A sentinel of tradition is helping ensure we can continue to enjoy fineries steeped in history

　　It may just look like a button to you and to me, but the wonderful little knot that is the apple of Huang Yuangsung's eye represents no less than centuries of history.

　　In fact so enthralled is Huang with these intricately made curios that they have helped to keep him tied up for more than half his life, from a day in 1972 when his eyes first fell on one, attached to the clothing of a farmer, when he beheld it more as art than as a mere fastener.

　　The previous year Huang, now 72, had begun publishing Han Sheng, or Echo, a magazine in Taiwan devoted to folk craft, and his mission to document China's folk culture continues to this day.

　　Huang learned from the farmer that the button knot he saw was called jie and that women in rural areas make them to attach not only to clothing but use them as decorations in varying sizes on curtains and other fabric items as well.

　　Thus began a search stretching over nine years, one in which Huang managed to track down the last surviving masters of jie making, and he painstakingly made records of a dozen knot-tying skills, illustrated step by step, and revealed them to the public in an issue of Han Sheng that came out under the banner "Chinese knot".

　　By putting in the hands of readers the ability to duplicate all 14 kinds of knots, the oldest one dating back nearly 18 centuries, Huang played a major role in ensuring that this ancient art would not be lost to the world.

　　In fact it was Huang who coined the term Chinese knot, a craft that would eventually experience a renaissance in China and be picked up by other craftspeople in many other countries as well.

　　Beyond buttons

　　But of course Huang and Han Sheng's horizons stretch well beyond these buttons. Each issue of the magazine focuses on a single subject, the topics as diverse as the cover art they inspire: 18th-century kite patterns, Shanxi noodle-making, Fujian mud houses. Issues are often closer to a book in length, packed with photos and hand-drawn diagrams. The research can take months, even years.

　　In fact, in going about his work, Huang seems to be obsessed with the same exacting attention to fine detail that has possessed the practitioners of the crafts he chronicles. For example, for readers to enjoy the glories of the finest traditional opera costume, in taking a couple of photographs, one of the front and one of the rear, will simply not do. Instead, readers are regaled with illustrations of the minutest details, including the various patterns found in its embroidery, every button, the collar band, and cuffs. Readers will also be given a step-by-step guide to how the garment is made and be schooled in any nomenclature relating to patterns.

　　Just as Han Sheng pays tribute to artisanship, the magazine itself has received widespread accolades for its own craftsmanship, perhaps none as lofty as when, in 2006, Time magazine in the United States, in a list titled Best of Asia, named it the "best esoteric publication".

　　The judging panel called Han Sheng the "Chinese art and culture bible", and said "every issue is almost as reverently handled as the artwork and craftwork it seeks to preserve".

　　Steeped in culture

　　Huang, born in Taoyuan, Taiwan, studied sculpture in one of the island's best art schools. Although it was in urban settings that he was mostly educated, his strongest recollections are of the countryside, he says.

　　"When I was a child, my home village was full of folk craft arts: the colorful costumes in folk operas, wall paintings in temples and traditional paintings for celebrating the Chinese New Year."

　　One of his strongest memories, he says, is of a ceremony worshipping Mazu, a goddess said to protect seafarers who is widely worshipped in Taiwan.

　　"Folk culture was once the glue of rural society, but it is now disappearing," Huang says. "I hope my magazine can be a kind of gene bank. Even if art forms die out, at least through the magazine people can relive them."

　　In his quest to collect folk craft, Huang travels frequently between Taiwan and the mainland. The mainland has a longer tradition of craft making and is better endowed with resources, he says. In his first visit to Beijing he was particularly impressed by homemade red lanterns for celebrating the Chinese New Year.

　　"Craft arts were everywhere in the mainland, and people were still making and using them. I was thrilled. It was as if I had discovered a gold mine. But with the rapid urbanization of the past few decades those traditions have been disappearing at an unprecedented rate."

　　While Huang has been privileged to watch on as crafts that seemed on the verge of distinction have shown new spurts of life, he has also been a front-row spectator as some have died. Twenty years ago, he says, he visited a craftsman who was using methods dating to the Tang Dynasty (618-907) to dye fabrics.

　　"He was breaking his old dye vat into pieces. When I asked if he was about to buy a bigger vat he said hardly anyone bought his stuff and he was about to quit. He was the last person I know who still knew how to dye textiles in the Tang Dynasty fashion, and his quitting meant that that skill was about to die."

　　Even with the coverage that Han Sheng gave to those skills, it was not enough to save the craft, he says, and the workshop of that old craftsman is now a mere relic, albeit a tourist spot where people can buy traditional textiles, and see the tools of the old trade.

　　Staying relevant

　　Huang has shown himself adept at adapting to the times to ensure that the magazine does not go the way of crafts that have disappeared.

　　In 2003 Han Sheng began publishing in Beijing, putting out editions for mainland audiences, and to mark the start of the Year of the Monkey, on Feb 8, Han Sheng worked with Baidu to produce a traditional paper-cut monkey for the front page of the Chinese Internet search engine's maps section.

　　"It's good to see traditional monkey images being used as motifs on an Internet site," Huang says. "That raises awareness among people of the skills of paper cutting. I know people of the present age can appreciate the beauty and skill of traditional arts. But what we need to do is to ensure those arts do not become extinct."

　　pengyining@chinadaily.com.cn

　　One people, one sense of history

　　In 1988, Taiwan authorities for the first time allowed the elderly to return to the mainland and visit their families. Huang accompanied his father-in-law, a former Kuo-mintang airman, on a trip to Hubei province, where his father-in-law was born and raised.

　　From then on, Huang began collecting material on the mainland.

　　"I saw my father-in-law draw a map of his hometown and put a small red spot on his home village because he missed his home but couldn't go back," Huang says.

　　Huang also accompanied many other veterans returning to the mainland and says he was touched by the deep emotional attachment that they had with their hometowns.

　　In the 1980s elderly people from Taiwan flying to the mainland had to transfer in Hong Kong and then enter the mainland through Guangdong.

　　"Veterans were talking and laughing on the train from Hong Kong to Guangzhou, really excited about going home," Huang says. "Once the train crossed the Guangdong border, silence descended in the carriages and everyone peered at the scenery, something they had not seen for decades. The mainland had changed. Many had tears in their eyes."

　　Huang says that in his group was a 60-year-old who said little and seemed serene, but in Guangzhou talking on the telephone his composure broke and he burst into tears.

　　"After 30 years he finally heard the voice of his mother. Many people never got the chance to see their homeland again. I'm glad people from both sides can now visit each other freely. After all, we both share the same history and tradition."