Chang Hsien-ping was born in 1943 in Wanli Township, Miaoli County. His father and grandfather were both weavers who made hats and mats from mat rush and small-flower umbrella sedge. His grandfather wove mostly by hand, but by his father's time the family business primarily involved weaving mats by loom. But it was still manual labor involving many complex processes, which naturally required a lot of hands, so Chang's parents didn't shirk their work when it came to making babies. Four girls were born before young Hsien-ping came whining into the world as the eldest son in a third generation of weavers. Four more sisters and two more brothers would follow.

Weavers by trade

Chang chuckles as he recalls how his father used to put the entire family to work: "Father assigned chores to all of us kids, and we had to finish them before we could go outside and play. We often caught hell from him for doing sloppy work in our rush to get out with our friends." As a result of his father's strict requirements, Chang developed into a great stickler for detail.

Business didn't always go so well for Chang's father. Faced with the pressure of raising 11 children, he didn't encourage Chang to go far with his schooling. Despite the tough conditions, however, Chang managed to find time outside work to finish high school. When the elder Chang died of cancer in 1969, Chang took over as head of the family business at the age of 26.

A melange of mirth and pain flits across Chang's face as he describes the situation in the weaving business 30-plus years ago: "A catty of rush mat cost NT$10 back then, and we'd turn it into four hats that sold at NT$2.5 apiece. Hell, we were working for free."

Faced with depressed prices on the domestic market, Chang followed his father's lead in pinning his hopes for survival on the Japanese market. When Chang was 30 years old, a Japanese friend in the lighting fixture business asked him to find someone in Taiwan who could make bamboo lampshades. But an exhaustive search turned up no one capable of meeting the Japanese maker's exacting quality standards. Chang thought to himself: "I've been weaving rush and sedge all my life. Can bamboo be all that tough to work with?" And so he gave it a go.

But bamboo turned out to be more difficult to work with than he had imagined.

The first step is the hardest

Chang lived in Chunan Township, Miaoli County at that time. Bamboo was grown and harvested in the county, but it was still quite difficult to get just the right type, and very few locals were skilled at splitting bamboo into workable pieces. The need to export in volume, moreover, meant that it would be best to replace manual labor with mechanized processes. But there was precious little bamboo-splitting machinery available back then, and what there was didn't suit the needs of mass production. Chang had machinery made to order. But that merely led to a new set of challenges. Bamboo can be straight or curved. It is jointed, and comes in varying thickness and circumference. The variability of the material made it extremely difficult to calibrate the machinery, and failures were frequent.

The best bambooware is made from thin materials, with precision and balance, preferably from Makino bamboo, which features long spaces between the joints, as well as tough, pliant fibers that can be split into fine strips measuring only four millimeters in width. It takes many years to develop the skill to do this. Bambooware is made from lightweight materials, yet the finished product must be sturdy. But while sturdy, it must also be flexible. Unless all the bamboo strips are of the exact same thickness and width, it is virtually impossible to achieve a symmetrically shaped product. And the interstices must be of uniform dimension for a piece of bambooware to present attractive geometric patterns no matter what angle it is viewed from.

Before bamboo can be woven, it must undergo all sorts of preparatory processes-selecting and felling the bamboo, scraping off the bark, rough splitting, fine splitting, setting the width and thickness of the strips, and rounding off the tips. And when finally it is time to set about the actual weaving, every step must be carried out with precision, whether in laying out the base, building the sides, finishing the rim, tying down the edges, or adding decorations. There can't be any protruding slivers left behind to prick the skin. Good bambooware is light, elegant, tough, and smooth.

Folk art accolades

It took two long years, but Chang finally worked out a way to produce lampshades meeting the requirements of the Japanese client, Matsushita Lighting Company. The client was especially amazed that Chang could turn out products of complete uniformity using nothing but manual techniques. In 1981, a Japanese businessman brought Chang a piece of fine bamboo basketware and asked him to reproduce it. This provided the fillip that plunged Chang headlong into bamboo basketry as a full-time pursuit. Chang spent over four years working on the reproduction, and learned a lot in the process. During that time, he started creating works of his own, and little by little, bamboo basketry snuck up on him. By the time he delivered the completed reproduction, bamboo had become his career.

