China Daily Global Edition (USA)
Decoding the past
Carefully crafted replicas of ancient relics have become online sensation
When archaeologists announced their latest discoveries at the Sanxingdui Ruins site in Guanghan, Sichuan province, earlier this year, a 25-year-old man in Shanghai came up with a bold idea — to re-create life-size replicas of some of the site’s signature treasures by using old techniques.
As a full-time content creator for video-sharing site Bilibili, he has turned his ideas into a series called Kouguwenjin (“decoding the past”). The two videos uploaded so far have racked up over 17 million views between them.
“Excited about the new discoveries, especially the remains of a gold mask, announced in March, the first video in the series sees me ‘restore’ the fragmented mask to its former, shining glory,” Caiqian says, adding that he did not expect the video to be as popular and widely shared as it has been.
Without giving his real name, he prefers to be known by his online username, Caiqian, which refers to the modest estimation of one’s talent.
Uploaded in April, the 12-minute video — which cost around 200,000 yuan ($30,982) to make — shows him hammering 500 grams of pure gold tens of thousands of times for 15 days to re-create the 3,000-yearold mask. The video was worth the money. It had been viewed more than 10 million times and garnered over 2 million likes so far.
Following this initial success, Caiqian posted his second video in August. In the 18-minute video, he re-creates a gold rod that was unearthed at Sanxingdui in 1986. This time, he spent more than four months and about 250,000 yuan buying material, including 900 grams of gold.
“Replicating the rod was much more difficult than I had anticipated. I tried to faithfully forge the gold rod by employing techniques used in the past. Although my steps were not exactly the same as those of old craftsmen, I could understand their desire for perfection,” he says.
Amazed by his skill and effort, more than 3.4 million users have followed Caiqian on Bilibili. Some have commented that he doesn’t only try to replicate the relics, but, in doing so in such a faithful manner, is “communicating” with the ancient people, dating back more than 3,200 years.
Dubbed as one of the greatest archaeological finds in the 20th century, according to Xinhua News Agency, the Sanxingdui Ruins site was accidentally discovered by a farmer when he was digging a ditch in the 1920s. The excavation of six new pits at Sanxingdui in March re-ignited the interest of the public.
As such, Caiqian’s video series has become a sensation on social media.
On Sina Weibo, his latest video has been viewed over 64 million times. The official Sanxingdui Museum account on the platform has even commented under the video, applauding Caiqian’s “great replication skills”.
Crafting has been a favorite pastime for Caiqian since he was a primary school student. One of his first forays into metalwork saw him use a knife to cut a steel ruler into a kunai, a weapon used by martial arts experts. With the handmade kunai, Caiqian spent a lot of time practicing his throwing skill in the school’s backyard.
He began to explore making other things, such as toys and tools, by hand. Entering junior middle school, he turned to the internet and began learning carpentry. It was in 2017, when he was studying electronic and information engineering at college, that he began to post his crafting videos on Bilibili. The first video he uploaded, on July 21, 2017, shows how to make a wooden comb.
After Caiqian went viral, many users commented under his first Bilibili video that it was “where the dream started”.
When he graduated in 2019, Caiqian was faced with a difficult choice — to find a job or become a full-time content creator. He chose the latter. The first half year was tough, so he had to sell a handmade sword to make ends meet.
Gradually, though, things got better and, last year, he broke the 1-million-follower mark on Bilibili.
So far, Caiqian has uploaded about 50 crafting videos on the platform.
He remakes many objects such as pendants, bookmarks, chopsticks, mugs and game weapons like the Night Sky Sword from Japanese TV anime series Sword Art Online: Alicization — War of Underworld and the Magic Blade from Chinese animation series Scissor Seven.
He has also set up his own studio.
Zhu Yarong, the deputy curator of Sanxingdui Museum, told Chengdu. a news outlet of Chengdu Media Group, that Caiqian’s replicas have played an active role in the promotion of Sanxingdui culture. Technically, Caiqian’s approach seems to follow experimental archaeology, which attempts to re-create or use structures or artifacts in order to learn more about old techniques based on primarily sourced archaeological material.
Such honest effort to understand, and actually build, ancient artifacts is not easy, and Caiqian’s mission to replicate the golden rod was a tough one.
According to Sanxingdui Museum, the actual gold rod is 143-cmlong, 2.3 cm in diameter and weighs about 463 grams, and is made of gold-plated wood that boasts a gold leaf design wrapped around the length of its body. The leaf design is an exquisite 46-cm-long decorative pattern of arrows, birds, fish and people. Believed to have been used as a sacrificial tool, the rod is thought to have been a symbol of power in the ancient Shu Kingdom.
When engraving the patterns on the rod, Caiqian tried to apply a traditional method called zanke, which means to engrave a design into a metal surface by cutting delicate grooves into it. After practicing the skill on a thin copper plate for a month, he found that the real decorative pattern was actually double lines with less than a millimeter between them. A feeling of desperation washed over him that he compared to that of “a climber looking up a mountain that cannot be conquered”.
With the metaphorical peak still in his sights, he did not shy away from the challenge. Instead, he changed the method completely. Making himself an ox-bone blade, so that its blunt edge would not pierce the gold leaf, he used a painstaking, repetitive process of tracing the lines onto one side of the sheet to create an indented version of the pattern. Turning the sheet over, he used the blade to accentuate the lines, now in relief, to emulate the intricate detail of the original.
He says that only with such scrupulous attention to detail can such an artifact be made.
“Kouguwenjin is a series focusing on the cultural relics themselves, but I also want to launch a new series connecting young people with our cultural heritage,” Caiqian adds.