Hammer and Chisel at the Xining Heritage Exhibition

At a 2020 exhibition in Beijing, He Man demonstrated Huangzhong metal engraving with a hammer and chisel. The national-level inheritor’s small, repeated movements brought a tool into contact with a metal surface. Outside the exhibition hall stood another scale of the same craft: a warming pot almost three metres high.

Seventy-two silver-copper artisans had made it in 2019. Copper, steel, silver, tin and gold formed its material palette, with Kunlun jade and other stones set around the wall. The pot weighed about 1.3 tonnes and held roughly 2.2 cubic metres. According to the exhibition report, it could cook enough food for two cattle, eight sheep and one hundred chickens.

The report described production centered on family workshops, where skills passed from parent to child. He Man’s demonstration made the concentrated work of one artisan visible; the great warming pot embodied the accumulated labor of a team.

The exhibition also presented heritage projects from Huangzhong, Huangyuan and Datong, including duixiu appliqué, shadow puppetry and vinegar fermentation. Metalwork appeared among these practices through both an action and an object: a chisel engraving a surface, and a functional vessel enlarged into a public landmark.