Suzhou-style woodwork drew the interest of overseas journalists to traditional Chinese culture during a recent media tour in East China's Jiangsu province.
The tour, organized by the Jiangsu provincial government and China Daily, was attended by 10 media representatives from seven countries. They visited the cities of Changshu, Taizhou and Huai'an from Dec 14-18.
Known as the "hometown of rosewood", Changshu, a county-level city in Suzhou, has more than 1,000 years of producing rosewood furniture. The city is now home to about 300 rosewood furniture manufacturers.
Yao Xiangdong, head of the East Rosewood Furniture Art Museum in Changshu, said Suzhou-style rosewood furniture is notable for its exquisite craftsmanship, elegant designs and high quality.
It has become incredibly popular in international expos and also a new "signboard" for the country's international cultural exchanges, Yao said.
Overseas journalists toured the museum and enjoyed a close look at its centerpiece－a wooden replication of the legendary Chinese landscape painting Dwelling in Fuchun Mountains, created by Changshu-born master painter Huang Gongwang in the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368).
The famous painting was saved from a fire in 1650, but in two pieces. Eventually, one of them was moved to the Zhejiang Provincial Museum in Hangzhou and the other to the Taipei Palace Museum.
To craft a full-scale replica with the finest rosewood, more than 20 woodcarving craftsmen on both sides of the Taiwan Straits gathered at Changshu in 2015, Yao said. They joined hands and adopted different woodcarving techniques to reproduce every detail of the original painting.
It took them half a year to complete the 11-meter-long artwork, reuniting the two halves of the masterpiece in a special way.
Tran Ngoc Chi, a journalist from Vietnam National Television, said he was impressed with the superb craftsmanship of the woodwork.
"We can even see clearly the ripples on the river and the shapes of the leaves," Tran said.
The media group then participated in a carpentry workshop, in which they learned how to assemble a wooden stool with traditional Chinese mortise-and-tenon joints rather than nails.
"It's much harder than it seems," said Anwar Adam Hassan Osman from Sudan News Agency, who finally succeeded in making a stool after two failed attempts.
These techniques showed the great wisdom of the ancient Chinese people, Osman said.
Daria Semykina from Russia has been in China for nearly three years. She said she enjoyed such an interesting hands-on event, which gave her a deeper understanding of the profound traditional Chinese culture.
According to Yao, the Changshu museum is committed to innovation and has developed modern rosewood furniture based on time-honored woodwork skills.
The museum also works together with several universities and colleges to promote the traditional culture among younger generations.
Foreign journalists learn to make wooden stools at the East Rosewood Furniture Art Museum in Changshu
