Taiwan Today

Every year, Taiwan hospitals see some 1,200 patients admitted with severe spinal cord injuries, with an average age of 27. It is tough for anyone to cope with losing motor and sensory functions in the prime of life, but Hsu Tsung-huan (許宗煥) has managed to overcome his physical as well as spiritual challenges to build a career in pottery.

Hsu was born in 1965 in Dacheng Township, Changhua County in central Taiwan. Although a coastal township, Dacheng is actually a farming community where rice, peanuts and sweet potatoes are grown, so Hsu’s childhood was divided between school and helping with farm chores. Like many other young people from Dacheng, Hsu left home to look for work in the city after completing his junior high school education. The young man tried several different trades, but at the age of 18 entered an apprenticeship at an auto repair and maintenance shop in Banqiao District, New Taipei City. “The economy was developing, and more and more people began to be able to own cars, so it was something with a promising future,” Hsu says. “My plan was to learn the skills, save some money and someday run a small shop of my own.” His plan, however, was terminated by an accident at work. A co-worker at the shop carelessly released a hydraulic jack when Hsu was working under a car.

Hsu suffered permanent paralysis from the waist down. “Having walked, run and jumped for 20 years, such an accident paralyzes not only your body, but also your life,” he says. The young man was hospitalized for several months, and, like many such patients, chose to live in isolation after returning home. “We have no control over our excretory system, which means we’re very likely to embarrass ourselves in front of people,” he says. “The best way to avoid the situation is to stay away from the outside world.” For more than a year, Hsu spent most of his time eating, sleeping, reading newspapers and watching television at home.

Time could not heal Hsu’s spine, but it gradually allowed him to accept the physical challenges he had to face. “Life would never be the same for me,” he says. “I started to wonder if there was something I could do to at least support myself.” After learning about several physically challenged artists from the newspaper and television, Hsu thought of giving painting a try. He says that although he had never had any formal training in art, he liked to paint and did quite well in primary and junior high school art classes. Hsu had not found time to paint after he started to work, but his recuperation allowed him to immerse himself in the art again. “It wasn’t just an attempt to develop the skill to make a living,” he says. “Painting actually served as a kind of medicine that helped me find some spiritual comfort.”

In 1986, with encouragement from his mother and brother, Hsu visited the Catholic Non-profit Tsz-Ai Mercy Hospice of Taichung Diocesan Body Corporate in Changhua City to check out a pottery training course, which was designed to help physically challenged people gain enough skill to find a job in a pottery factory. “My understanding about pottery was limited to the painted pottery and black pottery in the [Chinese] history textbooks,” he says. “I decided to stay only because there were four hours of painting class each week.” Although initially not particularly interested in pottery, Hsu gradually discovered the beauty of the craft. He completed the one-year training with the best performance in the class, and was then offered a place as a teaching assistant. “The pay for a teaching assistant wasn’t much, but it wasn’t just about the money,” he says. “What really mattered to me was that I was able to ‘stand’ on my own again.”

While working as a teaching assistant, Hsu participated in various craft competitions for the physically or mentally challenged. He won first prize in the Third National Skill Competition for the Handicapped in 1990 and then represented Taiwan the following year at the Third International Abilympics held in Hong Kong. Hsu won a “work of excellence” award at the Hong Kong event, but the trip—specifically the flight—was especially inspiring. “I didn’t know the sky could be so blue up there, and you have to brave the clouds before you can see that sky,” he recalls. “To me, that experience meant that in life you also need to go through the clouds—challenges, that is—to see the blue sky.”

While teaching and honing his skill in pottery, Hsu also continued painting, and from 1987 to 1992 attended a Chinese painting class held by the county government. For those five years, he spent more than an hour in his wheelchair each way going to and from the painting class in the evening, when students in the pottery class were relaxing. Hsu focused on traditional Chinese realistic painting, which is characterized by fine brushwork and close attention to detail. In 1990, one of his paintings featuring a Chinese woman was collected by the National Changhua Living Art Center.

Out on His Own

The teaching job lasted for five years until the program was terminated in 1993. Hsu explains that students in the course had been unable to find work in any pottery factories, since most cannot work as efficiently as normal workers, and jobs had become even scarcer after many of Taiwan’s pottery factories moved overseas. There was no point, therefore, in continuing an employment program for the physically challenged that could not help them find work. Leaving Tsz-Ai, Hsu decided to set up his own workshop. Initially, he was uncertain about whether to pursue painting or pottery, but eventually decided on the latter. “My purpose was to support myself by selling my works,” he says. “There seemed to be a bigger market for pottery products, which can play a greater role in daily life than paintings, which are for show only.”

