Compared with machines, hands are often useless in efficiency, and "doomed to death" may be the fate of many handicrafts.

But "intangible heritage" is not only about technology and efficiency, but also about our history and culture.

Just like the pottery making of the Dai people, it still retains ancient skills. Although it has fallen behind in efficiency, it has a cultural code closely related to the Dai people, which in turn allows us to understand the changes of Chinese civilization since four years ago.

Making pottery by Dai people: an interpretation of Chinese civilization 4000 years ago

Author |? Weiming Xv

1. The only Potter in the village

The Dai calendar will begin tomorrow, and Yumeng is making the last batch of pottery.

When I got to her house, she had been busy for a while. "I'll take a break before I do it, just after someone has visited and left."

But soon she began to mix with the soil, rub it into a round strip, and then build it on a wooden turntable. She is wearing a tube skirt that Dai people often wear, barefoot, and the big toe of her left foot slowly pushes the wooden wheel to cooperate with the action of wiping mud strips on her hands. This method of making pottery with both hands and feet is really rare in other places now.

▼? Yu Meng, the national intangible cultural heritage inheritor of Dai slow-wheel pottery, photographed by @ Xu Weiming?

Her son Yan Wenjiao is making a small teapot, and the pot body is almost ready. He is installing a spout and a handle.

After April 10, Xishuangbanna suddenly became lively. The Dai calendar year and the water-splashing festival are coming, and there are more and more tourists. Suddenly crowded streets and hotels with sharply rising prices made us feel a little flustered.

The temperature is also getting higher every day, as if saving heat for the water-splashing festival. However, Yumeng's workshop is separated from the outside world by an iron gate, keeping a sense of distance. The workshop is very quiet, as long as it is in the shade, it is very cool.

Yumeng and her son Yan Wenjiao devoted themselves to making pottery, and Yumeng's husband was busy in the yard and in the mud. The outdoor hot weather and lively atmosphere form a special contrast with the indoor.

There is another person at home who is making tea with a tea set made of Dai pottery. Yan Wen said that this is Pu 'er, which just came out this spring.

▼? Yumeng uses Dai pottery tea sets at home and uses Pu 'er tea in early spring. Photography @ Xu Weiming

Although this teapot teacup is made of pottery, its appearance is not much different from what you usually see.

However, in the past, the shape of the Dai tea set was actually quite different from the present. Yan Wen pointed to the pottery placed in the corner of the shelf against the wall and said, "That kind of pot was used before."

That kind of teapot is more like a small pot with a single mouth. In the past, Dai people lived in houses with fire pits. They put the tea leaves in this earthenware pot to bake for a while, and then inject boiling water. The already hot pottery will make a crisp sound when it meets water, and the tea will also roll with it.

The cup for drinking tea looks like the common tall cup today, but the mouth is slightly narrow and the abdomen is slightly convex. It is conceivable that drinking tea with this cup will be very different from drinking tea with a small cup today.

▼? Tea cups used by Dai people in the past, photography @ Xu Weiming

It's not just teapots and teacups that have changed. Mentou Village, where Yumeng is located, used to be a village near Lancang River, but now it has become a village in the city. Yan Wen said that there are at least 30,000 foreigners renting in the village, while there are less than 3,000 real locals.

The local people no longer do farm work because there is no arable land. Yumeng and Yan Wen are the only people in the village who make pottery, which may be a little different for most people.

2.？ Dai Wangshu's Man Le Zhai

Yumeng's pottery-making skills can be traced back to a long story if traced back to the source.

1 180, the Dai people established the local political power "Jinglong Jindian State", which was subordinate to Dali State. Dai Wang lived in Xuanwei Department, about 6 kilometers away from Jinghong City, and built six villages next to it to provide slave services for the palace.

One of the villages is called Manlezhai, which specializes in making pottery for the palace.

▼? About 1000 years ago, in the kingdom of Jinglong in Jindian, a village dedicated to making pottery for palaces was established. Photography @ Xu Weiming.

Later, the local government changed several times. 1953, Xishuangbanna established the Dai Autonomous Prefecture, the chieftain system was abolished, and Xuanwei Division was dissolved. The identity of the villagers in Manlezhai has also changed, and they are no longer responsible for pottery, but the pottery-making skills have been passed down all the way, and almost every household is making earthenware.

However, because they have lived by hand for generations and have no land, they have to rely on relatives and friends to move to nearby villages one after another. Later, Manle Village was basically dissolved.

