Golden Palace Embroidery House--Bringing the Gods to Life

Just a couple of minutes on foot from Ilan railway station, there are two parasols placed at the door of the Golden Palace Embroidery House. The second-generation director, Chen Pen-chuan, is putting the finishing touches to them with some thread so that they can be sent to the temple that ordered them. Chen wipes away the sweat on his brow with the cuff of his shirt and explains to the guest that parasols are used by the gods to provide shade and shelter from the rain.

Inside the house is a photograph of founder Chen Chin-kuan drawing a pattern at age 73, when he was still sharp-eyed and nimble-fingered. The second-generation operators of the house, brothers and sister Chen Pen-jung, Chen Pen-chuan and Chen Ai-chu, recall the days that their father came across the waves from Fuzhou in mainland China to learn his craft, their eyes full of loving respect and reminiscence. That story begins 70-odd years ago with a boy who was all alone in the world.

Drawing a two-dimensional design on the cloth and embroidering it with the cloth stretched in an embroidery frame is known as "embroidering the base."

An apprenticeship

Chen Chin-kuan was born in 1916 in Fuzhou, and due to his family's poverty he followed an elder from his hometown to Taiwan to learn a trade at the age of 17. When Chen went to buy his boat ticket, he discovered that children 12 and younger went half price; he was so skinny and frail that he declared himself to be five years younger than he was, and successfully obtained a half-price ticket to Taiwan. As a result, by the time he had learned his craft and opened his own shop, friends would laugh, "At the age of 16, you're already the boss of your own shop."

At that time Fuzhou people were renowned nationwide for "the three blade crafts"-wielding scissors (tailors), cleavers (chefs) and razors (hairdressers). Unfortunately, while growing up there Chen didn't study any of them. On the advice of an elder he went to Taipei to study embroidery at the Cloud Embroidery House on Tihua Street.

Although Chen Chin-kuan was one of a small minority of male students studying embroidery, in the three-and-a-half-year course of his studies he not only had to take curses and beatings from his teacher but also to help his teacher's wife cook meals and wash clothes, suffering patiently throughout. Chen Pen-chuan once heard his father say that some of the students left in anger after receiving a beating from the teacher, but after two or three days without shelter or anything to eat or drink, with an empty stomach, they obediently came back. In order to display his authority to the runaways, the teacher would even wake them up in the middle of the night to discipline them.

After three and half years only supplied with food and lodging, the graduates were still required to work their tenure off before they could leave. According to Chen Pen-chuan, any days that were taken off sick, or for other reasons, would all be recorded by the boss, and would have to be made up for after graduation before they could leave or begin to receive a craftsperson's wages.

For "raised embroidery," cotton wadding is laid over the flat surface of a design to create a three-dimensional effect, and fixed to the base cloth with large tacking stitches.

Lion's ears that move

Chen Chin-kuan graduated in the last tense days of WW II, and American bombers would often carry out raids on Japanese-occupied Taipei. The Japanese colonial government evacuated residents into the countryside, and Chen was sent to Ilan, where he set up his business.

In the latter days of Japanese rule, in order to promote the Japanese policy of making Taiwanese into loyal imperial subjects, the island's people were forbidden to worship their gods or to embroider deities' clothing. Chen Chin-kuan had to fall back on mending work, repairing Western-style suits for Japanese customers. "In the days of the occupation, only Japanese officials and those with money could wear sebiro, or Western suits. If they accidentally burnt or damaged the clothes in some way, they needed someone with embroidery skills to fix them," explains Chen Pen-chuan.

Although the Japanese government officially forbade the worship of gods, pious Taiwanese would still secretly carry out rites. Because they knew Chen Chin-kuan was skilled at embroidery, they would privately ask him to make clothes for the gods. And because of the fine quality of his work his reputation quietly grew.

