A Gong fan with an image of the Goddess of the Luohe River. (Photo/China Today)
Woven Bamboo Strip Fans
Fans made of woven bamboo strips from Sichuan Province were invented by the Gong family, thus named Gong Fans. With a history of over a century, the craftsmanship has been passed down to the fifth-generation heirs.
The creator was Gong Juewu, who displayed ingenuity since young age. Besides doing farm work, he made some accessories for daily use with bamboo strips and sold them to augment his income. Summer in Sichuan is scorching hot, so he made some bamboo fans which were popular among consumers. Once it took off, he just focused on the fan business. He saw some bamboo accessories bearing characters and patterns with auspicious meanings, which inspired him to use similar patterns and iconography on his fans. Through trial and error, he finally wove different patterns on his fans by utilizing the color variations of the two sides of bamboo strips. He continued to improve his works by making bamboo strips thinner, so the alternating patterns on the fans became more exquisite and intricate. Gong Fans are usually peach-shaped, with a width of 20-centimeters, a moso bamboo edge, a handle made of ox-bone or jade, and patterns of flowers on the fan surface.
Gong Yuzhang, son of Gong Juewu, is the second-generation heir of Gong Fans, who further improved upon and promoted their products. He managed to weave scenes of mountains and rivers, human figures, flowers and birds, fish and insects, as well as Chinese calligraphy. Once a businessman brought a picture to Gong, on which was a Chinese beauty with half her face hidden behind a transparent fan. The businessman wanted Gong to weave the scene to show the gradations. Gong, by utilizing the different thickness and density of weaving bamboo strips, vividly recreated the picture of the beauty behind the fan. Since then, his reputation skyrocketed. Some senior officials and eminent personages invited Gong to their houses to make his trademark fans for them.
To make a Gong fan involves a complicated process. A special kind of one-year-old local bamboo is selected as raw material, so that the bamboo strips processed with special tools are crystalline and a bit glossy. The material preparation is all about manual work, with the help of only a knife. The procedures include weaving the pattern and the edge, as well as gluing certain parts. The fan surface is as thin as a cicada’s wings, so it is very light. Many people would mistakenly assume it is made of cotton threads.
The crucial step is to make bamboo strips. The thinner the strips, the clearer and more life-like the patterns are. Gong Yuzhang invented a set of tools, with which he can make hair-thin bamboo strips, and feather-like bamboo strips that can be used to make fluffy sparrows at different ages. Sometimes he poked dots on the thin strips to form human eyebrows. He also used different colors of bamboo strips to deal with lighting and shade. The pictures on the fans include natural scenery, birds, animals, and flowers, all look vivid and life-like.
Gong Daoyong, the fourth-generation inheritor, further shrank the thickness of bamboo strips from 0.025 millimeter to 0.01-0.015 millimeter and the width down by 30 percent. That means the bamboo strip is astoundingly one seventh of human hair. Thus the fan surface is even thinner and shows a semitransparent effect. Gong Daoyong’s daughter and niece are the fifth-generation inheritors of Gong Fans. They assert that the secret for keeping the Gong Fans popular is the constant striving for perfection.
In 2008, the craftsmanship of making Gong Fans was designated a national intangible cultural heritage.