Artists who moved out of Manle Village also brought their complete pottery-making skills to the new village where they settled, including Mandou Village where Yumeng is located. Yumeng's pottery-making technique was learned from an artist from Manlezhai.

▼ "The last king" Dao Shixun, after the abolition of the toast system, the fate of the pottery people in Manlezhai has also changed.

Today, in Mandou Village, only the Yumeng family is making pottery. Later generations who moved from Manle Village gave up making pottery. If we look at the inheritance of the pottery-making craft of the Dai nationality from a longer time, the contingency there is really puzzling.

Besides Yumeng, Xishuangbanna has many inheritors who make Dai pottery, such as Han Yandian and Nan Yu 'en. However, compared with the previous number of potters, there are very few practitioners now. If not rescued in time, Dai pottery may not exist today.

▼? Duan Qiru, Old Curator of Xishuangbanna Cultural Center Photography @ Xu Weiming

In 2006, Dai pottery was included in the first batch of national "non-legacy" list. Before being selected, Duan Qiru, the old curator of Xishuangbanna Cultural Center, was mainly responsible for the declaration of Dai pottery and other projects. At that time, this ancient craft had almost disappeared throughout Xishuangbanna.

Duan Qiru found artists who are still making pottery in some villages. Of course, the main reason for giving up pottery is the economy-the income from pottery making is only 2000 yuan a year, and its contribution to the family is limited.

There are also some accidental reasons that make people feel very emotional. Duan Qiru said that he had been to a village. In fact, 17 people can make pottery, but they don't do it anymore. Later, I learned that it was because of an accident in 1986: at that time, a villager drove a walking tractor to sell pottery, and the road rolled over, leaving two people in trouble. Survivors and old people thought it was unlucky to make pottery, so they gave up.

▼? Duan Qiru's book "Dai people slowly make pottery"

But people who make pottery still have a lot to give up on this craft. Duan Qirui once visited a farmer who no longer made Dai pottery. When he offered to buy tools for making pottery, he was rejected. The other party said that it was very sorry for not passing on the skills handed down from ancestors. It will be even worse if he sells these tools again.

In fact, their loss of Dai pottery skills is more helpless.

Later, Dai slow-wheel pottery became a national intangible heritage, and its protection was paid attention to, and the lost skills were gradually restored, which led to the situation we see today.

▼? Yu Meng, pottery maker, photography @ Xu Weiming.

3. Slow wheels won't make you happy.

At present, the common way of making pottery is to draw the blank by hand with a fast wheel. As long as you are skilled, you can pull out a shape in an instant.

However, making pottery with slow wheels can only be built with mud bars, which is very slow.

The thickness of pottery is not easy to master, and it is prone to uneven thickness. It is more necessary to accurately master the dosage of pottery clay. But Yu Meng is very skilled, so although she makes pottery with slow wheels, it is not slow. If it feels thick, remove some soil. If you don't think it's thick enough, add some soil and use your hands.

▼ Because she is already very skilled, Yu Meng is not slow to make pottery with a slow wheel. Photography @ Xu Weiming

Rain dream made a small clay pot, and after making a rough shape with clay bars, I saw her smooth the joints in the clay bars with her fingers. In order to make the shape of the device more regular and beautiful, Yu Meng did some trimming with a bamboo scraper. Then wipe the jar mouth with a cloth soaked in water, and the upper edge of the jar suddenly becomes much smoother.

Then, with pebbles in one hand and sticks in the other, she pounded the inner and outer walls of the clay pot. This kind of beating has two advantages. One is to make the clay pot more compact, and the other is that there are some notches on the wooden racket, which can give some special patterns to the outer wall of the clay pot.

There are two common patterns in Dai pottery. One is a stripe pattern in the up and down direction, which looks like a thin rope. The other is reticulate, which seems to be composed of countless diamonds. But because it is a slap, it is not a special rule, but gives people a sense of broadness. Some devices require accurate pattern rules and can be printed directly.

▼ Tapping the inner and outer walls can make the ceramic body more compact. Photography @ Xu Weiming

After the pottery blank is made, it must be placed in a ventilated place for a few days, dried in the shade and then dried in the sun until it is completely dry. When a certain number of ceramic blanks are reached, they can be fired.

Traditionally, the most common way for Dai people to burn pottery is in ancient plains, not in kilns.

When burning, first spread a layer of firewood and straw on the ground, then code the dried pottery blank and cover it with a layer of straw. Then, it is very important to cover the straw with a layer of soil. It's a bit like roasting "beggar chicken". You have to paste a layer of soil on the outside of the chicken.

