The "King of Cliff Cypress" Sells 30 Million a Year - And She's a Pretty Young Woman Who Loves Bonsai

These wood carvings, in all their myriad forms and with their uncanny craftsmanship,

have drawn tens of thousands of onlookers to admire them,

these are the wildly popular cliff cypress wood carvings.

The young womanQingtian，

gave up her well-paid white-collar job with regular nine-to-five hours in Shanghai,

returned to her rural hometown,

spent three years,

selling over 30 million yuan of cliff cypress wood carvings a year!

She has been reported on by the media and television many times,

and in the local wood carving industry she is called "King of Cliff Cypress”。

Qingtian grew up in a small county town surrounded by mountains on three sides and facing the sea on one,

repeatedly rated by world craft organizations as:

"China's Capital of Classical Craft Furniture" - Xianyou, Fujian。

Here there is a wood carving culture over a thousand years old,

and the reputation of the hometown of wood carving is known throughout China.

Qingtian combined traditional craftsmanship with modern quality management,

creating a sales legend of 30 million yuan a year in cliff cypress wood carvings.

She said: "Wood carving is the essence of China's traditional cultural craftsmanship, and I want more people to love it."

(Oral account: Qingtian, compiled by: Fenghuanzi)

I am Qingtian, 26 years old this year.

Three years ago I gave up my designer job in Shanghai and returned to my hometown of Xianyou.

Xianyou has a thousand-year wood carving tradition and many wood carving craftsmen, and my father is one of them.

My strict, old-fashioned father has been making wood carvings for 40 years, and he supported the whole family with this craft.

Father's hands are covered in many knife scars, all left from work. He knows the hardships of wood carving and did not want his daughter to suffer the same.

We argued many times, but he could not overcome my stubbornness, and in the end Father agreed to let me do wood carving and made a deal with me: if I could not turn a profit within a year, I would have to go back to Shanghai and work a regular job.

Father's workshop is calledNanhu Zhenpin, and it mainly makes carvings from rather precious rosewoods such as Hainan huanghuali and small-leaf red sandalwood.

I decided to start with Taihang cliff cypress because Taihang cliff cypress is suited to wood carving ornaments in two ways:

One, Taihang cliff cypress has a unique fragrance that refreshes the heart and mind;

Two, every piece of Taihang cliff cypress raw material is one of a kind.

Taihang cliff cypress, as the name suggests, is the cliff cypress from the Taihang Mountains and the Qinling range.

The cliff cypress roots and trunks that grow wedged in rock crevices absorb the essence of heaven and earth, forming their elegant, curved and lively shapes, and are hailed as the supreme among cliff cypresses.

Cypress gatherers can only dig out the wood in extremely harsh natural environments, so a piece of cliff cypress is hard to come by.

All wood carvings begin with selecting the material.

Pick a good piece of material and the work is more than half successful. At the cliff cypress raw material yard, people often come to blows over the same piece.

Taihang cliff cypress is mainly judged for quality by its form, grain and oil content.

Cliff cypress raw material is wrapped in an outer layer of mud and bark, sobuying material is like gambling on jade - a big gamble。

The first time I went to the cliff cypress raw material yard was at noon on a hot summer day. I went to select material wearing a dress, and the bare-chested men mocked me for being there just to make up the numbers.

I confidently picked out a piece of material, took it back and washed off the mud, only to find it was rotten all the way through.

I burst into tears on the spot. That piece of wood had cost over 6,000 yuan, two months of my wages at the time, and it had suddenly become worthless.

Once the material is chosen and washed clean, it is time to start designing and roughing out the shape.

Chinese wood carving mainly has several themes: landscapes, flowers and birds, figures and Buddhas.

Each theme has its own beautiful meaning - this is China's wood carving culture of several thousand years.

The craftsmen conceive the carving theme according to the form of the raw material.

Follow its momentum, go by its shape. In cliff cypress root carving, seven parts are nature and three parts craftsmanship.

Some good free-form materials, having undergone nature's baptism for hundreds or thousands of years, are themselves works of art.

The essence of making wood carvings is being a person: you must calm your mind and keep learning.

Having taken quite a few losses, I learned to listen to the craftsmen's experience and opinions.

To communicate more conveniently with the craftsmen, I picked up a carving knife to experience the details of carving, and my fingers were often cut.

That period of experiencing frontline production was so frustrating that I thought several times about giving up, but fortunately I persevered.

Every industry has its own unsavory hidden rules and shady practices, and cliff cypress wood carving is no exception.

For example, some workshops pass off Sichuan cliff cypress as Taihang cliff cypress, and sell new, green material as old, aged material.

Once, a long-time customer mailed back a carving of the God of Longevity with a broken arm and asked for a refund.

An investigation revealed that a craftsman had accidentally broken the God of Longevity's arm during production and had simply glued it back on.

I immediately refunded the customer the purchase price and the postage.

The craftsmen could not understand my approach at all; they thought that since the whole industry did this, it was reasonable.

I am rather particular by nature. Customers choose to trust us, so we cannot fool any customer.

This time I flew into a rage and required the craftsmen to sign a quality commitment on their own works, guaranteeing that every piece could be traced, so that rewards and punishments would be clear.

After strengthening quality control,

our small workshop'sworks were made more and more slowly,

and output grew smaller and smaller,

but what came with it was more and more customers,

and better and better word of mouth.。

The world is this interesting: we ran slowly,

yet we ran faster and farther than our peers.

Later, my peers in the industry actually gave me, a small girl less than 160 tall, the nickname "King of Cliff Cypress".

I don't think it's anything that magical. We just stubbornly obsessed over every detail of every work and kept every promise we made to customers.

Dedication brings its own rewards: be meticulous with the product, and open-hearted with the customer.

This year is my fourth year back,

and the team has grown from 3 people at the beginning to more than 20 now.

Inselecting material, designing, carving and packingwe have carried out a professional division of labor.。

The small shop from back then has been replaced by a large showroom, and I have also stepped out of frontline production to be specifically responsible for receiving visiting customers.Many customers, on their first visit, are surprised to see me in person and ask: are you the King of Cliff Cypress?

Now, whenever I have time, I still go to the raw material yard to stroll around and discuss improvements to every detail with the craftsmen.

Seeing that I had forged my own path through perseverance, Father never mentioned going back to Shanghai again.

My idea of doing wood carving is no longer just to share Father's burden.

I want to spread the art and culture of wood carving, and I hope more people can know about and understand this craft.

In the past, buyers of wood carvings were mainly the generation of our parents, but now more and more young people like wood carving and like China's traditional culture.

Perhaps this is a kind of inheritance.

Qingtian is very warm and enthusiastic.

She will talk with you about the carving workmanship and materials of cliff cypress wood carvings,

as well as the traditional cultural stories behind the wood carvings,

for a whole day.

If you are interested in wood carving,

you can long-press the QR code in the image below to follow her.

(End)

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