Chang excels at accentuating the contrast between the empty-yet-solid handles and the solid-yet-empty body of the basket itself, and likes to use curlicues and coiled decorations to impart a sense of relief to his works. This method produces a sculpted effect, and brings his basketry alive. Chang's hard work and dedication earned him a Folk Art Heritage Award from the Ministry of Education in 1990. He went on to win Folk Arts Awards (Second Class in the basketry subcategory in 1992 and 1993; Third Class in 1994). The 1994 award was for a work entitled Ripple.

Ripple employs a concentric-ring design. The piece is shaped like a conventional water jug, with handles modeled after the curved roof gable (ma bei) typical of traditional Fujian-style farmhouse architecture. Yet in spite of its conventional shape, the piece exudes an aura of serenity reminiscent of an era gone by. Chang relates the impetus for this creation: "As a boy I liked to throw rocks into a roadside pond, or the well outside our house, and watch as the ripples spread out. I created this piece of basketry to capture the fun I had playing around as a kid."

Stirring the creative juices

Bamboo's weakness lies in the difficulty of preservation. To make sure that it stays in good shape for many years, bamboo has to be dyed, coated, or bleached. Chang once spent four years consulting with experts and trying out different ways of treating bamboo. In the end, by modifying the conventional methods of varnishing furniture, he came up with a completely original coating that enabled him to produce bamboo pieces with different looks. One of his more successful efforts is a brown varnish that imparts an unassuming, well-used look. This varnish was so successful, in fact, that it once sparked controversy at an art exhibit, where some expressed suspicion that the pieces entered by Chang were actually antiques rather than original works! Thanks to Chang's hard work and creativity, bamboo basketry has escaped from its utilitarian straightjacket and gained recognition as a highly prized target of art collectors.

To train a new generation of bamboo weavers, Chang spent six or seven years teaching bamboo basketry to youth from the Atayal tribe in Nanchuang Rural Township, Miaoli County. During the course of his teaching, he discovered that the Atayal and Saisyat tribes used a very interesting traditional weaving method of their own-a twisted coil style that results in a very solid feel. Chang was captivated by the technique, and spent time studying it. In addition, he has also traveled to the rattan capitals of the world (Indonesia, Thailand, and Borneo) to study and observe. While there he sent lots of outstanding pieces of basketry back to Taiwan. And in his travels around Taiwan over the years, Chang has visited with many collectors in search of xie lan ("appreciation baskets"), a special type of basket once used commonly in Taiwan for religious ceremonies and weddings.

Unlike Huang Tu-shan and Li Jung-lie (bamboo basketry artisans who won Cultural Heritage Awards in 1993 and 1994, respectively), Chang is still in middle age. Asked about the difficulties involved in passing on bamboo basketry to the next generation, Chang says that few people are able to see bambooware as art because in Taiwan's agricultural society of years past, bamboo was readily available and almost all bambooware served a utilitarian purpose. A person who fails to understand or appreciate bamboo basketry will not be interested in learning how to make it, for which reason there are very few active bamboo artisans today who are willing to delve deeply into the art. Chang adds: "On top of that, the education system doesn't attach much importance to bamboo basketry. The only place where it's taught with any degree of thoroughness is at Chunan High School, where they have a bamboo basketry course. Most schools just teach it as part of their crafts course, and they don't go into much detail."

Artists on the public payroll

Nevertheless, Chang is optimistic about the future of bamboo basketry. Anyone truly interested in bamboo basketry can figure out how to do it even without a teacher, says Chang, so there is no danger of the art form simply disappearing. Having a teacher, however, can save one a lot of time and money. He also explains another factor at work: "These people who have received the Cultural Heritage Award need to have an assured income if they're to devote their full energies to writing books and teaching students. They need to be able to pass on everything they know, without feeling like they have to hold things back from their students." Masters have shied since ancient times from sharing all their secrets with their underlings, for the prospect of an apprentice learning all of one's tricks and striking out on his own as a formidable competitor has always been a worry.