Hsu also debated over where he should set up his workshop. Yingge District in New Taipei City was an obvious option since the place is known as the center of Taiwan’s pottery industry and many visitors go there to look for pottery works. As a new, unrecognized artist, however, Hsu was not sure if he could survive the strong competition in Yingge, so he decided to modify part of the family home and set up the only pottery workshop in Dacheng. “Probably no one would purposely come to Dacheng to look for a teapot,” he says. “But the bright side was that I didn’t have to worry about the rent and there was—and still is—no competitor.”

Considering that his physical condition limits his output of finished pottery, Hsu decided to focus on crafting teapots, as they fetch a higher price per piece than other types of pottery used in daily life, such as plates or cups. That is due to the higher level of skill required to craft a teapot, which must be well balanced in the hand, allow the tea to flow smoothly and enhance the aroma of the brew.

Pottery clay has long been considered the best material for making teapots, while using a potter’s wheel to form the pot and then finishing the spout, handle and lid by hand is a common technique for making them. Working with a potter’s wheel, however, is very difficult for Hsu since it requires the use of strength from the waist to keep the maker balanced and the arms and hands steady as the wheel turns. “It’s a technique that normal people can gain through practice, which is not the case for me,” Hsu says. “I’d never regain any strength from my waist, and I had to find another way to do it.” After experimenting with various approaches, Hsu hit upon the solution of lying against a board placed on the wheelchair’s armrests. The board acts as a support for his upper body and elbows so that he can handle the clay steadily on the wheel.

Another key technique that determines the quality of a teapot is kilning. Hsu explains that the fine pores in the pottery clay can make tea taste milder by absorbing the oil from the leaves, and over time the seasoning imparts a more aged look to the pot and unique flavor to the tea, highly sought-after effects. Different clays require different kilning temperatures. Raising the temperature a few degrees too high can turn the surface of the teapot into something close to porcelain, however, and consequently lose the effect of a pottery teapot. Hsu has tried many types of clay and settled on mixing two types from Miaoli County, northern Taiwan, for his teapots. Still, with each new batch of clay he must take time to determine the appropriate kilning temperature, since even a slight misjudgment can compromise the quality of the final item.

Hsu knows that in addition to making items of high quality, craftsmen also need to offer a little extra to be noticed in the market. His approach was to combine images of the 12 Chinese zodiac signs into his designs. A teapot designed for the Year of the Dog, for example, might see the spout fashioned in the shape of a dog’s head and the handle into a tail. “Designs related to Chinese zodiac signs are always easier to sell, because they give people a feeling of individuality,” he says. Despite his physical challenges, Hsu worked more than 10 hours a day in the first several years after he set up his workshop. In 1997, he held his first solo exhibition at the Changhua County Cultural Center. Thanks to the various exhibitions and craft competitions he participated in around that time, his designs started to be recognized by collectors and he has found some market success. There have even been buyers who have spent 12 years collecting the whole set of 12 Chinese zodiac teapots Hsu has developed.

Sculpting Designs

To expand the range of his teapots, Hsu started to sculpt them in 2000. Although the process takes longer, given his condition it is actually less physically demanding for him to sculpt than use a potter’s wheel. The technique also allows more room to create unique designs. From spring to early autumn, in months when the weather makes the clay dry faster, Hsu still works on his potter’s wheel. For the rest of the year, however, when the clay dries more slowly, Hsu takes the opportunity to sculpt teapots. Thanks to his solid training in Chinese painting, he is able to re-create realistic images from his farming village, turning his teapots into blocks of driftwood, baskets of peanuts or pieces of bamboo. Like his zodiac creations, the sculpted teapots have also become popular.

In addition to coming up with new designs, Hsu is eager to share the craft. He has set up a pottery classroom at Meifeng Elementary School, which he attended as a child, to provide children in the rural area with greater access to art education. “Probably none of them will become a pottery artist, but I’ll be happy if some of them can learn to appreciate art,” he says. Other than teaching Meifeng students, Hsu has also designed programs for senior citizens and mentally challenged children at local charity organizations, as the hand-eye coordination and control of muscles required in crafting pottery help in the rehabilitation or development of such individuals. And out of his busy schedule, Hsu is more than willing to share his experience with patients with spinal cord injuries.

The accident 28 years ago put Hsu in a wheelchair. While the experience at first led to feelings of desperation and frustration, he has since built a new life, with determination and a potter’s wheel.

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