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UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 GUANGZHOU 011469 
 
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STATE FOR EB, R, EAP/CM, EAP/PD, DRL 
STATE PASS USTR 
USDOC FOR 4420/ITA/MAC/MCQUEEN, CELICO, DAS LEVINE 
USPACOM FOR FPA 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: ECON KIPR SCUL ELAB PINR CH
SUBJECT:  Revolution and Remembrance -- The Last Stand of 
Traditional Culture in Chaozhou? 
 
Ref:  Guangzhou 11352 
 
(U) This document is sensitive but unclassified.  Please 
protect accordingly.  Not for release outside U.S. 
Government channels.  Not for internet publication. 
 
¶1.  (U) Summary:  War and revolution -- including that of a 
cultural nature -- have not been kind to the once highly 
civilized city of Chaozhou in eastern Guangdong.  Still, 
some artisans hid treasures during the Cultural Revolution 
and preserved the expertise and aesthetic level as best 
they could.  Now traditional Chaozhou fine arts -- 
intricate wood carving and raised silk embroidery -- have 
made something of a comeback but are being threatened by 
the lack of apprentice and journeymen artisans not to 
mention the provincial and central authorities' penchant 
for appropriating Chaozhou artifacts for permanent display 
in outside museums or for outright gifts to state visitors. 
End Summary. 
 
¶2.  (SBU) Chaozhou has some stunningly beautiful cultural 
sites and sights that could become the basis for a very 
large tourism industry (reftel), but it has not been an 
easy road for Chaozhou.  This ancient city resisted the 
Manchus in the 17th century and paid a terrible price. 
Warlord armies crisscrossed the area in the 1920s, and 
armed conflicts between Communist and Nationalist forces 
also took place there during this era.  Japanese 
trepidations exacted their toll in the 1940s, and then it 
became the turn of the Communists.  The early part of that 
era saw the substantial dismantling of the Xiangzi Bridge, 
a unique and valued structure for Chaozhou citizens but 
just an "old bridge" awaiting "modernization" for the 
Communists.  Then, the Cultural Revolution cut a huge 
swathe in Chaozhou, including the destruction of most of 
the Buddhist images and accompanying paraphernalia and 
decorative artwork in the city's famous Kaiyuan Temple, 
founded in the 8th century. 
 
Physical Grandeur Being Restored 
-------------------------------- 
¶3.  (SBU) Now the Chaozhou government and citizenry are 
well on their way to "retoring" the grandeur of the city. 
The Xiangzi Bridge, with its stone pillars topped with 
wooden pavilions and moveable wooden pontoons in the 
middle, will be reopened in September.  The Han Yu Temple, 
built in 999 and which had not suffered much during the 
Cultural Revolution (due perhaps to the anti- 
"superstition," anti-Buddhist stance taken by this famous 
Tang Dynasty essayist and philosopher) is very presentable 
even now.  The Kaiyuan Temple has brand new Buddhist 
images, including some housed in an entirely brand new 
eastern wing, and is serenely and tranquilly beautiful 
despite the crowds of worshippers. 
 
A Wooden Life 
------------- 
¶4.  (SBU) But what of the artisans and the aesthetics 
social classes of Chaozhou?  Have they been "restored" as 
well?  Master Artisan Gu Liuxi told us that he is doing 
quite well now.  The new Buddhist images at the Kaiyuan 
Temple are the work of him and his factory -- a dizzingly 
noisy place with some workers using chain saws to cut huge 
logs down to workable size, others carving the intricate 
details famous in Chaozhou woodworking, and still others 
applying the gold leaf found on many religious and non- 
religious works.  Gu said that he had survived the Cultural 
Revolution in part because he was not then seen as a senior 
craftsman, but he lamented the wanton destruction that had 
taken place, particularly at the Kaiyuan Temple.  After the 
Cultural Revolution was over, there was not enough money to 
restore the temple, but fortunately he and his factory, 
then state-owned, received orders from Buddhist temples in 
Thailand (where a lot of Chaozhou overseas Chinese reside) 
and the company moved forward from that point. 
 
