In Qianlong Emperor's "Fuwangge Poem", a sentence of "being diligent and tired in his old age, nourishing thanks to the dust" revealed his hope of resuscitating his life in his later years.

In real life, Emperor Qianlong also built a garden to let him "nourish the dust"-this is the Ningshou Palace Garden at the northeast corner of the Forbidden City, commonly known as Qianlong Garden.

　　Although Qianlong himself did not live in this palace built for him for a day, he can imagine the high standard of Qianlong Garden with the respect of his Supreme Emperor.

Exhausting countless talents of craftsmanship, it is still possible to focus on the present, and behind it is the condensation of generations of craftsmen and ingenuity.

　　A reporter from Chinanews.com recently interviewed authoritative experts who participated in the restoration of Qianlong Garden to reveal the behind-the-scenes story of “repairing the old as the old” for you.

Yang Zehua compares before and after the restoration of "Jiang Maode's Painting of Landscapes".

Photo by Sheng Jiapeng

Treating cultural relics and prolonging the year: the traditional skills of the Forbidden City are inherited in an orderly manner

　　As the third-generation inheritor of the national intangible heritage project "Ancient Calligraphy and Painting Restoration Techniques", Yang Zehua, the leader of the Painting and Calligraphy Restoration Group of the Ministry of Culture, Science and Technology of the Palace Museum, entered the Department of Painting and Calligraphy Restoration in 1985 and presided over the restoration of a large number of calligraphy and calligraphy relics in the Palace Museum.

What impressed him the most in recent years is the restoration of the Tongjing paintings of Juan Qinzhai.

　　Juan Qin Zhai is located in the northeast corner of Qianlong Garden of the Palace Museum. It was built in the 37th year of Qianlong (1772).

The general scene painting is made up of 22 separate frames on the roof and walls, and each painting is spliced ​​together to form a complete scene.

　　The general landscape painting was painted by the Italian missionary Castiglione and his disciples at the time, using traditional Chinese paints and Western focus painting methods.

Because each frame is huge and the paintings between them are coherent, the western painting method makes the color of the picture thick, loses its glueability over time and easily fades, and the silk is embrittled seriously, which makes it very difficult to repair.

　　Yang Zehua led the team. For mineral pigments that are easy to fade, the method of removing dust from the dough was used. After testing and analysis, the proportion of the fixing glue for the pigment was obtained. There are no precedents for the targeted repair methods used in this article.

Zhang Tiecheng led the team to restore the Qianlong Garden cultural relics.

Photo courtesy of Zhang Tiecheng

　　"The wet dough that doesn't stick to your hands is a good tool for dust removal. The dough can not only get dust off, but also the oxide layer of the dye in the landscape painting, making the painting bright again."

　　When the silk painting is unmounted, long-fiber mulberry paper must be attached to it. Only the silk painting with the backing paper can fill in the color and be reposted to the original place for restoration.

The team searched the whole Anhui, and finally found this kind of qualified ancient paper in a remote paper factory.

The restoration work of Juan Qinzhai's landscape painting went smoothly.

　　The restoration process of "Dong Gao Flower Pasting" and "Jiang Maode's Landscape Painting Pasting" by Yang Zehua can be described as "resurrecting the dead".

　　Both stickers are from Fuwang Pavilion in Qianlong Garden.

Both paintings are over four meters high and nearly three meters long. The former is "a broken bag" when it appears, and the latter is "almost difficult to open" when it appears.

Because it was too large, in the storage process that year, the frame was folded vertically and then folded in half horizontally. A large number of fragments were generated at the fold, and the work was missing many places and was seriously damaged.

　　Compared with scroll paintings and calligraphy, the scales are larger, the form is colorful, and the content implies auspiciousness. It has become a distinctive display element in the original display of the Palace Museum.

However, it is difficult to repair and protect the patch: one is that it is difficult to operate due to the large size of the patch, and it tests the endurance of the repairer to reveal the heart and full color.

Moreover, the damage to the stickers is high and the injury conditions are complex, so the technical requirements for repair personnel are relatively high.

　　"The smallest piece is only the size of a pinky fingernail", Yang Zehua recalled. The calligraphy and painting group carefully cleaned up each piece together, trying to find each piece like a jigsaw puzzle. Every time it finds one, it will be very happy, and then use silk paper to reinforce it. ...Half a month later, thousands of fragments were put together to form an ancient painting about 4.7 meters high and 2.8 meters long.

　　Regarding the restoration of such large-scale stickers, Yang Zehua, who has nearly 40 years of experience in the industry, believes that the intervention of modern technology has made traditional restoration techniques "more powerful."

For example, he used science and technology to collect data from the external environment and the stability of its own materials before the restoration, so as to fully understand the disease mechanism of the cultural relics; during the restoration, the inspection data was followed up throughout the process for comparison experiments to strengthen the fit between scientific and technological testing and clinical restoration. It makes the final restoration results more rigorous.

