Regarding the fact that I wrote a foreword in online literature, it can be said that the reputation is mixed. But from my personal point of view, the preface can better explain to the readers what kind of ideas my book wants to convey, and avoid some plots in my book that will make readers doubt the authenticity because of "poor information", or think that I am too idealistic, "blind" cultural confidence, etc......

As for the theme of the book, in fact, the title and introduction of the book speak for themselves, the theme story revolves around lacquerware and the Grand Canal, and integrates a variety of excellent traditional Chinese culture as the constituent elements of the book.

Since I have already talked about the value of intangible cultural heritage, this book will talk about lacquerware, talk about the impression of lacquerware in the society now, and then talk about how I found an intangible cultural heritage protection unit, to understand and buy it. It is also a response to the impression that many people on the Internet do not value lacquerware, which is very inconsistent with the actual situation expressed in my book.

According to historical data, lacquerware has been used for more than 8,000 years. Its role, origin, technology, market share, etc. are constantly changing with the development of history, and in the process of continuous improvement and enrichment of its technology, it has also promoted internal and external exchanges and demonstrated the transformation of an important political system in Chinese history: from primitive society to god worship, and then to the homes of ordinary people, lacquerware can be said to be an important form of expression of Chinese culture.

Words and idioms such as "pitch black" and "glue-like lacquer" are not only to describe lacquerware, but also derived from the characteristics of lacquerware, which is enough to see that lacquerware has a strong and colorful stroke in the history of Chinese civilization.

Lacquerware has always been valued by the state, and its status can be said to be no less than porcelain. From the fixed-point training in the last century, specially cultivating relevant talents for several large state-owned enterprises, to the lacquer screens that can be clearly seen in many domestic and international conferences and meetings......

But urushiol in lacquer is known to cause allergies. Although I also started to learn about lacquerware back in 2018, it was only a glimpse of its amazement, but since I started to visit the lacquerware conservation unit in 2021, I heard many craftsmen tell about their experiences, and I really saw how terrible it is.

From Pingyao Tangdu to push the lacquer, to the Yangzhou lacquer factory, to the BJ gold lacquer inlay, and finally to my Taoist who learned to chop the qin, allergies are an inescapable topic, and it is also the reason why many people are discouraged.

It is precisely because of these hardships that I am more and more disgusted by the irresponsible remarks made by many marketing accounts and some irresponsible bloggers.

"Without design, it can't keep up with the times, and it's not as good as the aesthetics of the ancients, so it's better to reproduce the ancients", which is usually the main topic and form of their drainage.

I used to only see the lacquer works displayed in the Dongcheng Intangible Cultural Heritage Museum, and once thought that "there is no innovation, no design", but when I thought of one "innovative design" after another, I really found the intangible cultural heritage protection unit through the national intangible cultural heritage official website under the guidance of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, searched for the address, went deep into the protection unit, and saw their works......

Only then did I realize that my so-called innovations may just be leftovers from my ancestors, and now they can be easily reproduced, or maybe they were designed 20 or 30 years ago, or they can't even keep up with the current innovation and development.

However, whether it is the Forbidden City lacquerware restored by BJ gold lacquer inlay, or the Nine Dragon Wall reproduced by BJ and Pingyao, or the pure carved lacquer recreated by Yangzhou lacquerware based on thousands of miles of rivers and mountains, the "Canal Pearl" of the Luodian vase centered on the canal, and even countless restored works.

Or BJ gold lacquer inlaid "rhino leather lacquer brooch, rhino leather lacquer earrings, bleaching paint fan, bleaching paint refrigerator sticker bottle lifter dual-purpose, sheep's horn luodian comb", Yangzhou lacquer factory's "hook knife painted land punch board, porcelain inlaid lacquer tea box, point screw keychain, luodian plate watch, rhino leather lacquer pen, luodian brush", as well as the two scroll lacquer paintings, respectively, the four-cut process and luodian are fused on a soft and rollable picture scroll.

What is not innovation? How are they not designed, and how are they not in line with the times?

