A small town called Tianfu sits in a mountain about one hour and a half driving from Chongqing central city. Here, is has the first railway of Chongqing, which witnessed the town's prosperity with its mineral resources. There are empty buildings, telling the homesickness of people leaving the homeland for development because of the depletion of resources. Peng Yong and his wooden-stone hall have still held on there.
Chinese Root Carving Art world's highest award ---- Liu Kaiqu Root Art Award was announced in 1993. A 30-year-old peasant root sculptor from Hechuan District, Chongqing, won the Liu Kaiqu Root Art Award and the Outstanding Works Award respectively for two works of "Supercilious" and "Lovers ", which created a great sensation at that time. The unknown root sculptor at that time was Peng Yong.
He began to contact with Root Carving by chance from the age of 10, and he was apprenticed to a master because of the love of Roo Carving by the age of 14, and now he has completed nearly 10,000 root carving art works, and has been famous overseas. In the root carving art career of Peng Yong for more than 40 years, he often missed meals and sleep for carving, and rested for three or four hours per day. The scars on his hands were even more numerous, but he still enjoyed it. "The root-seeker will not forget the root, and in my opinion, craftsman spirit is mainly standing fast ", he said.
Peng Yong said that in the process of artistic creation of tree roots, he would also feel the spiritual baptism brought by root carving. "The rock cypress grows in the rock with little soil and insufficient nutrient, it's still struggling to grow. It is just because the root has the tenacious vitality and the unyielding struggle spirit, so that it can eventually become a material with success. In fact, the spirit of this root is also the faith I pursue”, he said.
Eventually, Peng Yong 's pursuit of Root Carving Art had been recognized by all sectors of the community. In 2001, he was appraised as the first master of folk art in Chongqing, and in 2005, he was named as the first master of arts and crafts in Chongqing. He has won more than 130 international gold awards, national, provincial and municipal awards, and participated in more than 400 international and domestic exhibitions. His root carving works are listed as intangible cultural heritage in Chongqing.
In Peng Yong’s view, the most important thing to judge art is to get the audience's approval, even if with many honors. “The highest measure of art is neither money nor awards, nor titles, but they are the eyes and expressions of the audience. Folk art should pay attention to vitality”, He said. Peng Yong believed that root carving should pursue nature and get rid of man-made craftsmanship. So to this day, he still insists on using hand tools for artistic creation, and even has tools on the workbench that have existed for decades. Peng Yong told reporters that the works carved carefully and polished personally by heart have the most vitality.
Under his knife of carving, the roots turned into out of mud and not dyed lotus, or proud plum blossom, or wings flying eagle one by one. For Peng Yong, the creation of a root carving work is like giving birth to a "child ". It needs thinking and accumulation of traditional culture according to the natural image of the root of the tree, and uses skillful, wonderful and delicate techniques to inject the soul into the works.
After visiting Peng Yong's works, the aesthetic leader Chaowen Wang wrote for him that "different from the root art of artificial sculpture, we should take advantage of the beauty of nature. If you take it easy and cut it down, you'll regret it and feel bad". Peng Yong, also encouraged by Chaowen Wang and other aesthetics, came out of a road of root carving art combining the wild wind style (no modification, free growth, and no artificial craftsmanship) and the wild lotus style.
Not only that, Peng Yong have successfully made the long-lost methods of "ant climbing tree", "decapitating and extending", "returning to nature" and "transplanting flowers and trees" and other carving techniques reappear in the root carving world by visiting and studying all over the country for nearly two decades. And even his works break through the material restrictions, and his carving is more arbitrary. In 1999, his "Birds and Phoenix" created for 6 years was valued at 3.6 million yuan by the Kunming World Expo Trading Center.
However, What Peng Yong is most concerned about is to carry forward and inherit the folk art of root carving. He said it was a responsibility as a traditional cultural craftsman. But unfortunately, even if he started teaching by free of charge, many people came to study, but most of them could not last for three months. "People are too utilitarian and impetuous now. If our generation is gone and the next generation does not learn the essence, it will be troublesome ", he said with regret.
Despite there are many difficulties, Peng Yong is still full of energy. At present, Peng Yong has set up a root carving museum in Tianfu Town, where his works will be placed in the museum and opened to the public in the future. In addition, he is also going to Southeast Asia to carry out his personal works exhibition, with the "flower outside the wall and fragrance inside the wall" method to ignite the enthusiasm of the national people for the art of root carving.
In order to further develop the art of root carving, according to his plan, Peng Yong will then set up a root carving art industry park in his hometown and recruit talents in colleges and universities. Root carving enthusiasts everywhere can be here for exhibition, exchange and learning, and finally the root carving art will be developed into an industrial industry. “I am not full of a thousand miles of energy, but full of a thousand miles of ambition. Although I dare not say to turn things around, I must do my best to pass on the root carving culture " , he said. (Source: China News Network)