Traditional Crafts Endure the Test of Time

From Germany to Beijing

I was born in the wake of the decade-long “cultural revolution,” which waged a war against the “Four Olds” – old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits. It eviscerated China’s traditional culture, and pushed many of Beijing’s folk arts to the verge of extinction.

I grew up in the age of reform and opening-up, when Western culture and pop music entered China and exerted tremendous influences on its youths. By contrast, the presence and influence of traditional culture were diminishing. Bric-a-bracs, things my mother’s generation played with in their childhood, such as rabbit figurine, flour sculpture, and malt candy art, were rarely seen when I was a boy.

Thanks to my mother, I fell in love with painting at a young age. After finishing middle school in 1994, I entered an art and design school in Beijing, and after graduation went on to study at a light industry college in Dalian. Two years later, I felt a strong desire to learn the advanced culture and knowledge in a developed country. It was 2000, when new media had emerged as a pillar industry in developed economies. Therefore, I decided to go study new media design in Germany. I spent the following nine years in Germany, and obtained a master’s degree.   

I returned to Beijing at the end of 2009. The city was very different from nine years before. I needed some time to readjust, and see how to apply what I learned abroad locally. I first found a job with a TV advertising company, and then moved to an IT company as a user interface designer one year later. I stayed there for three years.

Many people of my generation are big dreamers but poor doers. Having learned in schools all the classics and works by luminaries in their respective fields, I felt folk arts to be unimpressive. My mother’s pursuit to make the hairy monkey was to me no more than a pastime. However, this attitude slowly changed.

In 2013, my mother’s hairy monkey mentor could not give classes any more due to health reasons, and needed someone to pick up the slack at the two schools where he taught. The time didn’t fit my mother’s schedule, so she recommended me. Now I become a freelancer giving courses on traditional arts and crafts for children. More than a decade after my 8,000-km trip to Germany, I was back at the starting point. Life has been and will continue to be unpredictable.