherd and several head of cattle. On the upper part of the slab, a mountain range overlooks a small village and a riverlet trickling by. To the right, facing the slab, are carved the slots of five paddy fields. "They are used for different pigments for Chinese classical paintings," he said.
Later, Chao discovered that rocks retrieved from the Lo Chi riverbed are round instead of flattened, encouraging him to make use of their depth to create more definitely three-dimensional and more simplified works. Now, after years of development, his masterpieces have won high critical acclaim both at home and in Japan.
Famous wood sculptor Ju Ming discusses Chao's achievements: "Flat and dexterously carved traditional ink-slabs have persisted for more than 20 centuries. The three-dimensions and simplified structure of Chao's slabs have finally elevated such handicrafts to art."
Ju Ming recalls his first encounter with Chao's creations at the home of a friend, Tsai Jung-yu, a local potter. Tsai had acquired one of Chao's slabs, which is inscribed with a line from Ma Chih-yuan, a famous poet of the Yuan Dynasty. It reads simply: "All kinds of love for autumn." Ju Ming was taken by the unique creation and inquired if it was an ancient treasure.
Thereafter, Chao noted, many have asked to buy his dexterously carved inkslabs. He turns down most requests. He does not want to dilute his work quality with mass production. "There is a Chinese proverb which warns that excessive attention to trivia saps the will. I want to bring my technique as close to natural beauty as possible," he said.
To collect his rocks, he rises early—at 5 a.m.—and drives his truck to the banks of the Lo Chi to comb for aqueous rocks. As a novice, he would bring a chisel along. "Try black, brown, and green rocks with your chisel; if the blade goes in, you can rest assured that they are the rocks you want. Otherwise, they are fresh mountain rocks. Aqueous rocks are not as hard. After slow exposure to the air and the sunlight, you don't have to treat these rocks specially. But aqueous rocks fresh from water pits on the mainland will split into shards once they are exposed to air and sunlight. On the mainland, after digging out rocks from the riverbed, you must wrap them in cloth, and store them in shaded places. The rock is as soft as clay for carving. But you must be quick in your work. With gradual exposure to the air, the rock grows harder and harder. Strange ... once you finish your work, the rock turns as hard as steel plate. I must say, rocks are animated. They have their own lives," he mused.
Inkstone in use—Left, a black jade reservoir receives a metered quantity of water, in which the inkslab is slowly rubbed; right, the calligrapher proceeds with his work, while inkslab and a tiny water pitcher stand ready to replenish his ink supply
After trucking the rocks back home, he first observes the natural shape of each selected piece before starting his work. To him, this is the most important part of the whole operation. "I especially object to a flat-bottomed ink-slab. It doesn't matter to me if a slab is a bit rickety. Inserting a folded piece of paper will make it stable ... though I find the public has difficulty accepting this concept. During my recent exhibition in Taipei some visitors even went so far as to press heavily on one side of a slab to check if it was unstable. It is, of course, easy for me to flatten the reverse side of a yan-tai; but I intend to safekeep the rock's natural shape as best as I can," Chao asserted.
When asked if his career as a professional violinist has helped in his new orientation, Chao replied in this way: "Physical achievement is an unreliable goal. For me, the technical manipulation of a violin belongs in this area. Though an Olympic champion may find it difficult to outdo himself, a great musician in his 70s still has to practice before taking the podium, though he has practiced eight hours a day all his life. Why? He is afraid of making mistakes. Then, if you ask a kid if he can use chopsticks, he will show you his dexterous skill, though he may only use them three times a day. Playing the violin brings me only physical instead of spiritual joy. To carve ink-slabs is different. It is creative work, rooted in our own culture. I will admit that I have adopted the serious attitude I devote to my violin to my new work practice."
One of his rooms holds stacks of dozens of finished ink-slabs. He compared one of them to Niagara Falls, pointing to the sharp drop from the rim to the pond. To one side was a rock, in appearance, intact. Chao suddenly separated the rock into two halves—one a lid, the other the slab. "I want to prove that the cured aqueous rock won't easily absorb water. After sealing a slab with a lid, water or ink will remain in the pond for as long as you like," Chao explained.
To make a lid and slab from the same piece of rock, Chao first inserts a drill into the natural rock to divide it. "Do not saw it open, otherwise the lid will slip away too easily," Chao told us his trick.
I was amazed to find a bronze piece amid these rocks. Chao opened the bronze lid and showed us an ink-slab inside. "On our honeymoon, my wife and I decided to escape from crowds. We stayed in the small town of Shuli to carve inkstones, including this one—as green as an emerald. I cast the bronze container to protect it. It is a souvenir, not for sale."
