70-year-old artist creates stone shadow carving works to recount scenes from classical Chinese novel

A 70-year-old folk artist in northwest China’s Gansu Province created a set of stone shadow carving works in order to introduce a great classical Chinese novel, Chinanews.com reported on Nov. 17.

Photo shows a stone shadow carving work created by Tao Shiqing. (Chinanews.com/Yang Na)

The artist, Tao Shiqing, spent over 10 years working on nine stone shadow carving works made out of marble slabs. His works vividly reflect some of the typical scenes in the Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the four great classical novels produced during China’s Ming and Qing dynasties (1368-1911), bringing to life all the details from the scenes, including the postures and facial expressions of different characters.

Tao has enjoyed painting since a young age and has long had a thing for making cobblestone sculptures. He also learned photography skills all by himself.

Tao began thinking about telling stories about the Red Chamber in his own way after reading the book several times. During a trip to southeast China’s Fujian Province over a dozen years ago, he witnessed the charm of stone shadow carving techniques, a form of Chinese folk art for creating images on the surface of stones by chiseling dots onto marble slabs. He later decided to learn the techniques from a master at a local studio, who refused to teach him since he was already over 50 years old.

Photo shows a stone shadow carving work created by Tao Shiqing. (Chinanews.com/Yang Na)

Tao didn’t give up and chose to watch how other artists went about creating stone shadow carving works every day during his stay in the province. Thanks to his painting and photography skills, the man was able to quickly master all of the basic carving techniques.

Back home, Tao began to create his own stone shadow carving works while integrating his traditional Chinese painting skills.

Tao then decided to make an attempt at recounting some of the scenes from Dream of the Red Chamber through the medium of stone shadow carving. To present the various details in the scenes and characters’ different facial expressions, he had to read different versions of the same novel and would often observe the facial expressions of students when they got out of class from a primary school near his home.

Tao Shiqing busy creating a stone shadow carving work. (Chinanews.com/Yang Na)

Tao revealed that it took him nearly a year just to complete a single stone shadow carving work, as he had to chisel about 150 million dots onto the marble slab he was working on.

Due to years of arduous work and physical toil, Tao suffered from severe cervical spinal diseases and visual impairment, but he has never regretted his decision to continue chasing after his dream, while at the same time attributing his own achievements to the unconditional support he receives from his family members.

Someone offered him several million yuan for the set, but Tao declined. “I’m not doing this to make money,” the man said.