The split A knife goes into the end of a bamboo culm and opens it along the grain. The first cuts are coarse; the later ones take the strip down until it is thin as thread. The work is done by eye and by feel. A strip that is slightly too thick will not turn a corner cleanly; one too thin will break at the bend. In Qingshen, in Meishan, this splitting is the first skill a weaver learns and the one that takes longest to keep. The sound is dry, repeated, almost quiet. The hand knows the width before the eye confirms it. The same strip can be woven into a basket that holds cocoons or a fan that fits in a hand.

What the strips carried The craft was not made for display cases. Qingshen weaving served silkworm raising, with baskets that held cocoons; it served water, with a bamboo-and-stone weir built for the Honghua irrigation works in the Tang; it served scholarship, with boxes made for a scholar's desk; and it served the court, with tributes sent in the Qing. A basket has to carry weight, a weir has to hold against a current, a box has to close. Each use set a different standard for the same strip, and the weaver's repertoire grew from those standards rather than from ornament. None of these objects was made to be looked at; each was made to be used until it wore out.

From basket to picture In the twentieth century, Qingshen weavers began to make pictorial works, including a woven version of Along the River During Qingming. The change is not only one of subject. A basket is judged by whether it holds; a picture is judged by whether it looks like what it shows. Both depend on the same strip and the same hand, but the picture asks for shading, faces and distance, and the strip has to be split finer to give them. The gap between a basket and a picture is the gap between a tool and an image, crossed one strip at a time. The woven painting is a test of the craft's upper limit, not its everyday work.

The listing In 2008 Qingshen bamboo weaving was entered in the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage. The official listing also describes the craft as endangered: the makers are old, and few young people are taking it up. A heritage listing can bring attention, commissions and students, but it cannot make a hand steady or an eye sharp. The work is slow and the training long, a difficult combination. What the listing protects is a technique, not a market. In Qingshen the question is whether the strip will still be split by someone who expects to make a living from it. The listing describes the situation plainly, which is rarer than a celebration.