Tianjin

Mr. Wei’s father was a kite-maker, his father’s father was a kite-maker, his grand-father’s father was a kite-maker. As this unassuming man, who is in fact one of the most well-known kite-makers in Tianjin, excitedly shows me how to fly a mini-kite indoors, I cannot help but feel a certain sadness knowing that his son has no interest in continuing the craft. For this generation, the world is full of possibilities, alternative past-times and more financially rewarding careers. Whether these bring him as much satisfaction as kites do to his father, who unboxes his kites as if a child opening gifts on Christmas morning, is not for me to judge. I have been free to chose my own interests and career, so I should probably celebrate the fact that China’s new generation can now do the same.

Weifang

It felt like I had discovered Narnia as I stepped into Mr. Zhang’s kite workshop. It was alive with animals in the form of bamboo wireframes, large pencil outline drawings and beautifully painted silk. As he showed me his current experiments in moving crab claws and dragon head antennaes, I too wanted to become a kitemaker!  What a contrast to the production-shop I had visited the day before. They too had made kites, but in a human mass-production line producing simplified versions of designs copied from workshops such as Mr. Zhang’s. In the production-shop, the kitemaking process had been divided into small tasks to enable maximum efficiency and thus output. The ladies at that production-shop were clearly skilled at the craft, but obviously bored. You could sense their lack of enthusium in the kites before you even met them.

Mr. Zhang’s daughter, who helps her father make kites, says that to enable them to keep doing new creative projects, they keep the workshop small and do not produce large quantities of any one kite. If you go into the production-shops next year or in a few years time they will still be making and selling the same kites, there is no progress.

It seems that for kite-making, and perhaps many of the crafts still alive in China, it is not a question of whether the skill will survive, but if it will develop. It seems that production-workshops are training a great number of workers to become very competent technically, but not inspiring them to understand the science or joys behind the craft which would give them the passion to create something new.

Xiaozha
Classic Hongda

Quanzhou
Spacious 2 seater electric vehicle with matching security lock and storage basket.

As I carefully wrap my Hui-An hat to send back to Hong Kong, I am once again pondering  a question that has been milling around in my head since the beginning of the China trip. In China, what gives an object value? Or more specifically, what do I value in an object from China? The ideas I had brought with me from London about appreciating locally and hand-made objects have all be thrown into question out here. In China, “Made in China” is no longer the imported product, it is what is made locally. You also suddenly realise that most things that are “Made in China” are hand-made, only at lightning speeds by workers producing identical objects as if they were machines.

So why am I so precious about this hat?  Perhaps it is because I know that these hats are made only to order as it takes this skilled craftsman a month to make each one. Perhaps it is because I know that once this generation of hatmakers stop making these hats, they will no longer be made, the younger generation have not the patience to learn or practise this craft. Maybe in China that is what I am starting to value, “time”. The time and commitment of the maker gives me the responsibility as the owner to give the object the same amount of  respect and care as they did. In a world that is always in a hurry to get somewhere, time is becoming more and more scarce. I wonder if China, in it’s hurry to catch up with the West, is losing something along the way, the value of Time.