Some people may say, "What are you, what is the creativity you think of", aside from myself, those videos and comments that shout that there is no creativity, the makeup box they want is actually just a box that Yangzhou lacquerware and Xie Fuchun duck egg powder have cooperated for many years; The hairpins and jewelry they asked for were numerous in all the lacquerware factories; The price of the fan they want can range from hundreds to hundreds of thousands......

Therefore, through this book, I want to tell you that the country, lacquerware artists and even related practitioners have never failed to pay attention to lacquerware, let alone its practical value and the value of the times.

The practicality of lacquerware has never been a problem, but what really troubles its development lies in the understanding of lacquerware and the understanding of lacquerware craftsmen by the Chinese people and the world.

"japan", which is regarded as traffic by countless people, calls for the so-called "attention", but the most commonly used translation of lacquerware is "lacquerware", which has also been pointed out by many Chinese living abroad in the comment area, and Baidu translates and searches for lacquerware, which also bolds "lacquerware" and puts it at the top.

Some people will say, whether what they say is right or not, someone can see it or not?

But the attention brought by a lie, or a deliberately fabricated 'dispute', is like "grandstanding" and "moaning without disease". If many people really blindly join the lacquerware industry for love and do what they think is innovative, they can only end up with no one after suffering a lot.

Let's ask: At that time, people's blood was cold, and in addition to lacquerware, would anyone rescue those endangered intangible cultural heritage?

The impact of these videos is far more than that, many people have learned about lacquerware in the video of "China is not without luxury", and they think that lacquerware has been shelved, and ordinary people can't afford it at all, but there are a lot of daily necessities such as a few pieces, dozens of pieces, and hundreds of yuan, such as makeup boxes, fruit plates, tea tables, bracelets, fans, and keychains...... The whole nine yards.

Yes, there are millions of boutiques. However, "a hundred miles and a thousand knives and one or two paints", the price of individual purchases of high-quality lacquer is now about 300 yuan a catty, and the average price is also about 150 yuan.

In addition to money, more investment is time. Taking carved lacquer inlaid jade screens as an example, if you want to change from raw lacquer to carved lacquer inlaid jade and a series of works, after the color of cinnabar, stone blue, and stone green, the wooden tires brushed with raw lacquer need to be dried in the shade under special temperature and humidity.

Yangzhou does one layer a day, and two layers a day in the rainy season; BJ sometimes takes a week to do a layer, and only less than half a year can do it. A layer of lacquer, with a thickness of only 0.03-0.04 mm, takes a whole year to brush to one centimeter.

On this basis, the craftsman can carry out the next step of carving lacquer, during which there can be no mistakes, otherwise the whole will be lost. In addition, a series of steps such as designing a draft require a lot of labor and time, as well as extremely high skills of craftsmen.

Therefore, a work that can sell millions of dollars may take several masters to work together for five or six years to complete.

There is a reason why expensive is expensive, and cheap is also a daily utensil in the hands of ordinary people. And those irresponsible videos are only the word "expensive" left when they open their mouths and close their mouths, so that the society's perception of lacquerware will go further and further on the wrong road. It's what really makes lacquerware 'shelved'.

In the video I swiped, there are also people who are reluctant to buy because they have seen all kinds of irresponsible propaganda, so they mistakenly believe that lacquerware artists are using their hardship and tiredness to "morally kidnap" consumers.

But the reality is that many of the contradictions are not actually caused by the inheritors themselves, nor are they boasting about them. The difficulties of market, culture, innovation, practicality, aesthetics, and raw materials are real, and they are not wrong to tell the facts to everyone. But some irresponsible videos are taken out and hyped up to gain traffic and benefits.

Fortunately, in the video of the marketing account, I have also seen a lot of comments that have similar views to me.

There are lacquerware students, and there are also enthusiasts like me, the inheritors I met or the craftsmen of the conservation unit, who would talk about "allergies", but they never complained or complained, but just told the stories of the past, "now they have come here", and they can enjoy lacquerware making.

Even if the allergy is something that we can experience again if we don't touch the lacquer once a year, they just laugh and tell us that this is the lacquer - it's like saying that good things always have a temper.

What really makes it most difficult for me to accept is that some people associate "lack of attention" with the false proposition of "blind" cultural self-confidence.

