With the arrival of spring, northwest China’s Qinghai Province is about to usher in the peak tourist season. In the villages of agricultural and pastoral areas, as well as among urban factories, traditional Tibetan cultural products such as shining silver and bronzewares and gorgeous Tibetan carpets are continuously produced.
Wang Fubang, a district-level inheritor of “silver and copperware making and gilding skills” and craftsman who has been making silver and copper jewelry for nearly 30 years, is working overtime on a recent order from Mongolia.
Wang lives in Yangpo Village, Xining City, the birthplace of gilding techniques in silver and copperware. Due to its close location to the famous Tibetan Buddhist temple Kumbum Monastery, silver and copper craftsmen came here more than 100 years ago. The village became famous because “every family had its own workshop.”
Wang said due to the small volume of production and little fame, he was unable to create an entire industry. His products were sold only in the province and beyond in the past.
However, over the past few years, as part of implementing the national rural revitalization strategy, a base with an area of more than 90 mu (63,000 square meters) has been established in the village for craft production. More than 400 households, or almost 40 percent of villagers, joined the business model “joint-stock cooperative-base-farmers.” As Wang’s products gain increasing popularity, he has received orders from Mongolia, Singapore, India and elsewhere.
As early as the Han and Tang Dynasty, Chinese dishes were transported west along the Silk Road to Central Asia, Western Asia and even Europe.
Ruslan Duvanbekov, a senior researcher at the Department of Archaeology and Ethnography of the National Museum of the Republic of Kazakhstan, recently told Xinhua that several oil lamps from China have been found in the southern Kazakh cities of Taraz and Turkestan.
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