Editor’s Note: This article is produced in collaboration with the Chongqing Institute of Foreign Studies, as part of a series of ongoing reports exploring the city’s abundant resources in intangible cultural heritages.
Lighting fancy candles is an indispensable part of traditional Chinese wedding customs. Often used in weddings, such candles are mostly adorned with patterns of dragons and phoenixes and flowers to convey good wishes for prosperity and auspiciousness. Therefore candle often used in traditional Chinese wedding is also known as dragon and phoenix candle.
According to historical records, there were wedding candles as early as the Six Dynasties. They were used at weddings in the Southern Liang Dynasty (502-557) and became a custom after the Tang Dynasty (618-907). Wedding candles had played a significant role in the marriage ceremonies in the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties (1600-1644). Thus, dragon and phoenix candles had witnessed countless marriages in centuries.
Nowadays, with the change of marriage customs, the candle-making craft in many areas is on the wane, but the Xiushan wedding candle shines at home and abroad by virtue of its unique local style and innovative spirit of technicians.
The original dragon and phoenix candles were made of paper cut into the shapes of dragons, phoenixes, and flowers and dipped in wax oil. Later, after a long period of exploration and practice, the initial simple paper candles gradually developed into wax candles. Integrating both waxing and paper-cutting, the production process of dragon and phoenix candle is very intricate with over ten accessories to be made and seven procedures to be covered including paper cutting, waxing, and wax melting, toning, casting, painting and carving. The manufacture of dragon and phoenix candle requires fine handwork and in master’s words, as soft and light movement as “ghost hunting”. Among several main styles, such as phoenix strolling across peonies, golden dragon playing beads, and dragon soaring through auspicious clouds, the most difficult is the making of dragon and phoenix, which poses a challenge to Master Chen’s candle-making journey. Master Chen Jianyou, the third descendant of the Xiushan dragon and phoenix candle, has made painstaking efforts to study this craft and created a three-dimensional dragon and phoenix image on the dragon and phoenix candle, which makes the dragon and phoenix fully alive and vivid.
With festive and rich color, the three-dimensional wedding candles made by Master Chen are beautiful in shape, exquisite in workmanship, and distinctive in style. On the vermilion wax column hover vividly and extraordinarily dragon baring teeth and brandishing claws and phoenix spreading wings for flight, beside which stand elaborately carved waxflower, presenting its crystal clear petals to beholders. Coupled with exquisite packaging in lovely color, the “Jianyou candle” became more and more famous and marketable, which was sold around the world for thousands of yuan.
In 1991, the dragon and phoenix candle was sent to Chongqing by Xiushan County Ethnic and Religious Affairs Committee for exhibition and won the third prize. Then it was exhibited during Chongqing Opera Troupe’s performance trip to Taiwan. In 2007, the “dragon and phoenix candle” was inscribed in the first batch of intangible cultural heritage protection list in Chongqing. In 2010, the “dragon and phoenix candle” was displayed in the Shanghai World Expo, becoming a favorite in the traditional Chinese folk skills. Now, it was known far and wide due to the participation in the 24th World Intangible Cultural Heritage Exhibition at the Louvre, France. Wedding candle making, a craft perfected by time and effort, will eventually survive and thrive.
(The original article comes with a Chinese version authored by Li Haoyue (advisor/Ran Hongqing) as well as an English version translated by Wu Liang (advisor/Li Ya), and was later narrated by Wu Yi (advisor/Lei Yu), all of whom are students (and teachers) from Chongqing Institute of Foreign Studies.)