Upon another table stood an inkwell, a rock carved out in the center to hold ink. "A Chinese-painting professor ordered one from me while visiting my exhibition in Taipei. He asked that I fashion a well with a diameter of just eight inches. I was so furious that I asked the gallery to ask him, in return, if he used a compass to draw the moon in his paintings. His request reflected two things: First, he lacks a true sense of beauty. Regardless of the shape of the rock, he wants a round well. Second, he is snobbish enough to treat himself as the artist and others as craftsmen," Chao raged.
His countenance greatly relaxed when he spotted a set of ink-slabs nearby. A rock in the shape of a seated old man stood next to a lidded slab. The old-man rock is a paperweight. The lid is the ink-slab itself, its lower part a casket to contain brushes.
Some of the ink-slabs contain colorful internal patterns. "They may be animal fossils," Chao said. "You don't know how beautifully they show up until they are placed under the water."
I nodded in assent and left the remainder of a great variety of ink-slabs at peace. When asked about the history of yan-tai in China, Chao searched for one of his articles on ink-slabs. According to his article, relics unearthed from a Chin tomb in Hupei Province and a Western Han tomb in Honan Province, reveal that early ink-slabs were both simple and crude. They were round or cube-shaped stones paired with another small stone for grinding the ink.
Late in the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.), slab designs began to grow more elaborate. Most yan-tai then had four legs, for at the time, people sat on mats instead of on chairs. During the period from the Three Kingdoms (220 A.D.-280 A.D.) to the Tsin Dynasty (265-420), porcelain yan-tai made an appearance.
The flowering of culture and art during the Tang Dynasty (618-907) also saw the further development of ink-slabs. A greater variety of raw materials came into use. The most well-known were the duan-yan, made from certain rocks from Kwangtung Province. Chengni-yan, another type, were made of filtered river silt; natural silt deposits also came into use at this time. These were treasured and were sent as tribute to the Imperial court every year by the areas which produced them. Most Tang slabs were shaped like dustpans, still primitive in appearance.
During the Ming (1368-1644) and Ching (1644-1911) Dynasties, slab development reached a peak. In addition to those made of stone, porcelain, and river silt, there were also exquisite slabs of copper, iron, jade, and lacquered sand. These were shaped into lifelike forms—flying birds, swimming fish, jumping insects, and blooming flowers. Some were engraved with imitations of the master-pieces of celebrated painters and calligraphers. A number of scholars and civil officials made it a hobby to collect ink-slabs.
Among the many skillful carvers of ink slabs who emerged at that time, Ku Er-niang, who carved duan-yan, was especially well known among both the upper class and ordinary people. Ku learned her skills from her father-in-law and husband, both well-known craftsmen of yan-tai in Kiangsu Province. Widowed, Ku started her carving career late in the reign of Ching Emperor Kangshi (1662-1722). She carved duan-yan for many distinguished men of letters, but only a few of her works have been handed down.
Duan-yan have unique properties, among them, being as smooth as the skin of a baby. It is said that at one Imperial examination in Changan during the Tang Dynasty, all the candidates found their ink frozen during a sudden heavy snow, except one man from Kwangtung who used a duan-yan. Later, when all his ink was exhausted, he blew on the ink-slab, and gradually, the duan-yan was covered with beads of moisture; he was able to continue writing.
Besides keeping the ink from drying up and protecting the brush from wear, duan-yan are remarkable for their natural veins and patterns. Craftsmen consider a duan-yan marked with a shi-yan—a round pattern called the "eye" of a stone -the most valuable. Legend has it such an eye can forecast the weather, shining brightly on clear days and dimming when it rains.
A story set during the Northern Sung Dynasty tells of Pao Chen, a legendary judge who was about to leave his post for a new one. He was so honest and upright that he refused all gifts from the local gentry before sailing away. As he sailed under a cliff, the weather suddenly turned cloudy, and it began to rain. Pao Chen was alarmed by the sudden change, and upon questioning his men, learned that they had secretly accepted the gift of a duan-yan. As soon as he had thrown the ink-slab into the roiling waters, the weather cleared; then, a large area of green land emerged where the ink-slab had fallen.
According to Chao, the locally produced Lo Hsi rocks were first excavated around the end of the Ching Dynasty. During the Japanese occupation of the island, one prince even visited the island to savor the beauty of the stone. In addition to the delicate, polished quality of the rock, it features graceful and beautiful patterns.
While we were bidding farewell to Chao, his three-year-old daughter was frolicking in the courtyard. The huge ink-slab—20 cm high, 200 cm long, 66 cm wide, and weighing 212 kg—later served as her stool. Only one tenth of it served her purpose.