Chen Pen-chuan says: "Father's main specialty was high-raised embroidery. That is, building up a three-dimensional design by laying cotton wadding over a flat embroidered surface, and using the "running thread" technique to enchance its outline. The most representative raised embroidery is of pagodas and lions' heads. In order to make the lions' heads even more animated, father would put springs behind the lions' ears, and that way when the gods went out to parade on the streets the lions' ears on the clothes would move with them, looking just as if they were alive." This led many temples to be attracted from afar to place orders.

As for the origin of the Ilan area's popular marching gods, known locally as daxian wangzai, it's said that Ilan is one Taiwan's major centers for Beiguan music. Whenever temples in the Ilan area held festivals there was intense competition between the troupes to construct an original, first-prize winning festival carriage, and the air of intense but friendly rivalry motivated the creation of Ilan's marching gods.

In the parade troupes at lively temple fairs one can often see "marching gods" two or three times as tall as a man. These "god generals" combine the three crafts of embroidery, carving and carpentry, and are a particularly beautiful example of religious folk crafts.

All in a day's work

Says Chen Pen-jung: "After the war, the Nationalist government moved to Taiwan, and Taiwan and China were still in a tense standoff. The government was drafting the kids that parents had worked so hard to raise into the army. With an outbreak of war between the Nationalists and the Communists possible at any moment, there was always the danger they could be sent to the battlefield. Add to that low standards of medicine and hygiene at the time, along with all kinds of infectious diseases wreaking havoc, and many parents went to the temple to implore the gods that their newborn children grow up healthy and those who were doing their military service would return from the forces safely.

In the 1970s, after the conflict in the Taiwan Strait had deescalated into a cold war and medical facilities in Taiwan had improved, a host of festivals emerged that were designed to repay the gods for granting the people's wishes, and these involved practices such as making new clothes and headgear for the gods, and processions featuring artistic performances to carry the gods on tours of their territories.

In the 1980s, Taiwan's economy began to boom, and many agricultural tracts were rezoned as urban areas, creating a new wealthy class called tianqiao. They built temples and held religious pageants, promoting an upsurge of folk religious beliefs. Meanwhile, competition between the followers and youth leagues associated with various temples also contributed to the development of Taiwan's now flourishing tradition of deity's clothing embroidery and marching gods.

During this prosperous period for embroidery, the Golden Palace Embroidery House was not only joined by a second generation but also had 20 to 30 apprentices-in its heyday as many as 50. At the time, many parents brought their daughters to the house to become students of the craft. When the competition was at its most fierce, they were so eager to learn a craft that they were willing to forgo their wages for the first three months.

Because Chen Chin-kuan's craftsmanship was of such a high standard and he was such a dedicated teacher, graduates of Golden Palace were above average. Chen Chin-kuan's apprentices over the years totaled as many as 2-3,000, and he even established a home factory. With his ideas of work flow and standardization, to make the work quicker he would divide his students into teams, with each team embroidering part of an item, which he would then assemble and finish.

Perhaps it was the family connection, perhaps it was due to considerations of skill, but both of Chen Chin-kuan's daughters-in-law were selected from among the master craftspersons at Golden Palace. By the time the business passed down to the second generation they were embroidery experts and Golden Palace, as a matter of course, became a family business.

Facing competion from low-priced Chinese products, Golden Palace has turned its focus to "marching gods" (god generals), which are hard for outsiders to imitate and which have established this old firm's style.

Running thread

Chen Pen-jung, born in 1948, and his brother Chen Pen-chuan, two years his junior, were influenced by their environment from a young age and were fast learners. After finishing primary school they followed their father in the study of embroidery. "At the beginning, you had to first learn to place stitches accurately," says Chen Pen-jung. "In particular with the big needles you had use the strength of your fingers to control them and keep them steady, as embroidering accurately is essential. After you'd mastered that, you then learned "running thread," which involves first laying out cotton wadding onto flat embroidered cloth and fixing it in place with large tacking stitches, and then outlining the pattern with colored thread. When learning to do the contours of raised embroidery, you have to learn to watch the lines of the pattern, and ascertain how to embroider them so that the lines are smooth and it can be carried out in the fastest time. It's only when you can be aware of this while embroidering that you can be justly called a master."

