Picture and text/Ying Zhigang

When Liu Baohong announced to the outside world that he would personally make a hall name holder, the people around him looked confused. What is a hall name holder?

Liu Baohong went out of his way to explain that the hall name was the "pocket stage" he picked up when Kunqu opera artists came to other people's homes to sing a hall party.

Everyone is even more puzzled. You are a "carpenter" who makes furniture. Instead of doing serious business, you set up a "stage". Can this kind of "showmanship" make money or make a fortune?

No one else could understand it, but the old father unexpectedly supported it.

The old man said that he had seen cousin Mingdan before liberation when his eldest brother got married.

On that day, the Liu family was a large family on the bank of Yangcheng Lake. They invited the Kunqu Opera Hall Famous Class to sing at home. They watched with their own eyes the people of the opera troupe carry the hall names in and put them together one by one, turning them into a "small stage" with carved beams and painted buildings.

This is what the old man has been talking about all his life. Now that he hears that his son is going to make a house name by himself, he is both hopeful and proud.

Suzhou is the birthplace of Kunqu Opera, and private opera troupes that sing Kunqu Opera are often named after the name of the hall.

From the Ming and Qing Dynasties to the Republic of China, large families in Suzhou would always invite famous families to sing operas at home on weddings and birthdays.

When the Hall Name Class comes, they will pick up two sets of performance poles, one set containing musical instruments, props, costumes and other necessities for the performance; the other set is a special Hall Name Band.

When we arrived at the owner's lobby, we assembled the beautifully carved screen boards in the hall name holder one by one, and hung colorful lights on them. From a distance, it is a dazzling stage.

During the performance, six or seven artists from the Tangming class sat around the long table in the Tangming bracket on three sides, playing, singing, and singing, and singing the Kunqu opera.

Liu Baohong decided to make a "Tang Mingdan" by himself, not to make money or become famous."I think Tang Mingdan is a treasure in traditional Chinese culture. It's a pity that this craft has been lost."

Liu Baohong, 62 years old, was born in a carpentry family on the bank of Yangcheng Lake in Suzhou. After graduating from high school in 1977, he entered the industry and devoted himself to furniture design and production, and officially became the third generation successor of the Liu family of woodwork.

As a representative inheritor of Ming-style furniture making techniques, a intangible cultural heritage of Suzhou City, and a master of arts and crafts in Suzhou City, Liu Baohong has a sense of urgency to "snatch back traditional crafts."

In his lifetime, he hopes to fix the making process of traditional furniture in the form of pictures and texts, and fix the size of each construction, so that future generations will have rules to follow.

What does the name of the hall that Liu Baohong wants to make look like? How is each build designed? How to make it?

There are only two pairs of this hall name in Suzhou. As the treasure of the West Hall of Suzhou Museum and the Kunqu Opera Museum of China, you can only see but not touch, let alone measure it with a ruler. The craftsmanship of making it has long been lost. Wouldn't it be a dream to make it out of thin air?

Liu Baohong vowed to copy this ancient craft. Regardless of others 'dissuasion, he stayed in the West Hall of the Suzhou Museum every day, his eyes kept staring and his heart kept thinking. Gradually, he drew pictures one by one in his mind.

After more than a year of design, sketching, and carving, a hall name composed of more than a thousand structures was finally born in the "Gonggentang" on the shores of Yangcheng Lake.

This "Tang Ming Dan" is made of Burmese rosewood as the main material. The whole set of work is 2.8 meters long, 2.2 meters wide and nearly 3 meters high. It is made up of more than a thousand mortise and mortise members.

The six supporting arches are all carved with mahogany into the image of a "lion playing ball", and the surrounding fences are hollowed out with gourd and persimmon branches. The pillars are also carved with more than a hundred innocent little lions. They sit on them with their heads held in their arms. They are like a group of loyal guards patrolling all directions, showing the untouchable majesty of the king of beasts.

The screens on both sides are inlaid with two crossed auspicious patterns. Plum blossoms are carved on the top of the screen window, either in bud or blooming; in the middle is a cornucopia, with Ruyi on the left and horns on the right, and the middle is full of gold ingots, symbolizing "auspicious luck and luck, and rolling wealth", echoing the "Magpie Climbing Plum" at the bottom; bats and flowing auspicious clouds are carved between the two panels, implying the meaning of "Prosperity and Heaven"; The frame of the flower-window is shallowly carved with bamboo patterns, which also has the beautiful meaning of "bamboo reports peace" and "rising steadily".

The work is divided into three parts: upper, middle, lower, and lower. The upper part is the roof of the temple hall, the middle is the plum blossom window, and the lower part is the screen inlaid with marble. The flowered windows are similar to the windows in Suzhou garden buildings. They not only make it convenient for outside guests to watch the performance of the hall name, but also create a situation that is hidden and invisible through the combination of reality and reality.

There is a set of tables and chairs inside the Tangmingdan to facilitate artists to play. Twelve flower god patterns are hollowed out on both sides of the top, and the lower screen is inlaid with marble to set off the hollowed carved bergamot, longevity peach, pomegranate, bat, gourd, vase, etc. Pattern shape full of auspicious meaning.

Tangmingdan is a musical instrument during performance. It is beautifully carved, rich and elegant. Kunqu opera, instrumental music, etc. can be interpreted in it, which can achieve a reverberation effect and give people a gorgeous audio-visual feast and wonderful spiritual enjoyment.

Historically, Tang Mingdan has had great practical significance in promoting the popularization and promotion of Kunqu Opera among the people. The two are interdependent and are a rare physical witness in the history of the development of Kunqu Opera art.

"Don't let traditional culture be just a formality and a cultural gimmick." This is the original intention of Liu Baohong's famous name for producing "Burn Money but Not Selling Money".

Liu Baohong believes that as a Su craftsman, one must have a sense of responsibility and mission to inherit and innovate traditions, adapt to contemporary aesthetics, and leave samples for future generations.

As an excellent traditional culture, the main body is human beings, and the carrier of inheritance is also human beings. The essence of heaven and earth it contains is a bright beacon on our way back.

As the inheritor of a traditional skill, Liu Baohong "hopes that his little action can drive excellent traditional culture to come alive and become popular, making it a top-level flow. In that way, the cultural genes that have been passed down for thousands of years will surely have a better future."