*Ying Stone Rockery Miniascape

86.*Ying Stone Rockery Miniascape

Nominating Unit: Yingde Municipality, City of Qingyuan

Ying Stone Rockery Miniascape is a special handicraft in Yingde Municipality, and is mainly distributed in Wangbu Town and such places. According to Yuan Zhi, a record book on gardening written by Ji Cheng in the Ming Dynasty, Ying Stone Rockery Miniascape was already used for miniascape at that time. After generations’ transmission, especially after China’s reform and openingup, Ying Stone Rockery Miniascape has become a finely divided large scale cultural industry.

The miniascape mainly makes use of Crinoidal limestone. Wangbu Town in Yingde Municipality enjoys a karst landform, and its mountains are rich in limestone, which after ages of erosion, produces numerous loose slates with abundant colors and peculiar shapes. It is called Ying stone (limestone), and was listed as royal articles of tribute as early as in the Song Dynasty, and designated as one of the four famous garden stones in China in the Qing Dynasty. Small articles made of it are fondly admired by ancient scholars. Famous calligraphy and painting masters such as Su Dongpo, Mi Fu and Lu You all loved it. There was also an anecdote about Huang Tingjian who would collect Ying stone with his family fortune. The peculiar and strange looks of Ying stone also make it the best natural material for making miniascape.(https://www.daowen.com)

Ying Stone Rockery Miniascape takes clay, porcelain, wood, or stone basin as its base, with sand paved inside it. The sizes of the basins are normally 30 cm wide, 40 cm long, and the smallest ones look like saucers. The miniascape is made by first picking stone pieces, washing them, and finally gluing them together with mortar made with mixing cement, fine sand, yellow sugar and black ink together. Traditionally Ying Stone Rockery Miniascape is famous for its leveraging on the natural shapes of the stones. In some cases a couple of stones would make wonderful scenery, sometimes even just one rock. The design of the miniascape is also very ingenious. The basic compositions can be mountain and water, just mountain, trees on rocks, rocks on tress, etc. The vivid portraits of mountains, villages, cliffs, islands, etc in a basin are marvelous wonders. It possesses both natural beauty and artistic beauties, and is referred to as “a solid painting, and silent poem”.

Recently, due to the short-sighted introduction of supersonic technology to get atomized effects in miniascape, the traditional connotations and skills in miniascape making has been greatly undermined. The over-quarrying and unplanned quarrying severely destructed the supply of Ying stone. Ying Stone Rockery Miniascape is faced with great danger, and urgent attention and protection are needed.

In 2008 Ying Stone Rockery Miniascape was listed into the list of the second batch of state-level intangible cultural heritage.