Taiwan Today

Perhaps the greatest frustration a ceramic artist can experience is opening a kiln and finding that a carefully sculpted creation has cracked or shattered. But for jian nian master craftsman Chen San-huo (陳三火), his work begins with breaking bowls, plates and vases into pieces. Then, based on the colors and shapes of the fragments, he pastes the pieces onto human or animal figures made of concrete to create new works. “We collect and make use of what others have discarded,” he says. “Jian nian is basically a craft that turns waste into art.”

Jian nian, which literally means “cut and paste” and describes the basic process of the craft, is mostly seen on the roofs of Chinese temples. The works are not merely decorations as they also provide vivid insights into Chinese history, literature, mythology and religion. For instance, a complex display along the peak of a temple roof might portray a story from ancient history, complete with mounted generals, foot soldiers and servants, or depict a happier scene such as three auspicious gods extending their good will from their lofty perch. The practice has evolved over the years, and nowadays colored glass is more frequently used than porcelain fragments at new and recently renovated temples because the glass is cheap, readily available, easier to cut and shape, and more colorful.

The craft originated in Guangdong and Fujian in mainland China and was brought to Taiwan in the early 1910s by immigrants from the coastal provinces. When temple construction was booming in Taiwan during the 1920s, a large number of mainland craftsmen crossed the Taiwan Strait to help decorate the new buildings. These jian nian craftsmen can be divided into several schools, each of which added unique characteristics to the same basic techniques and became known for specializing in certain designs. He Jin-long (何金龍), a master craftsman from Guangdong, for example, focused on posture and had a partiality for creating military pieces. Meanwhile, Hong Kun-fu (洪坤福) from Fujian specialized in crafting intricate pieces and preferred making civilian figures.

Born in 1949 to a family of temple craftsmen in southern Taiwan’s Madou Township, Tainan County (now Madou District, Tainan City), Chen was exposed to various temple crafts at an early age. During summer and winter school vacations, his father and two elder brothers—a temple painter, jian nian craftsman and mason, respectively—would bring the younger Chen with them to work. In fact, Chen’s father had decided early on that his son would pursue a career in temple woodcarving. But after spending a summer watching the various craftsmen at a temple that his father and brothers were working on, the boy felt drawn to jian nian. “I was amazed by the way those craftsmen cut the glass or ceramics into pieces and created whatever they wanted,” Chen recalls. “I thought about it for a while and opted for jian nian instead of woodcarving as a career.”

Learning the Trade

The young Chen was so enthusiastic that he chose to drop out of his final year of junior high school to become an apprentice to his brother Li Shi-yi (李世逸), who had learned the craft from two of Hong’s apprentices. However, Chen was granted few privileges as a result of the familial relationship between master and student. He recalls that, like all the other apprentices, his job included everything from cleaning and cooking to preparing tools and materials. The one major benefit of the family connection was that Li actually taught his younger brother, something that was unusual in apprenticeships. “In traditional master-apprentice relationships, the masters were always busy working and the apprentices could only pick up the skills by observing their masters and then practicing on their own,” Chen says. “My brother wasn’t exactly the most even-tempered teacher, but he taught me everything he knew about the trade.”

Chen recalls one occasion during his apprenticeship when he created a phoenix by pasting the feathers uniformly across the wings of the creature. He remembers feeling quite proud of his work until Li told him that it looked unnatural because there are gradually widening intervals between the feathers at the tips of real birds’ wings. “What my brother was trying to say was that I should observe, think and pay attention to the detail rather than just do what everyone else does,” Chen says. “Things like fitting feathers don’t have much to do with technique, but they distinguish a jian nian craftsman from a jian nian worker.”

Chen completed his 40 months of apprenticeship in 1969 and became his brother’s partner. At that time, craftsmen were extremely busy due to the large number of temples being built and renovated. Over the course of around three decades until the early 2000s, the brothers worked on more than 100 temples across Taiwan. To save on transportation time, craftsmen usually lived on site and then moved to another temple when their work was completed. “Living a nomadic existence was hard,” Chen says. “But you got to observe how master craftsmen worked and then talk with them and learn from them at the end of the day.”

