The Undying Beauty of the East - Intangible Cultural Heritage: Lacquer
In the ancient Chinese classic "Shan Hai Jing", a magical plant is recorded: "In Guo Mountain, most of its trees are lacquer palm. In Ying Da Mountain, there are many lacquer trees." From these lacquer trees, the soul of handicrafts - lacquer can be extracted. The reason why it is called the "soul" of handicrafts is that after being coated with lacquer, the appearance of the utensils can become extremely exquisite and can effectively prevent the erosion of time. Even after thousands of years, it can still remain shiny and new.
The reason why lacquer is particularly precious is that it is extremely rare. The number of lacquer trees is very small. A lacquer tree must grow to at least 70 years of age before it can be tapped for lacquer. Moreover, after each tapping, each tree must rest for two years before it can be tapped again; otherwise, the tree will die. When collecting lacquer, after each cut, one needs to wait for five days before making the second cut. On average, about one or two thousand lacquer trees can yield only one jin of lacquer. Therefore, there is a folk saying that "One jin of lacquer requires traveling a hundred miles and making a thousand cuts", which shows its preciousness.
If one wants to completely produce a lacquerware, usually hundreds of procedures are needed, which can endow the utensils with functional characteristics such as corrosion resistance, wear resistance, acid resistance, and heat resistance.
Archaeologists have discovered that for many thousands-of-year-old lacquerware relics, even though the wooden bases have decayed and rotted, the lacquer layers remain intact as before, emitting a luster of the years.