However, the soil did not cover the woodpile tightly, leaving an ignition port at the bottom and several vents at the top. Then light the fire, the firewood burns gradually, and the soil becomes dry and hard, which is equivalent to a temporary kiln.

▼? Two Tools of Indo-Dai Pottery Patterns: Photography @ Xu Weiming

Yu Meng's son said that this method of burning the ground with soil has many advantages. First, keep the temperature of the firewood pile high, which can reach 800 to 1000 degrees Celsius. Due to the sealing and heat preservation of the outer soil, the temperature in the kiln can last for a long time, which not only improves the success rate, but also makes the ceramic color more uniform.

Another advantage is that this kind of flat burning can be large or small and is very flexible. If the pottery is used for a long time, the woodpile will be made larger, otherwise it will be made smaller, which is not limited by the size of the kiln and saves fuel. The place where Yumeng usually burns pottery is in his own yard. After burning the radiation, he took it away and swept away the ashes and dry soil, leaving almost no trace. This is really much more convenient than a fixed kiln. Of course, many potters now burn Dai pottery in earthen kilns in order to reach a higher temperature.

▼? Do a good job of waiting for the pottery cup blank to dry in the shade, photography @ Xu Weiming

4. the gift of time

The pottery-making technology of the Dai people is considered to come from the Central Plains, with a history of at least 4,000 years.

The Dai nationality is a descendant of Baiyue nationality from the south of the Central Plains and merged with the local area. In the process of Baiyue people moving south, they brought pottery cookers and tableware along the way. In the process of moving southward, the pottery culture of the Central Plains gradually spread southward, all the way to Xishuangbanna.

Later, the firing technology of ceramics in the Central Plains was greatly improved, but Xishuangbanna was not affected.

▼ Dai pottery is mainly used to make daily necessities, photography @ Xu Weiming.

During the period of Cao Wei and Western Jin Dynasty, porcelain was widely used in the south, with delicate fetal quality and pure glaze color. Tri-colored Tang Dynasty can be fired in the Central Plains in the Tang Dynasty. After the Song Dynasty, porcelain firing in mainland China became prosperous as a whole.

The Dai people living in the southwest border are really inconvenient to contact the Central Plains. Since the arrival of Baiyue people and their pottery-making skills, it seems that several new ceramic technology revolutions in the Central Plains are no longer spreading here, but the simplicity of Dai pottery has been preserved and evolved independently, developing its own characteristics.

For example, influenced by beliefs, Dai pottery includes not only household utensils, but also Buddhist temple supplies. Because of religious requirements, most Buddhist temple supplies are made by men. Compared with daily pottery, the pottery used in temples is obviously different in shape and needs glazing.

▼ Affected, Dai pottery is also used for temple architectural decoration; Photography @ Xu Weiming

It is difficult for us to understand the sense of distance between Xishuangbanna and the mainland in the past. Now it takes less than an hour to fly from Kunming to Xishuangbanna, and the mountains and rivers between the two places are easy to cross. But if the time is reversed for 30 years, it is a daunting road from Kunming to Xishuangbanna. At that time, the transportation and logistics of the two places relied on people to pack horses. It takes at least ten days to walk to Xishuangbanna, and northerners have to worry about tropical diseases.

Nowadays, the primitive pottery-making skills in the Central Plains are almost nowhere to be found. The objects in the museum are cultural relics thousands of years ago, telling ancient stories. Who would have thought that in Xishuangbanna, the frontier of China, the making of earthenware is still vivid and has become a living fossil for people to spy on the development history of China pottery?

▼ The pottery in Xishuangbanna (above) is similar in shape and texture to the round-bottomed earthen pot unearthed in Tanshishan, Minhou, Fujian (below).

Far away in Tan Shi, Minhou, Fujian Province, fragments of an ancient round-bottomed pottery jar were excavated half a century ago, and archaeologists reassembled them into a complete pottery. This ancient pottery is thought to be at least 2300 years old.

People should be familiar with the pottery in Xishuangbanna. Although separated by a long time and space, it is strikingly similar to the earthen pottery of the Dai nationality in form and decoration.

Although the production of Dai pottery has been improved, the overall skill is still ancient. The way of making pottery with jade and Meng's hands and feet is not much different from that of people three or four thousand years ago. Perhaps it can be said that the pottery-making of the Dai people is a gift left by time.

Author? Weiming Xv

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