He used 500,000 yuan to build a root carving of 500 arhats, and the rich businessman broke the contract after bidding 1 10,000. What happened afterwards?

How skilled were the craftsmen in ancient China? Some products they make can't be copied by modern machines at all, nor can they be copied manually. Wei Xueyi, a writer in Ming Dynasty, wrote an article "The Story of a Nuclear Ship", saying that he received a gift from a craftsman named Wang Shuyuan. It was a miniature woodcarving with peach stones, so small that he could actually carve the scene of Su Dongpo's visit to Chibi.

China has a long history of carving art, including wood carving, stone carving, bone carving and root carving. Wang Shuyuan, a "figure who can be a palace vessel with a diameter of one inch, or even a bird, beast, wood and stone, is just a little-known person. If Wei Xueyi hadn't written him in the article, future generations wouldn't have known there was such a person.

Among the numerous carving arts, the root carving that pays attention to "three points of labor and seven points of nature" is particularly unique. For example, the once sensational root carving of Guangxi "Oriental Lion" is15m long and costs 30 tons of nanmu. Guangxi root carving team took half a year to build, and the cost was as high as 2 million.

Most people may wonder why it takes so long for these masters to make a root carving. In fact, as a kind of art collection, the price fluctuation of root carving is inevitable. With more speculators, prices will naturally go up. If the market is good, there will be more people engaged in this industry, and all kinds of root carving art will emerge one after another.

In 20 17, the sales market scale of natural root carving industry in China was 5.84 billion yuan, which increased by 580 million yuan in the second year. But the root carving art is scattered all over the country, and the scale is not large. For example, Fujian and Zhejiang have concentrated boutique root carving enterprises, and few people in other provinces may be familiar with root carving.

Speaking of large-scale root carving, Guilin, Guangxi has a vast territory and abundant resources. As early as the 1980s, Guilin's root carvings have sprung up everywhere, but most of them are made by individuals. Long Conghai is one of many root carving masters. He loved this art very much since he was a child, so he did not hesitate to drop out of school and go home to learn root carving. He opened his own root carving factory three years ago.

The root carving market is changing rapidly. Long Conghai thought that he could show his hands and feet, but he was hit hard. His most famous project is to carve "Five Hundred Arhats" on a giant ebony worth 500,000 yuan. Such a project naturally takes a lot of time and manpower, but as long as it is completed, its artistry is still very high.

Long Conghai's project has also attracted some attention. A wealthy businessman bid 1 10,000 yuan to book this work, and paid a small deposit in advance. However, after the market floated, the wealthy businessmen regretted it, saying that they didn't want to buy it, and Long Conghai could sell it to others. Where can ordinary people afford such things? Buyers are very difficult to find.

Therefore, Long Conghai is also very sad. In the spirit of an artist, he didn't want to miss such a good ebony, so he continued to carve and made a living by doing odd jobs at other times. Although the artistic design idea of Long Conghai turning ebony into a small "Longmen Grottoes" is wonderful, the unsold artworks can only be left there as a pile of waste.

The art of root carving has flourished since ancient times, and even the emperor loves root carving. Li Bichuan, a Book of the New Tang Dynasty, records that "those who taste pine branches and hide their backs are all like dragons, because they are Xian Di". Li Bi made a dragon-shaped back grab for the emperor. The emperor liked it very much and everyone followed suit. There is still a long way to go before modern root carving art can be revived, and craftsmen like Long Conghai cannot be ignored.