Needle-carved gourd

Carving gourd in Lanzhou is a famous traditional handicraft in Lanzhou. It depicts people, scenery, flowers and so on with carefully selected small gourds. With the help of poetry and calligraphy. Exquisite and wonderful carving, vivid and freehand brushwork, and strong artistic appeal. With strong national and local characteristics, it is a good gift and collection in ancient and modern times and is deeply loved by connoisseurs at home and abroad.

The gourd used for carving gourds in Lanzhou is the fruit of a herbaceous plant, which is hard in texture, smooth in surface, yellowish in color and shaped like an egg, so it is called egg gourd. However, most of them are round, not very oval. According to Xu Huifu, the former cadre of Lanzhou Cultural Bureau, Lanzhou carved gourd was first seen in Guangxu period of Qing Dynasty. Legend has it that there was a tailor named Wang (someone visited Wang Hongping) who often carved flowers and plants on the egg gourd for his own appreciation. It is the ancestor of Lanzhou Gourd Carving. In the early years of the Republic of China, a few ingenious people carved knife and horse figures and scenic spots on the egg gourd and sold them to various markets as children's toys, which attracted people's attention. When Zhang Guangjian's Dugan (A.D. 19 14 to 192 1) arrived, firstly, because of Zhang Guangjian's advocacy, and secondly, because of the creation of artist Li Wenzhai, the carved gourd jumped from the folk to the upper class and became an artistic treasure given by officials and gentry.

The gourd works carved by Ruan, a master of arts and crafts in China, have been collected by the state, and the carved gourd products in Lanzhou and Linxia have won provincial prizes.