Fanning a love of Chinese fans

It was approaching the height of summer and work at Huang Shuofu’s factory was also heating up, with more than 20 employees rushing to fill orders for his local specialty product — Chinese tuanshan fans.

The task at hand was particularly pressing this time because they were making tuanshan exports for an international luxury fashion brand, which specifically requested about 7,000 custom-made versions of the traditional handicraft.

“Our fans have always symbolised Chinese culture and heritage, prized as works of art,” said Huang, 78.

The popularity of tuanshan can be traced to the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220). The round fans resemble a full moon, signifying auspicious union and happiness. Their use extended beyond being tools for dealing with scorching summers to reflect high status and taste.

Huang himself is a fourth-generation master craftsman of the fans, which are traditionally made with bamboo that grow abundantly in his hometown in Guilin city of South China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

He has won major accolades at home and abroad for his work in preserving and promoting tuanshan as intangible cultural heritage. In 2013, he was asked to craft two fans adorned with ethnic Zhuang embroidery to be presented to then-UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon, who was visiting China at that time.

Huang’s fans are still made the traditional way, with bamboo strips and sticks for frames and handles assembled by hand. Paper, silk and cloth on which paintings, calligraphy, embroidery and other designs complete the product.

He is also constantly innovating and adding features to his creations, such as a distinctive ring-ribbed base to connect the fan frame to its handle.

“We need to keep up with new trends and incorporate these into the traditional elements as much as possible while retaining the original essence, to continue sharing this heritage with people at home and abroad,” Huang said.

He added that his factory has obtained more than 30 national patents and exported products to major overseas markets including South Korea, Japan and Singapore.

His daughter Huang Keren, 40, who helps run the family’s business operations, such as its marketing and outreach, said daily production can hit 5,000 pieces, with about one-fifth of that amount for export.

Latest digital trends such as livestreaming have helped e-commerce make up a major part of the business, she said.

The guochao trend of recent years to showcase traditional Chinese cultural elements in a variety of fields such as clothing has also contributed significantly to growth, she said.

“Many of our customers include parents buying fans that showcase the best of Chinese traditional culture, like copies of famous paintings, poetry and calligraphy, for their children,” she said, adding that mini DIY kits for their young customers to put together their own fans are also very popular.

Huang Shuofu said that, as part of his responsibility in passing down the intangible cultural heritage to future generations, he also runs workshops and classes for children and adults, as well as collaborations with cultural institutions like museums, to make sure the tuanshan tradition “survives and thrives”.

Similarly, sustainable, green practices are a priority, he said, especially since his creations rely on natural bamboo as a major material.

“We minimise our waste and discard as little as possible,” Huang said. “I recycle the bamboo strips, cloth, paper and try to come up with new ways to use them, such as for bookmarks, stationery and other smaller-sized, related products.”

In line with sustainable, inclusive development, the tuanshan production also ropes in local rural communities.

For villager Zheng Ming, harvesting bamboo through cooperatives and other production channels to provide the raw material for Huang’s fans in the past three decades has helped improve his family’s previously subsistence livelihood in line with rural revitalisation.

“We help provide 600,000 to 700,000 pieces of bamboo every year and our income has increased significantly, three to four times higher than before,” said Zheng, who is in his 70s.