¶5.  (SBU) Gu continued that the Kaiyuan Temple restoration 
was a highlight of his life, and he was pleased that 
Chaozhou people from all over the world, including of 
 
GUANGZHOU 00011469  002 OF 003 
 
 
course within the city itself, had made massive monetary 
contributions.  The revenue from the restoration has also 
allowed Gu to expand production of a whole array of 
products including non-Buddhist pieces, and some of his 
works are now on display at various exhibition halls 
throughout China.  These smaller works, often of scenes 
from history (the Three Kingdoms Era, for example) or 
literature ("The Dream of the Red Chamber," for example), 
are intricately carved such that the details on the faces, 
for example, are nuanced and realistic.  Such works require 
as many as three or four years, with teams of artisans, 
some specializing in faces, some in furniture and screens, 
and some in the natural settings (hills, forests, and 
waterways).  But these artisans are increasingly hard to 
find, and the specialists are overwhelmingly middle-aged. 
Working for three or four years on small pieces is 
painstaking, hard work, and young people do not want to 
take the time to learn how to do this type of intricate 
carving, he lamented.  Moreover, the tradition of passing 
on techniques to the next generation within an artisan 
family is also difficult in a one-child era (Gu's daughter 
is involved in the business end of running the factory and 
the two showrooms but is not herself interested in learning 
the craft). 
 
Silken Threads 
-------------- 
¶6.  (SBU) We also visited Master Artisan Zhang Xiuwen at 
her Chaozhou embroidery shop.  Zhang explained that 
Chaozhou embroidery is famous for being raised, i.e., silk 
thread is piled onto itself to create relief images of 
animals, people, flowers, plants, and even Chinese 
characters (in cheaper pieces, the raising is done with 
cotton thread with a silk facade on top, but Zhang said 
that these cheaper pieces often create problems later for 
purchasers).  These pieces could be relatively small but 
they can also be enormous (for example, the Kaiyuan Temple 
is festooned with embroidered floor to ceiling banners in 
the Chaozhou style).  Because of the interest shown 
particularly by the Consul General's spouse, Zhang excused 
herself and went to her home, which is on top of her shop, 
and came back with her "stash" of a couple of score of 
embroidery pieces. 
 
¶7.  (SBU) The Master Artisan had "rescued" these pieces and 
several more score as a relatively low employee at the 
embroidery craft factory where she had been employed when 
the Cultural Revolution broke out in Chaozhou.  She had not 
believed that the Red Guards would have wanted to destroy 
or confiscate these works, but after looking at the 
destruction that took place before her very eyes, she 
secretly took what she could and hid them for over a 
 
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decade.  And these are treasures.  A traditional style "one 
hundred birds" piece -- water-stained after it was 
retrieved from a burning pile of embroideries -- is 
brilliantly composed, with every single bird having 
distinct faces and forms, while a version of "two chimeras 
playing with one another" is vividly charismatic. 
 
¶8.  (SBU) Zhang had rescued more of these, but after 
"reform and opening" she had told Chaozhou municipal 
officials that these treasures still existed and she had 
donated many to them.  She was shocked and unhappy to 
discover that many of the pieces were subsequently sent on 
to Guangzhou and Beijing where they either went on display 
at some museum or became outright gifts to visiting foreign 
dignitaries.  She finally convinced Chaozhou authorities 
that they were giving away "the very soul of Chaozhou," and 
now she carefully hordes those pieces remaining in her own 
personal possession while Chaozhou officials have become 
far more conscious that these artifacts are more 
appropriately displayed in a Chaozhou setting, particularly 
as the city further develops its tourist industry. 
 
¶9.  (SBU) Zhang said that the force of her argument was 
buttressed by the fact that literally no more of these 
types of embroidery pieces are forthcoming.  The "secrets" 
of manufacturing the silk fabric on which the embroideries 
are stitched are "lost forever," and there is no large 
 
GUANGZHOU 00011469  003 OF 003 
 
 
extant supply of this particular type of fabric anymore -- 
she hordes some also for her own personal stitch work. 
More importantly, the craft is also deteriorating if not 
dying.  To be sure, Chaozhou still produces embroidery but 
much less care and work is involved in the production of 
contemporary pieces (they are still good enough, however, 
for provincial authorities to present as gifts to 
dignitaries, with Chaozhou products accounting for 40 
percent of provincial government gifts to visitors, 
according to Chaozhou city officials).  Moreover, because 
embroidery is painstaking handiwork, many young women 
refuse to take it up, preferring instead the lower pay but 
easier work style of the factory or shop floor. 
 
Comment 
------- 
¶10.  (SBU) Although "very expensive" by Chinese standards, 
the works by Gu and Zhang are cheap considering the amount 
of time spent producing them and the artistic creativity 
embedded therein.  Accordingly, the products are seeing 
brisk sales particularly to overseas Chinese albeit the 
number of domestic Chinese patrons is also growing.  Still, 
it is not likely that the revenue potential will be a 
sufficient draw for potential artisan apprentices and 
journeymen to spend the years mastering the crafts.  So, 
while the physical attributes of Chaozhou's culture will 
soon be fully on display for the world to see, the human 
"memory" behind that culture as embodied in the generation 
of Master Artisans Gu and Zhang may not be transmitted to 
their posterity. 
 
Dong