I have never denied that there is still a lot of room for progress in our cultural development, but under the cloak of "objective cultural self-confidence" and the fact of "admiring the foreign and flattering the foreigner" will really cause many people who do not understand and want to understand have a great misunderstanding.

After all, the sense of responsibility of the sons and daughters of China is eternal, and this sense of responsibility will also bring a sense of gain, making us more accepting that "we have to rely on us to help others", rather than "because we don't understand, we didn't help others".

What's more, some people put aside the environment, society, economy, and substitutes to talk about market share, and take "a certain Japanese country uses more", "I used to use it at home, but now basically no one buys it", "A certain Japanese country is better than us in innovation" and so on.

These views cleverly make use of the patriotic psychology of the Chinese people, as well as the fine virtues of being prepared for danger in times of peace, being modest, and seeing the wisdom and wisdom together, to attract traffic and earn enough eyeballs, but in fact they are exaggerating the achievements of other countries and devaluing our own lacquerware to worthless.

In addition to the word "japan" above, which attracted attention by pulling a very useful word, Kangxi was also taken out as an example, and the sentence "Among the lacquerware, foreign lacquer is the best" in his remarks as a gimmick, made patriots of all ages quite indignant, but this is undoubtedly a clear and out-of-context quote!

The original words of Kangxi recorded in the "Court Training Maxims" are: "Among the lacquerware, foreign lacquer is the best, so people all think that foreigners are clever and do best, but they don't know that lacquer is a thing, and it should be wet and not dry." China has a lot of dry and dusty ground, so the color of lacquerware is the darkest, and it looks like it is vulgar. The ocean is in the sea, damp and dust-free, so the color of lacquerware is extremely gorgeous. This is all due to the water and soil everywhere, and it is not the best done by foreigners, and the Chinese are not as good as what they do. ”

This passage explains Kangxi's point very simply: the foreign land is wet, so the color of the lacquerware looks bright, and the Chinese dry and windy sand, so the lacquerware does not look as good as the foreign land. Therefore, although people think that foreign lacquerware is better, this view is wrong.

As for why Yongzheng let the manufacturing office, that is, the distant master of the BJ gold lacquer inlay factory imitate foreign lacquer, there is no clear point of view that it is because of the "high quality" of foreign lacquer. On the contrary, there is evidence to prove that the imitations of the office are not only "of high quality", but also "varied".

At the same time, the imitation technology was actually transmitted from the Tang Dynasty at all, and was slightly changed by a Japanese country in combination with local culture. Therefore, the imitation behavior, to talk about this matter in general, is to say that Yong neither respects the ancestral teachings, nor does he know much about the development history of lacquerware.

Other than that, there is nothing more than the reasonable personal preferences of a generation of emperors.

Going back to what I said earlier, I have also met a person who compares the proportion of a Japanese lacquerware market in China, the Fujian lacquerware market in the 90s, and the Japanese lacquerware innovation in China to illustrate how "poor" the development of Chinese lacquerware is.

However, the main reason for the decline in market share is not directly related to the "lacquerware is not valued", but the collapse of lacquerware factories and the period of earning foreign exchange, cheap and cheap products have become high-quality and low-cost or high-quality and expensive due to resource protection and economic development, so consumers have increased their purchases, and with the development of the times, the increase of substitutes also determines the change in market share.

The development of private enterprises in rural and urban areas is also due to reform and opening up. State-owned enterprises are supported by state funds, and in the process, state-owned enterprises go bankrupt, and the factories that no one takes over will no longer exist, and production will inevitably plummet.

Among the intangible cultural heritages, such as Bi Liufu oil paper umbrella and Suzhou Ruyi Sandalwood Fan Factory, state-owned enterprises cannot cover their own profits and losses, and the debts are made up by individuals, which is continued.

What's more, China has porcelain, copper, bamboo, wood, purple sand and other materials, which can be selected from a variety of materials. High school political economy tells us that if the substitute for the same thing is cost-effective, such as stainless steel bowls and porcelain bowls can replace lacquer bowls, and wooden furniture and simple furniture can replace lacquer furniture, then the sales volume of substitutes will be high, so it is obvious that lacquerware cannot occupy the top spot.

