Chaozhou woodcarving
Chaozhou woodcarving is also called gold-lacquer carving. The gold is there because the carving is lacquered and gilded once it is finished, and the piece comes out all of a blaze. It is on the beams of halls of lineage, on the panels of the god’s palanquin and on the lids of offering boxes.
What it is一、是什么
Chaozhou woodcarving is the carving craft of the Chaoshan region, counted with Dongyang, boxwood and longan wood carving as the four schools of Chinese woodcarving. In 2006 it entered the first national list of intangible cultural heritage; in 2018 it was included in the first national catalogue for the revival of traditional crafts.
Why it flourished is a matter of social structure: sacrifice to the lineage was constant and popular religion active, halls, temples and houses all had to be decorated, and ancestors, god parades and marriages all needed vessels. Woodcarving here is not an ornament for display; it is a necessity of those occasions.
Five techniques二、五种技法
- Sunken carving (intaglio): the pattern lies below the surface. It saves labour and takes wear, and is mostly used on room doors, screen doors and cupboard doors.
- Relief: the pattern stands proud of a ground, divided by height into low, middle and high relief.
- Carving in the round: three-dimensional, to be seen from every side.
- Pierced carving (openwork): cut through in several layers, the most characteristic work of Chaozhou. The number of layers follows the thickness of the timber and the skill of the carver — two or three commonly, six or seven in the complicated pieces.
- Sawn openwork: a single layer cut through.
Pierced carving suits subjects with many figures, a complicated story and a wide scene, because the layers can interlace and give depth. The best-known piece, The Basket of Prawns and Crabs, is openwork in the round: from any side the posture of the prawns and crabs can be seen.
The work and the timber三、工序与材料
The process runs in four steps: drawing the design, choosing the timber, roughing out the block, and fine carving, with lacquering and gilding at the end; the more particular pieces add gold-lacquer painting and gilt lettering.
The timber follows the use. Structural components for buildings are large and mostly of China fir; furniture and vessels mostly of camphor, which is scented, resists worm and works well under the knife. The saying in the trade is that a picture must carry a meaning and the meaning must be auspicious: flowers and birds, fish and water creatures, historical allusions, figures from opera and stories out of myth, each with something meant by it.
Where it goes四、用在哪里
Three destinations: fittings for buildings, vessels for sacrifice, and furniture. The offering box used for gods and ancestors is the type case: a base, a lid and trays for fruit, commonly rectangular or lozenge-shaped, the latter also called turtle-back or olive. On ordinary days it stands on a table in the main room; at a sacrifice it is set before the altar, opened, stacked and filled with fruit — the ritual and the vessel are made for each other.
Where it comes from五、源流
It began in the Tang, first rose in the Northern Song, matured in the Ming and reached its height in the Qing. The Yongle Dadian of the Ming records that a prefect of Chaozhou had water clocks made and ‘gilded and lacquered’, which is the gold-lacquer technique. Through the late Ming and early Qing, emigrants came home to build halls of lineage and houses, and carving entered building decoration in quantity; at the end of the Qing came multi-layered pierced carving in the round, the best pieces open on both faces in several layers.
Sources来源
The feature page on Chaozhou woodcarving at the Ministry of Culture and Tourism; Chaozhou: the heritage of a thousand-year prefectural city (Southcn); Chaozhou woodcarving: all the craft in one, all the fineness through (Jiemian); Chaoshan woodcarving, exquisite beyond compare (Phoenix); and the project page on the China intangible cultural heritage site. Accessed 18 October 2026.
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Last revised: 5 November 2026