Over the years, Chen further honed his skills by working on restorations of old temples. One of the most rewarding experiences of his career came when he was invited to restore Zhujai Temple, which had been damaged by the massive earthquake that struck central Taiwan on September 21, 1999. The temple was built in 1777 in what is now Fengyuan District, Taichung City. Through the years, many master craftsmen from both mainland China and Taiwan had created outstanding works of jian nian during expansions and renovations of the temple. “To faithfully restore the pieces, I had to study the materials, styles, techniques and everything else about the craftsmen who created them,” Chen says. “It was much more difficult than producing new works, but it gave me the chance to learn from master craftsmen of the past.”

Zhujai Temple was also the place where Chen started to develop his unique jian nian technique—rather than shearing the glass or porcelain into desired shapes and sizes as has been done for centuries, he simply breaks the materials with a pair of pliers. Chen first employed this unusual approach at the temple one day when, for no particular reason that he can recall, he used the pieces of a smashed vase to create a human figure. Much to his surprise, the work drew a large amount of attention from fellow craftsmen and temple-goers, so much so that some of the admirers even offered to buy the piece. Encouraged by the warm response, Chen started to experiment with the technique in his free time. “The trick is figuring out where to hit something and how hard to hit it,” he says. “It’s hard to put into words, but I can pretty much break things into whatever shape I want.”

Fresh Interpretations

He used his signature technique professionally for the first time in 2003 to create works for Fuan Temple in Tainan. Hsiao Chong-ray (蕭瓊瑞), a professor of art history in National Cheng Kung University’s Department of History, sees Chen’s technique as a major breakthrough in jian nian that allows for new interpretations of the traditional craft. It is also significant that this evolution occurred at a time when demand for the time-honored trade was falling sharply.

By the early 2000s, when Chen was working on Zhujai and Fuan temples, many jian nian craftsmen had been forced to quit the profession. Mass-produced assembly kits of popular jian nian subjects had appeared on the market, and a lot of smaller temples were quick to begin using them. “There’s no technique involved since anyone can read the instructions and put them together in no time,” Chen says. “It’s cheaper and faster, but takes away all the individual style and beauty of the craft.” Today, only a few larger or older temples opt to employ craftsmen. To make ends meet, Chen developed a side business growing pomelos about 20 years ago, and the approximately NT$600,000 (US$20,000) that he earns from the annual harvest has been very helpful to his family.

The sudden death of Li in 2002 along with the decline in demand for jian nian craftsmen led to a change in Chen’s attitude toward his work. “I was all about doing my job, but my brother’s death made me think about jian nian,” he says. “I started to think of promoting it as an independent craft rather than just a form of decoration for temples. I wanted to take jian nian pieces down from temple roofs and bring them into art galleries.” After deciding on this new direction, Chen devoted considerable time to creating works using his signature technique. However, developing jian nian pieces for art exhibitions is more challenging than producing temple works. Typically, temple pieces are admired from a distance, so little attention is paid to certain aspects of them such as the backs of the figures. But when a piece is going to be observed up close, every side needs to be perfectly crafted.

Chen held his first solo exhibition in 2004 at the cultural center in his hometown. While many of the pieces were still of traditional jian nian subjects such as folk heroes and auspicious creatures, there were also new topics such as children playing with firecrackers. “There are rules and standards to follow when doing temple work, but I can go as far as my imagination takes me in my workshop,” he says. In 2007, Chen’s studio was selected as a Taiwan Crafts Workshop under a program organized by the National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute. To date, the program, which honors workshops for their outstanding craftsmanship, has recognized about 140 facilities across Taiwan covering all kinds of crafts.

In addition to creating new works, holding exhibitions and taking occasional temple jobs, Chen started teaching jian nian at his local community college in 2007. These students are not likely to become jian nian craftsmen or craftswomen, but that is fine with Chen. “I’m not training craftspeople,” he says. “I’m just sharing my work in the hope that more people can learn about it and maybe grow to like it.”

In 2010, Chen was recognized by the Council for Cultural Affairs (now the Ministry of Culture) as a master craftsman and important preserver of jian nian. A master craftsman he certainly is. Yet in a way, Chen is perhaps more of an innovator than a preserver. By leaving behind his shears and taking jian nian from temple rooftops to art galleries, Chen is helping evolve his craft and in so doing bringing the artistry of his life’s work to new audiences.

Write to Jim Hwang at cyhuang03@mofa.gov.tw