Black copper turns silver: flowing Yunnan flavor and old Yunnan flavor

Guandu ancient town, located in the southeast suburb of Kunming, is one of the famous historical and cultural ancient towns in Kunming, with many years of BOo history. The ancient town is not far from downtown Kunming, but compared with the bustling, noisy and crowded city, it seems like a lifetime ago. After a heavy rain, Kunming is cloudless in Wan Li in summer. Going to Guandu is to see the legendary "black copper goes silver".

The taste of old Kunming

Guandu ancient town is the birthplace of ancient Dian culture, and Guandu is famous for its folk song and dance performances. Folk songs and dances, lantern operas, Yunnan operas, folk songs, folk dances, folk instrumental music and other music performances are active on the folk stage all the year round.

When we went there, we met several grandmothers. They just finished singing Lantern and walked out of the pavilion without taking off their makeup, humming songs in their mouths and writing happy expressions on their faces.

According to reports, the old people in the town basically continue this life-get up with a cup of green tea in the morning, and then invite them to sing lanterns or older Yunnan operas in groups of three or five; After lunch, let's go to the teahouse for tea. This leisurely life relieves people's pressure to the greatest extent, thus forming the hospitable character of Guandu people.

Kunming Wu Tong Walking Silver Craft Museum is located next to the ancient town Jingang Pagoda. On the second floor of the eye-catching Gold and Silver Building, the history, production technology, inheritance, traditional hand tools, the works of the Jin family and various honorary materials are displayed.

Jin is the inheritor of this intangible cultural heritage. /kloc-when he was 0/8 years old, he was wandering in the old Kunming "flea market" and was attracted by an accidental opportunity to an ink cartridge with silver stripes on a black background. Since then, he has been fascinated by the magical skills of the Black Copper Bank, and he has been learning from teachers everywhere.

1985 or so, Jin studied the technology of extracting silver from black copper according to the master's secret recipe. He started from making a relatively simple pipe mouth, groped step by step, and made antique bronzes and silverware such as ink boxes, cigarette paste boxes, wine vessels and Four Treasures of the Study.

Now, with the support of the local government, Jin has established the Walking Silver Craft Museum, Walking Silver Learning Museum and Jiyinlou. The charming Guandu attracts tourists from all directions all year round. From here, they learned about this unique skill with a history of 280 years. From here, they took exquisite works of art to distant places.

Passing the sound of a hammer in a museum

When tourists walk in Guandu Old Street, they often hear the sound of Wu Tong's small hammer striking metal objects in the silverware workshop. It turned out that Kim and several of his disciples were making exquisite handmade silver handicrafts.

Pushing open the quaint wooden door of the "Golden Liji Silver House", I stepped over the stone threshold and walked in. The metal handicrafts such as pen holders, ink cartridges, small vases and pipes displayed in the cabinet were overwhelming. Their silver decorative patterns include plums, bamboos, chrysanthemums, flowers, birds, insects, fish, dragons, phoenixes, deer and cranes, as well as quaint poems and songs, which are full of the traditional art of calligraphy and painting in China. The overall look is elegant and very ornamental. In particular, the decorative effect of black and white is solemn and deep, with beautiful luster and very quaint.

This is black copper and silver. It takes copper as a tire, engraves various patterns on the tire, and then injects molten silver (or gold) water into the pattern, cools it and polishes it. After a long time, the bottom copper naturally turns black, revealing silver (or gold) lines, showing a clear decorative effect of black and white (or black and yellow).

According to legend, during the Yongzheng period of the Qing Dynasty, the craftsmen of the State of Yue accidentally dropped the gold ring into the pot while smelting copper and making utensils, and the ring immediately melted. He angrily threw everything around him into the pot, then he cooled it and found a special alloy copper with a bright black color. He tried to make handicrafts with this alloy copper, forming a unique black copper and silver in Yunnan.

During the Republic of China, Wu Tong went silver and reached its peak, with an annual output of more than 3,000 pieces. Products are exported to Hong Kong and even abroad. In response to the needs of the times, Shiping Yuejia opened a branch in Kunming. At this time, Wu Tong was famous for its silver, and many bureaucrats scrambled to collect it, but it was difficult to find one thing.

In the quiet small building, Jin and several apprentices carefully made black copper and silver, carefully carved them from time to time, and sometimes held semi-finished products in their hands and carefully pondered them to find out where they needed to be processed and improved. Different from other metal handicrafts, Wu Tong Walking Silver has experienced more than 280 years of vicissitudes, but it has completely preserved the whole process of handmade.

Because it is a pure manual process, the tools for making black copper and silver are also quite traditional. The main tools are bellows, smelting furnace, hammer (size), oil lamp, blowpipe (blowing fire and silver), pliers, chisels of different sizes (for carving patterns) and so on. Up to now, the tool has been updated with a "leather tiger" and a spray gun, which are used in the process of taking silver. The main fuels used to extract silver are kerosene and gasoline.

The key technology of extracting silver from black copper lies in the process of "extracting silver", that is, how to extract silver from black copper. Without proper chemical reaction principle and thermal principle, the silver on the black copper sheet will fall off or the black copper blank will be destroyed. From the melting point and compatibility of metals, it is easier to move copper to iron, but it is quite difficult to move silver to copper. Wu Tong's pure and exquisite artistic taste has been created by complicated handcraft.

The taste of primitive craft

In the Jin family, there is a cigarette cream box with a fitted ivory in the middle. "Ivory is an accidental opportunity. I bought it in 800 yuan at the antique market." Kim saw ivory, so he thought hard. After repeated experiments, he finally made a cigarette cream box and put it on.

"Old antiques should also be innovated, and they should not be blindly copied, which is not in line with the contemporary era." The black copper bank gear made by Jin and his disciple Li is sold well by this. Their works are often favored by collectors in Taiwan Province Province and Hongkong, and antique dealers all over the world often ask them to place orders.

Yunnan ranks first among all provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities in terms of ethnic types and the richness of intangible cultural resources, and the protection of "intangible heritage" has been at the forefront of the country for many years. However, it is also faced with the situation that many inheritance projects cannot be passed down and will die out.

"Since last year, 38 people have come to me to sign up, hoping to learn the craft of black copper and silver." After a period of getting along, Jin found that people who want to learn skills have various purposes. "But this is a unique traditional skill in Yunnan. If it is developed, it must preserve its traditional Yunnan flavor as much as possible. "

Li went home 10 many times, and finally impressed his master with his sincerity. However, Jin has its own standards and requirements for apprentices. In addition to the most critical "character", Jin also asked Li to be assured: 1. Wu Tong will never leave Yunnan; 2. Li's daughter wants to marry Jinning, and her son wants to marry Jinning girl; 3. Be sure to find a way to leave your hukou in Jinning in the future; 4. Make Wu Tong the best city in Yunnan.

Taking advantage of Li Bai's opportunity, after opening the gold and silver building, Jin opened the exhibition hall and museum of silver-walking skills in the form of "the museum in the shop".

The years have given the silver walking in Wu Tong a longer beauty, and the ancient Guandu ancient town has provided a huge stage for the intangible cultural heritage and folk handicrafts in ancient Yunnan. Against the background of lantern opera, Yunnan opera, folk songs, folk dances, national instrumental music and other folk songs and dances, Wu Tong walked picturesque and quietly forgot the time in the flowing culture.