Boxwood Carving

Boxwood Carving

Boxwood carving is a national intangible cultural heritage.

　　Yueqing City is located on the southeastern coast of Zhejiang Province, facing Wenzhou across the river. Yueqing boxwood carving is an ornamental round sculpture art made from boxwood, primarily popular in areas such as Nanjie Village in Wengyang Town, Houheng Village in Xiangyang Town, Liushi Town, and Lecheng Town in Yueqing, and has spread to Wenzhou, Yongjia, Hangzhou, Shanghai, and other places.

　　It is unclear when boxwood carving began in Yueqing. The earliest dated piece of boxwood carving known today is the “Iron-Crutch Li Statue” housed in the Palace Museum in Beijing, bearing an inscription from the Yuan Dynasty’s Zhizheng era. However, the emergence of Yueqing boxwood carving came later, after this statue. Yueqing is situated at the Ou River estuary and frequently suffers from floods. Locals have the custom of crafting “dragon racks” to ward off disasters and evil spirits. These dragon racks, made of camphor wood and carved with figures, were the folk craft that gave rise to Yueqing boxwood carving. In 1876, Wenzhou was opened as a treaty port, and foreign trade flourished. Many Yueqing boxwood carvings were collected by merchants from China and abroad. Folk artisans who originally specialized in carving dragon racks and Buddha statues gradually shifted to boxwood carving. In 1909, Zhu Zichang, a native of Wenzhou, won an award for excellence at the Nanyang Industrial Exposition for his boxwood carving work “The Mad Monk Jidian.”

　　In 1915, his work “Hide-and-Seek” won second prize at the International Panama Exposition. Besides Zhu Zichang, other notable masters in the boxwood carving field included Ye Furu, Wang Fengzuo, and Ye Yizhou. Current key inheritors mainly consist of Gao Gongbo, Yu Jinshun, Wang Duchun, Yu Dingliang, and Wang Duchang.

　　Yueqing boxwood carving falls into three types, each with distinct conceptual approaches, techniques, and procedures. The first is the traditional type, which mainly features single-figure sculptures, though group or composite carvings also exist. The second is the root carving type, which uses natural boxwood roots as material, shaping the sculpture based on the form of the root. The third is the split carving type, where unsuitable wood blocks for figure carving are split open, and the natural grain patterns revealed are used as the basis for creative carving—embracing spontaneity without excessive refinement. Traditional carvings follow specific figure models, so the wood type must be compatible, involving steps such as clay modeling, material selection, rough shaping, and final form setting. Root carvings, on the other hand, allow for more improvisation, offering great flexibility in conception, without the need for clay modeling, but requiring preservation of the root's unique natural form. Split carvings shift focus to carving based on the natural texture of the split wood.

　　Boxwood is a precious timber, known for its toughness, fine grain, and slow growth. There is a saying: “A thousand-year-old boxwood still doesn’t grow as strong as a cypress.” Yueqing boxwood carvings fully showcase the wisdom of folk artisans and have developed various distinctive styles throughout history—for example, the rounded and concise knife work of the Ming Dynasty, and the clear, smooth, and flowing lines of the Qing Dynasty. The production process of boxwood carving is complex, with each step demanding an exquisite level of detail and craftsmanship unmatched by other forms of carving, and impossible to replicate with modern technology. Today, Yueqing boxwood carving faces challenges such as a crisis in raw material supply, a serious loss of skilled professionals, difficulty in attracting new talent, and the fragmentation of individual workshops that struggle to make an impact. These issues severely affect the development of boxwood carving skills, creating an urgent need for relevant authorities to formulate plans to rescue and protect this unique craft.