It is not embroidery alone that Golden Palace is adept at, but the three skills of embroidery, carving and carpentry that are required for the construction of marching gods. Still it is the embroidery process that is the most complicated. Usually, after receiving an order, the job is divided up into drafting a blueprint according to the client's designation or description, measuring the height of the god, and making its frame. The robes need to be embroidered, as well as the headgear, the face needs to be carved, while the frame is made by binding together strips of bamboo in a light, flexible structure so as to allow the marching god to be operated in a more lifelike way. In particular the hands and elbows have to be able to move so that has an aesthetically pleasing figure and spirit when walking.

When embroidering a deity's robes, it is necessary to first draw a design on the embroidery cloth, before stretching the cloth in an "embroidery frame." The design is first embroidered on the flat surface to form the "base embroidery," before adding raised patterns using cotton wadding, and then assembling the garment by machine stitching. According to Chen Chin-kuan's daughter, Chen Ai-chu, "One deity's robe is assembled from 18 pieces of embroidery. The flat embroidery is sometimes replaced by machine embroidering, but the raised embroidery has to be done by hand, before sequins and beads are sewn on as ornamentation. If one person is working alone, it takes at least one-and-a-half months to complete, but with a family dividing the labor it can be completed in around 15 days."

One robe for the gods is put together from 18 pieces of embroidery. Sequins, beads and so on are sewn on as ornamentation, before the garment is completed by machine-sewing the pieces together.

Fish and wind pennants

At the beginning of the 1980s, at the height of embroidery's heyday, Golden Palace's more than ten female apprentices would be embroidering to the sound of the radio, and sometimes when a familiar Taiwanese melody came on they would join in together in song. In those folksy, more conservative days, the singing would often cause marching troops of soldiers to stop and watch. When Golden Palace bought the first 24-inch black-and-white TV in all of Ilan, and Huang Chun-hsiung's glove puppet series The Scholar Knight of Yunzhou was popular throughout the island, not only would neighbors from far and wide come to watch, but even taxi drivers would stop to take in the show.

"Sometimes, when we had too many orders, at night we would have to work overtime in order to rush a job," says Chen Pen-jung. "There were even times that, apart from eating and sleeping, we were embroidering the entire day. It was even worse at Chinese New Year. On New Year's Eve, customers would be waiting at the house to collect their deities' clothing, and Mother would have no choice but to put down her needle and cook them dinner on the stove. When the customers had finished eating she went back to her sewing so that they could go home and see out the night into the new year."

Chen Pen-jung recalls how the hardest time was when, in order to allow pilgrims to catch the first incense of the year, some temples, in the early hours, after the midnight repast, would want a rush delivery of deity's robes so the gods could see in the new year in new clothing when the temple doors opened.

For many years, when Toucheng in Ilan held its qianggu (literally "catch the orphan") festival, making "wind pennants" was entrusted to the experienced Golden Palace. According to Chen Pen-chuan, the pennants symbolize good fortune and prosperity and are the spirit and heart of the festival. In the festival, able-bodied men from all over Toucheng expend incredible efforts and undergo great hardships to clamber their way up the "orphan poles" smeared with ox fat, in order to receive the ultimate honor of snatching the wind pennant. Of particular note is that the people of Toucheng used mostly to live by fishing, and the village that gets the pennant, which is embroidered with fishes, shrimps, crabs and eels, can hoist it over the prow of their fishing boat. It is a supplication for favorable winds and for abundant catches. In recent years this test of physical strength and team spirit has attracted many foreign teams.

The founder of Golden Palace Embroidery House, Chen Chin-kuan, came to Taiwan from China's Fuzhou when he was young to study embroidery, and was still creating designs into his 70s. (courtesy of Chen Pen-chuan).