Chang feels that since the government has so much money to hire so many public employees, it ought to be able to put noted artists on the government payroll at a regular monthly salary, in return for which the artists could work in peace of mind and turn out at least one or two works per year for the government. That would be killing two birds with one stone, argues Chang, for the authorities would be helping to ensure the survival of our cultural heritage and showing concern for the welfare of artists.

Satisfied with dissatisfaction

In the 30 years since sheer chance steered him away from grass weaving and onto the bamboo path, Chang has never really put himself under the tutelage of any teacher. He has chosen instead to feel his way slowly forward, consulting with one person and then another while doing his own hands-on experimentation. He modestly says that he does not deserve the accolade of being a "self-taught genius," but whatever the case, his appreciation for the path he has chosen grows with every step forward and each bead of sweat. Asked which works he is most satisfied with, he shakes his head and declares: "There's no such thing as a satisfactory work."

This permanent state of dissatisfaction has had Chang feeling very tired for a long time now, for he has not known the joy of satisfaction. Every time he finishes something, the dissatisfaction prompts him to immediately begin thinking out his next work in an effort to find a new design and a new method of weaving to achieve a new effect. Over the years, Chang has become satisfied with his dissatisfaction.

Chang showed signs of artistic promise from a young age. He recalls with an embarrassed laugh how an elementary school teacher used to single out his crayon drawings for special praise and post them up on the bulletin board. But he doesn't remember doing any more drawing after that. "Today I've fallen in love with bamboo. I use it as my medium, and my knife as a brush. I execute each cut with care, and then my hands and head go into action, just like a painter. With precision and practiced skill, I take strips of bamboo and scrape them to a shine, split the bamboo into strips, set the width and thickness, and round off the tips. I go through a whole series of processes, until I've got a strip of bamboo that's absolutely wonderful to the touch." Then it's time to start weaving, using a bag of tricks developed through years of hard work. He plays with myriad variables-width, thickness, density, straight lines and curves, substance and void.... Patterns naturally appear. It never occurred to him that this was art.

What are his plans for the future? Chang points to an oft-quoted couplet that hangs in his workshop: "If I want tea, a few bamboo leaves will do / If I want vegetables, I can boil a chunk of pine root." For the Chinese, bamboo has always been a symbol of spirituality, thus the old saying: "A person grows coarse without bamboo to elevate him." But that doesn't mean that bamboo enjoys totem status. On the contrary, it is very much a part of our everyday lives. Our forefathers liked to plant bamboo groves outside their homes. One reason was the auspicious ring of the phrase "to plant bamboo" (homophonous in Taiwanese dialect with "cultivate virtue"). Besides, they could dig up tender bamboo sprouts for the dinner table, and could use mature bamboo for furniture and basketry. As both a spiritual symbol and a useful plant, bamboo is closely tied to our lives.

But no one has been more intimately involved with it than Chang Hsien-ping. He hopes to gradually simplify his affairs, build a workshop, and plant a bamboo grove in his back yard just like people did in the old days, so he can chop down some bamboo in the spring, dry it out through the summer and fall, and weave it into basketware over the winter. How nice it would be to watch the bamboo go from green to the color of golden wheat as time passes by!

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The best bambooware is made from thin materials, with precision and balance. Thanks to Chang Hsien-ping's hard work and creativity, bamboo basketry has gained recognition as a highly prized target of art collectors.

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Tramping through bamboo groves to study bamboo is a part of Chang Hsien-ping's life. He most often uses three-year-old Makino bamboo, and is also very fond of punting-pole bamboo.

This work, "Elegant Construction" (1992), a hexagonal basket with brick motifs, is a study in contrasting geometrical shapes. It won second prize in the basketry category of the folk arts awards in the year of its creation. (photo by Kuo Li-chuan)

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This mat rush, with its hexagonal patterns complemented by decorative strips, presents a pleasing pattern to the eye. With "Mutual Reliance" (2000), Chang Hsien-ping completely abandons traditional basketware forms to create something completely new, curving here, combining there, bulging out elsewhere.... (photo by Kuo Li-chuan)

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By modifying the conventional methods of varnishing furniture, Chang Hsien-ping came up with a completely original coating that keeps his works well preserved.

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As Chang becomes increasingly adept at bamboo carving, his works become all the more artistic, and his tool collection grows!