Yang Zehua (left) directed the restoration of calligraphy and painting.

Photo by Sheng Jiapeng

The help of jade carving master: Restoring cultural relics in the Forbidden City is like talking to the predecessors

　　The decoration craftsmanship of Fuwang Pavilion is the representative of Jiangnan craftsmanship during the Qianlong period. It reflects the top level of Qing Dynasty craftsmanship such as wood carving, double-sided embroidery, bamboo silk inlay, chiseled copper, enamel, lacquer, soft and hard snails, and jade carving. Break the boundaries of artifacts and expand the craftsmanship to the entire indoor space.

For example, agarwood inlaid jade windows, double-sided embroidered sill windows, dotted spiral carved lacquer windward panels and so on.

The restoration project of Fuwang Pavilion is even more arduous than the Langqinzhai, which is only more than 200 square meters.

It can be said to be "Seven years of tiredness and Qinzhai, ten years of Fuwang Pavilion".

　　A team led by Zhang Tiecheng, a master of Chinese arts and crafts and a master of Chinese jade carving, undertook the restoration of the interior decoration and furnishings of the jade in Qianlong Garden.

He recalled that when he came to the restoration studio of the Forbidden City on the first day, he saw a large wooden board covered with thick dust.

This piece of red sandalwood border Baibao inlaid kang eaves from Fuwang Pavilion is full of pits and pits, and the jade inside is basically peeled off, because there are too many missing parts, the original pattern is almost impossible to verify.

　　In order to repair this Kang cornice, Zhang Tiecheng and his colleagues studied for more than a month before finalizing the repair plan.

The first is to clean up cultural relics.

This is a fine job-use a vacuum cleaner to clean and remove the dust, use a bristle brush to gently sweep the surface, use a cotton swab dipped in a diluted ethanol solution to wipe the surface, there are a lot of glue and sticky wax on the bottom of the wood, you need to scrape them off with a big knife , Then use a small carving knife to remove the corner residues and the glue and wax debris, exposing the new wood stubble for bonding and mosaic... The whole process is very complicated, and every step must be careful to ensure a tight fit.

But compared to repairing the missing inserts on this kang eaves later, cleaning up the cultural relics at first was only the "easiest first step".

　　He introduced that the necessary supplementary materials for the kang eaves include snails, ox bone, agate, Hetian white jade, Hetian sapphire, malachite, lapis lazuli and colored glaze. Suitable materials should be found according to the color and shape of the inserts to be supplemented. , To ensure that its color, luster, flatness and thickness are basically the same as the original.

“It’s hard to find jade, but it’s even harder to find materials similar to the Qianlong period." A batch of old jade materials bought by the Beijing Jade Factory "is used up and gone."

　　A set of sixteen arhat screens inlaid with red sandalwood and jade made this well-informed jade carving master feel shocked.

This set of screens was a tribute by the minister to Emperor Qianlong. According to historical records, Qianlong's dragon heart rejoiced immediately and revoked all the screens provided by the Yunguang Tower and enshrined this screen.

On the front of the screen, sixteen arhat statues are inlaid with Hetian white jade pieces. The clothing lines of different thicknesses are as small as soybean grains and are no more than 40 cm long. They are all outlined with slender jade pieces. It's very difficult, and the jade may break with a hard effort, so it must be handled with care."

Information map of the Forbidden City.

Photo by Du Yang

　　From the restoration of cultural relics, we can often see the changes in the rise and fall of history.

Repairing another flower hanging vase, Zhang Tiecheng is very strange that the peony and magnolia flowers on it are inlaid randomly with red, green and green stones such as Shoushan stone and Qingtian jade. Not only are there large gaps around, but also there is no carving or beautification. , Is to paste one piece of material up.

Later, he learned from experts that this was a trace of restoration during the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty.

On the one hand, the treasury is empty and there is no money to repair it. On the other hand, some people have embezzled the cost of the repair.

　　Today, the inner eaves decoration of the Qianlong Garden building and the indoor movable cultural relics completed by Zhang Tiecheng's team have been restored. Nearly 30 groups of cultural relics have been renewed and re-installed in the Juanqinzhai and Fuwang Pavilion.

　　Speaking of gains, Zhang Tiecheng said frankly, “Recovering cultural relics in the Forbidden City and learning a lot of ancient skills is like talking to the predecessors, and being able to leave something for the future generations is my biggest gain and motivation.”

　　With a little polishing, every little detail is treated meticulously. The craftsman spirit of "choose one thing for a lifetime" has been passed on from generation to generation in the hands and hearts of Yang Zehua and Zhang Tiecheng.

The beauty of Qianlong Garden bears witness to the ingenuity passed down from generation to generation.

　　Reporter: Ying Ni Yu Zhanyi