In China, Reviving an Ancient City and Its Craft Traditions

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/05/arts/05iht-design05.html

Version 0 of 1.

BEIJING — For centuries, the ancient city walls of Cicheng in southern China have encased a traditional Chinese chessboard of streets and alleys, together with more than a hundred historic temples and residences, many of them dating back to the early 700s.

When local officials began the process of restoring Cicheng’s ancient architecture, they were confident that tourists would flock to see it, but were wary of turning it into a “dead” city filled with heritage sites and souvenir stores trading on the past. Hoping to avoid that, they have embarked on an ambitious program to revitalize Cicheng’s craft traditions by encouraging artisans and designers to study and work there. Another part of China is trying to revive its artisanal culture too: Dashilar, one of the few remaining historic areas of Beijing, whose dilapidated hutongs and siheyuans, or alleyways and courtyard houses, have survived the reconstruction of the rest of the city center.

“China spent most of the 20th century destroying its own culture and, thankfully, we’re at the point now where people are aware of what’s been lost and the need to rediscover it,” said Aric Chen, who organized a series of projects in Dashilar in September as creative director of Beijing Design Week. “There is unquestionably a rapidly growing emphasis on and appreciation of craft. The challenge is keeping it fresh and relevant.”

Not that this challenge is particular to China. Many countries with rich histories of craftsmanship face similar problems, but the speed and scale of the modernization of China’s ancient cities make the situation there particularly perilous. Unless action is taken to revive the age-old skills of places like Cicheng and Dashilar, they will disappear.

Historically, China’s craft credentials were unassailable. For centuries, the silks, ceramics, embroideries, calligraphy and lacquerware made by its artisans were among the finest in the world. The national tradition of craftsmanship fostered a culture of ingenuity, which helped to shape the industrial age. The elaborate division of labor pioneered by the porcelain workshops in the northern city of Jingdezhen during the mid-1600s was adopted more than a century later by Josiah Wedgwood and other European industrialists at the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Yet China’s craft heritage was woefully neglected for much of the past century. The country has been left with a dearth of artisans to pass on their skills and knowledge to a new generation of craftsmen and women. Many of the local networks of specialist suppliers and fabricators on which they depend have also disappeared, or are in danger of doing so.

Cicheng embarked on its craft revival when the architectural restoration program was nearing completion. The Cicheng Development Co., a local government organization, looked for new ways of using the renovated buildings, and decided to fill them with people whose work related to the region’s craft heritage. Advised by two Taiwanese specialists in Chinese folk culture, the architect Chu-joe Hsia and cultural historian Yung-sung Huang, the C.D.C. formulated plans to develop the Cicheng Innovation Cultural Park, which, it hoped, would encourage artisans and designers to work within the ancient city, thereby reviving traditional forms of craftsmanship, and inventing new ones.

The newly restored Cicheng had no shortage of studios and workshops for them to occupy. Exhibitions of historic and contemporary craftsmanship were staged to draw them to the city, as well as training courses and master classes led by eminent practitioners. The rationale was that younger artisans and designers would be attracted to a place with such a dynamic craft culture, and specialist businesses would emerge to supply them. Cicheng also integrated its craft heritage into its tourism strategy. Craft hobbyists now flock there from all over China to observe artisans at work and to study an eclectic range of handicrafts including pottery, folk embroidery, and making local delicacies like Cicheng’s famous New Year cake.

A different strategy is being deployed to similar ends in Dashilar. Like Cicheng, it has a rich history, albeit a younger one, rooted in the 1300s. Located in the heart of Beijing, near the Forbidden City, Dashilar was a bustling commercial center for centuries, when its narrow hutongs were filled with opera houses, silk shops, opium dens, tea houses and brothels, as well as the city’s first cinema and stock exchange. But in recent years, when other areas of Beijing have been transformed by redevelopment, Dashilar has been neglected. “When we first started telling people we were doing projects in Dashilar, the common response was: ‘You’re crazy, no one wants to go there,”’ Mr. Chen recalled.

Dashilar narrowly avoided the wholesale redevelopment of other areas of Beijing. By the time the development process was due to start, the cost of relocating and compensating local residents had become prohibitively expensive. Beijing Dashilar Investment, the government-owned real estate developer for the neighborhood, decided to make the most of its shabby, but charming hutongs.

Working with the Beijing-based architectural group, Approach Architecture, it formed a project team, Dashila(b), which has implemented a conventional urban regeneration strategy of renovating the historic buildings and persuading designers, architects and artists to occupy them. Less conventionally, Dashila(b) has also tried to rekindle the local craft heritage by bringing new artisans into the area and nurturing existing businesses, which include historic shops like Nei Lian Sheng, a shoe store founded in 1853 to make cloth boots for the imperial court.

Dashila(b) began by inviting Beijing Design Week to organize temporary exhibitions and workshops in Dashilar for each of the past two years, and by opening pop-up shops. It now plans to convert a disused factory commandeered by Beijing Design Week into a permanent gallery, and to run a regular program of debates and workshops on design, craftsmanship and architectural restoration.

Some of the designers and artisans that have rediscovered Dashilar through such projects have been persuaded to open studios there, as they have in Cicheng. That should make it easier to persuade others to follow, and to sustain the once-imperiled craft traditions of, at least, two parts of China.

<NYT_CORRECTION_BOTTOM> <p>This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 4, 2012

<p>An earlier version of the summary with this article misspelled the name of one of the Chinese cities. It is Cicheng, not Chicheng.