Dressing by the rules

While Kuo Chin-ming was studying for his PhD and found himself overwhelmed by work, he took solace every time he visited Nine Dragon Yuching Temple in Ilan County's Chiaohsi Township. After successfully gaining his doctorate in 2004, to show his gratitude he tossed crescent blocks and asked whether the Jade Emperor would like new robes. He was rewarded with a positive response three times, resulting in the splendid event of "a PhD repaying the god with an imperial robe." Chen Pen-chuan says that the Jade Emperor is ten feet tall, and the robes are eight feet long and 22 feet wide, relatively large for a deity's robe, and took around half a year to complete. It is the most representative work carried out by Golden Palace in recent years.

On the subject of imperial robes, Chen Pen-chuan emphasizes that traditional temple records dictate what the gods should wear and what embroidery patterns should adorn otherworldly officials. For example, the rules say that the Jade Emperor and the Lord of the Dark Heavens should have golden robes, while the Earth God wears a "longevity robe," and the Most Exalted Lord Lao wears robes featuring the eight trigrams. To repay the Earth God, a believer once came to the shop to order him an imperial robe, but since that's against the tradition Chen Pen-chuan passed the business on to someone else.

In recent years, there has been downward price pressure from Chinese-made products, but the quality of mainland goods is lower, dyeing techniques are inferior, and the finished products tend to fade within two or three years. Because Taiwan's dyeing techniques are more mature, finished products retain their color after more than ten years. The various products of Golden Palace, such as robes and headgear for the gods, lion streamers, large pennants, parasols, Eight Immortals embroidered panels, lion-dance banners, and marching gods are amongst the most highly treasured items in many temples in Taiwan, and their first choice. They are even sold to Buddhist temples in Hong Kong, Malaysia, Japan and America among other places. Meanwhile, although it understands the needs of every religious group, Golden Palace has gradually shifted its focus to making marching gods, which are less understood by outsiders. These not only exhibit the special characteristics of religion in the Ilan area, but have also amply established the old firm's style.

From right to left, Golden Palace Embroidery House's second generation: Chen Pen-chuan, Chen Pen-jung, andd Chen Ai-chu. The exquisite embroidery of this Eight Immortals panel exhibits vivid colors in the sunlight, gives one an even greater respect for tradition.

A race against time

Nevertheless, Golden Palace faces all manner of crises in its business operations. First is a critical shortage of embroidery talent. All the second generation of Chens are embroidery experts and have trained many masters, but are all in their fifties. Chen Pen-chuan takes off his reading glasses, looking up from his needle, to say, "embroidery workers are like sports competitors; they're on a race against time, because they have to be absorbed in what they do, and that taxes the eyes enormously. A lot of people after 40 or 50 years find their hands shaking and their vision blurring, and are forced to give up the embroidery needle.

Because the third generation of the Chen family have looked elsewhere to advance themselves, there is nobody to carry on the family business. Although Chen Pen-chuan is willing to impart his skills, he faces the plight of having nobody to carry the business on. "With a grueling routine of ten-hour days in front of the embroidery frame, both eyes straining over the needle and thread, not to mention the hardships of a long apprenticeship with no guarantee of becoming wealthy, what young people, in these exacting, fast-paced modern days, would be willing to undergo three to five years studying a traditional craft?"

Meanwhile, as skills in handmade embroidery decline, the tradition also faces the problem of some raw materials and accessories falling into short supply.

Nowadays Golden Palace is facing less orders from buyers, but it still needs to buy in large quantities of raw materials and accessories while prices continue to rise, which is a difficult problem to resolve. What's more, the tradition of making certain accessories, such as the tassels for the edges of pennants and the aluminum eyes and teeth of raised embroidery lion's heads, is dying out. The craftsmen who haven't already died are aged and in failing health. When they pass away, the accessories they made will pass away with them.

