Suzhou's master artisans strive to revive delicate authenticity

Poetic portrayal

Representative jade carving works of Yang Xi, 60, a national-level intangible cultural heritage inheritor, include a depiction of the Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva (Thousand-Hand Bodhisattva).

Unlike many large figurative Buddhist sculptures, this desk ornament features a meditating Bodhisattva with the face and dozens of hands in diverse shapes and gestures, leaving the body up to the imagination.

As the slender fingers are prone to damage, Yang carved from the middle to side, with the central hands appearing three-dimensional and those on the sides similar to embossment.

With an educational background in painting and sculpturing, the carver borrows traditional Chinese ink painting concepts of combining reality and illusion, achieving more with less in his jade carving works.

Having spent his early years in the city's historical Pingjiang Road neighborhood, Yang has also created a series of nephrite works inspired by the water town's crisscrossing waterways, arch bridges and rows of black-tiled, white-painted residences.