Sugar Painting Art Has A Thousand-year History. See How Folk Artist Chen Qilin Inherits His Craft.

An examination of the origins of sugar painting art: the cultural evolution from “pouring sugar cakes” to national intangible cultural heritage

Sugar painting, as a treasure of traditional Chinese folk skills, is classified into the category of traditional art intangible cultural heritage in the qualitative category of academic circles.

It uses sugar as ink and a spoon as a paintbrush to show a vast world in a small space, subtly explaining the unique art form of "it is both sugar and painting, and it can be viewed and eaten".

There is such a common name among the people, called "sugar cake" or "sugar lantern shadow". It not only carries the atmosphere of fireworks in urban life, but more importantly, it also contains the profound memory called "folk cultural space".

According to local cultural and historical materials and oral genealogy, its origins can be traced back to the Tang Dynasty, and it has a cultural connection with the poet Chen Ziang. Although it is a legend, it adds a heavy historical and cultural origin to this skill.

The technical process strictly follows ancient methods and is mainly divided into two core steps: boiling sugar and painting sugar .

<strong>Boil sugar It's the basic skill. Put the white sugar or brown sugar in a copper pot and simmer it slowly over a slow fire. During this period, you must stir it continuously with a copper spoon until the sugar liquid becomes golden and translucent. , a state of condensation but not stagnation, and the control of the heat completely relies on the experience accumulated by the craftsmen over the years.

Painting sugar is a core skill. The craftsman uses the copper spoon as a "pen" and the flowing sugar liquid as "ink" to create on the "canvas" of the marble slab.

The essence is the "five major elements". The shape is very lifelike, the lines are extremely symmetrical and smooth, the brush strokes are very fast, the painting can be completed continuously without modification, and the cooling time can be accurately controlled to start painting.

This process is not only a display of skills, but also a visual feast of folk performing arts .

Chengdu sugar painting has a system of inherited schools with a clear context. In contemporary times, the most important representative is Cai's sugar painting art.

The deceased sugar painting master Cai Shuquan was awarded the title of "First-Class Folk Arts and Crafts Artist" by UNESCO, which greatly improved the academic status of this folk art.

Chen Qilin is his disciple. As a representative inheritor at the municipal level, the project of this representative inheritor is a national-level representative intangible cultural heritage project. It completely inherits the essence of Cai's sugar lantern art.

In 1989, Chen Qilin, following his mentor Cai Shuquan and other sugar painting practitioners, creatively integrated sugar painting and lantern art across different fields. It took a long time and nearly two tons of sugar to create the 16-meter-long "Sugar Dragon".

This work won the first prize at the 20th Chengdu Lantern Festival and has since been toured across the country. It has become a model of the innovative transformation of sugar painting techniques in the folk cultural space, fully demonstrating its social and cultural significance beyond the scope of a single food or handicraft.

Looking at the current status of intangible cultural heritage protection , sugar painting art faces a profound paradox of the times.

On the one hand, in the modern cultural consumption scene, as shown by Chen Qilin's stall in the cultural park, it still has a high degree of ornamental value. Folk evaluations such as "Looking at Doubashi" confirm its deep mass base and visual appeal.

On the other hand, its market transformation and inheritance development path is becoming increasingly narrow.

As Chen Qilin said, "At this moment, it seems that only the performance value is left." This sentence accurately reveals the tension between the essence of technique and the dilemma of survival.

Although there are more than a hundred practitioners, there are only a few who can truly make a living by relying on their skills and pass them on in an orderly manner. Most people are trapped in a dilemma, that is, they cannot make money and at the same time they cannot let go of their skills.

There is even a situation where some practitioners only have a superficial understanding of traditional themes. For themes such as "Zhuang Zhou's Dream of Butterflies" that contain classical cultural connotations, they are unable to deal with them due to their own lack of cultural literacy. This situation exactly reflects the weakening of the cultural foundation in the process of inheriting skills.

An in-depth analysis from the perspective of academic standards shows that the dilemma faced by sugar paintings reflects the common problem of traditional handicrafts in the modernization process. This problem is that as an intangible cultural heritage project that is inherited in a living state, its value lies not only in the exquisiteness of the finished product, but also in the essence of craftsman skills and emotional warmth gathered in the production process.

Even if sugar painting machines are now available, they cannot replace the "human touch" in hand-made creations and the artistic aura generated by improvisation.

At the stall where the sugar paintings are placed, there are business slogans that read "Half turns don't count" and "Young and old don't bully". It is not only a declaration of business ethics, but also a code of conduct for traditional handicrafts in the folk cultural space.

Looking to the future, the contemporary activation value of sugar paintings needs to be rediscovered urgently.

Its historical origin can be traced back to the fusion of Han folk skills brought by immigrants to Sichuan in the Qing Dynasty. This shows that it is not only the result of regional culture, but also the cultural memory shared by the Chinese nation.

The protection of sugar paintings should not only focus on the recording and preservation of skills, but also need to deeply explore the craftsmanship spirit and cultural genes behind them.

By building a more complete inheritor training mechanism, integrating skill teaching with cultural literacy cultivation, and innovating the display form of folk cultural space, this "sweet art" has found a new foundation for survival in contemporary society, and has effectively moved from the performance dilemma of "many viewers and few buyers" to a sustainable development path of living inheritance and intergenerational continuation.

Only in this way can this sugar-making technique, which has been passed down for thousands of years, continue to shine in the long river of history.