Although Golden Palace has been hoarding a lot of raw materials and accessories, with the passing days it will eventually face shortages. "If there's no other way, we will have no choice but to rely on mainland imports. But Taiwan's competitive superiority in exquisite and durable manufacture will have been lost," says Chen Pen-chuan with a tone full of frustration.

The highly detailed pagoda in raised embroidery has to be produced layer after layer.

Hopes of sustainability

Facing gaps in the supply of talent, raw materials and accessories, the second generation of Chens have sustained their optimism and cool composure. Moreover, the Ilan County Government is taking the issue seriously, in 2002 holding a Marching God Competition that drew plaudits from the media and other circles. The National Traditional Arts Center in Ilan has also exhibited handmade embroidery works to widespread attention. Chen Pen-chuan obviously hopes such events will attract young people to the craft, but when he thinks of the future he's afraid that handmade embroidery will gradually disappear, which it seems is the ineluctable fate of all of Taiwan's traditional arts.

In the course of our interviews, the words of the second-generation Chens revealed their deep love and understanding for each other. In particular when they talked about their calluses, all three of them spread out their ten fingers to show them. Even harder to believe is that more than ten years ago the eldest brother Chen Pen-jung had a failed operation for glaucoma, resulting in blindness. The responsibility of running the business and the heavy burden of taking care of his eldest brother has fallen on Chen Pen-chuan. In order to allow his brother to join in the shop responsibilities, every day Chen Pen-chuan takes him to work and then takes him home at the end of the day. What is more, both brothers live upstairs from the factory, not living separately. Even their sister, Chen Ai-chu, who is married, turns up on time every day for work.

If you lightly brush the threads of the pure handmade embroidery produced by Golden Palace, you can sense the deep feelings invested in the work, leaving a profound respect for the tradition that produced it. It is a skill nurtured from youth-stitch by stitch, thread by thread-and it has brought a family together. With its dazzling Eight Immortals panels, Golden Palace is a burning light in the dusk of handmade embroidery.

Buddhist iconography is often adorned with auspicious bamboo and lotuses.

The God Generals-An Introduction

The god generals are mainly responsible for maintaining order in the heavens, this world, hell, and otherworldly regions. In Taiwanese animistic beliefs, numerous gods who inhabit the three worlds, with its four seats of government-the heavenly capital, the kingdom of hell, the water world and this world-have their own god generals to protect and attend them. Lu Chiang-ming, executive director of the Folk Studies Committee, explains that among the innumerable gods that comprise this system, and according to differing beliefs and dialects throughout Taiwan, the gods' names can be divided into 12 kinds. These include "god generals," "venerable generals," and "marching gods." The term "god generals" is more widely used in the north, and "venerable generals" in central and southern Taiwan.

Lu points out that "marching gods" is the original but more vulgar name, and is related to the fact that Beiguan music emerged in the Ilan plain relatively early. "Marching gods" originally referred to tall images of gods. Although the name is appropriate, it may be seen as disrespectful, and this has led to the emergence of terms like god generals and venerable generals to replace it.

(Kuo Li-chuang/tr. by Chris Taylor)

The "dragon-tiger pennant" has an embroidered dragon on one side and an embroidered tiger on the other. The edges of this side with an auspicious dragon are decorated with such things as phoenixes and peonies.

This lively raised embroidery work is the symbolic and auspicious qilin, or Chinese unicorn.

The robes of the Mother of the Western King and the Heavenly Holy Mother often feature the ultimate glory of nine phoenix symbols. The riotous colors make every phoenix appear elegant and splendid.

The robes and headgear for the gods, along with lion pennants, flags and marching gods made by the Golden Palace Embroidery House are treasured possessions in Taiwan's temples and are even sold abroad. Featured in the picture are parasols used to shelter the gods from the sun and rain.

A thick "running thread" is then stitched around the edge of the raised embroidery to emphasize its an outline and creating an even more striking three-dimensional effect.