For example, the lacquerware fountain pen that the other party and I argued about cannot be compared with its use value in China compared with that in Japan.

Because most of our pen market is supported by students, and students need to use "0.5mm black signature pen" according to the examination regulations, buying fountain pens is often used to give away, or business people to buy, at this time the practicability and necessity of lacquer pens are not high, even inferior to lacquer brush brushes. But on this basis, we still have a variety of lacquer pens in China, such as carved lacquer, snails, rhino leather lacquer, etc., which are made and sold.

As Kangxi mentioned, the appearance of lacquerware is affected by the environment, and the dryness, wetness, and corrosiveness of the social environment are different, all of which make it impossible for lacquerware to be compared with a certain Japanese country in China, and even in China, the environmental differences in various provinces are very different, which is destined to make the market share of lacquerware very uneven.

Taking Yangzhou guqin to BJ as an example, although there is no problem with the lacquerware from the north to the south, the service life of the lacquerware from the south to the north is greatly reduced. In this way, simple and cheap porcelain is the first choice.

Of course, five years ago, I also felt that "XX country is preemptively registering" and "why don't we pay attention to it", but this is all because of the factors of insufficient understanding. As long as you have a deep understanding, you should understand that many things are not temporary, and there are too many changes in the times behind them, and the situation is different between countries, so it cannot be generalized.

A single variable can be compared, when there are too many variables, such a comparison is nothing more than a family statement to prove their own point of view, and cannot be used as a proof that "Chinese lacquerware has poor development, is not valued by the state, no one inherits, does not understand innovation, and does not care about the needs of the female group".

Individuals can understand only a little bit of it, but when it comes to cultural propaganda, they must take responsibility and at least understand their historical, social and cultural background, as well as their past, present and future......

Five years ago, and even now, I was far less likely to be "seen" than a marketing account or blogger, and I couldn't do more, so I could only let the readers who read my book really understand the current situation of lacquerware that I learned about, and the culture they told me.

Speaking of which, I realized that the preface with more than 5,000 words was about to be written into an editorial by me. To sum up, in fact, it is nothing more than the introduction of the paragraph, lacquerware in China is not lacking in attention, innovation, lack of "understanding", lack of legitimate propaganda without "deception" language drainage.

I don't have the ability to do publicity, but I can write lacquerware into the story, and together with the characters in the book, use the young people's thinking to bring the world the recognition that "lacquerware originated in China" and "lacquerware has never been abandoned by the new era", and let everyone see the power of young people to empower lacquerware from the perspective of young people, and see how they can let more people understand the culture behind lacquerware and the difficulties that lacquerware craftsmen have overcome one after another.

My personal experience now only includes the experience of bleaching paint and learning to chop the qin, although now the qin has learned to go on the gray tire, the steps of painting lacquer, but because I know that I want to repeat the college entrance examination, the Taoist who taught the qin to see me very tightly, for fear that I will be allergic to delay the college entrance examination, and I have no chance to try it to death.

Of course, after my college entrance examination this year, I also plan to express my purpose bluntly, on the premise of ensuring safety, to see what the real "lacquer allergy" is, so as to really write about that feeling. Of course, if I'm lucky enough not to be allergic, that's also the source of my "extra luck" to be able to write.

Finally, I would like to send a message I left in the comment area of a video to all readers, to those who want to write about intangible cultural heritage, and to myself, remembering:

If you want to write lacquerware, you can't just write lacquer, you have to write about your face scratched because of allergies, and you have to write about the "worthiness" that you laughed about after many years.

If you want to write about oil-paper umbrellas, you can't just write about beautiful women, you must write about the confusion in the same rainy alley, and you must write about the indescribable "wow" in the museum.

To write about silk and satin, we must not only write about the fluttering clothes and fluttering fireflies, but also write about the close connection between the textile industry and the development of the motherland, and write about the shuttle line for thousands of years, and also write about the sigh behind the inheritance today.

If you want to write intangible cultural heritage, you should really understand them, understand the inheritance from generation to generation, the ups and downs, and even the luck that has allowed them to stay until now. Not just a gimmick that will bring you financial value and make you famous......

Ci Liansheng

March Day of the Second Year of the Second Zero

(04 May 2023)

Yu Jing