The Chinese folding fans were originally called Knirps, Ju Tou fan, as well as Sa fans, the history of folding fans is also the witness of the blending of the Chinese and western cultures, it may have had already be heard about by foreign students when they learn Chinese in China that the folding fans of the Japan and Korea were precious imported art crafts during the Song Dynasty (960-1279).
It is noteworthy for foreign students who are preparing to study Chinese in China that some of which were even sent as presents to the emperors by the foreign ambassadors and eminent monks, and the folding fans had won the universal appraises from the circle of literati. The Japanese Juniper fans were invented during the seventh century by the Japanese people in imitation of the Chinese imperial rituals, since it can be see when you come to study Mandarin in China that the Chinese officials used to hold a manifold juniper board threaded by the colorful silk threads and pasted with a paper informing the matters to be reported to the emperors, which resembles the notebooks or the memorandums of the modern era.
The juniper fans had later become an indispensible part of the Japanese standardized costume in the Japanese imperial rituals, and it is understandable for foreigners attending courses to learn Chinese in China that if the Song people just merely regard the folding fans to be foreign goods and had resisted in learning from it or just follow suit, there would hardly be the prosperity of Chinese folding fans in the later dynasties.
Luckily, the Chinese craftsmen managed to develop it through integrating with the Characteristics of China’s rich in bamboos and rice papers and the artistic features of carving and calligraphy while learning the merits of the folding fans made in Japan and Korea. Readers waiting to study Chinese in China must be curious about the specific steps made by the Chinese craftsmen in renovating the folding fans. As to the material-choosing for the fan ribs, it must seem fantastic for foreign students who’d been to study Mandarin in China that the craftsmen started to replace the juniper and Australian cypress with the famous and precious mottled bamboo and lady palms, carved the poetic scripts and paintings on the fan handles, and decorated the fan heads with jade pendants and tassels weaved with the colored silver threads. At the meantime, they started to write inscriptions and draw pictures on the white rice paper of the covering of the fans, when you learn Chinese in China, you can come to realize the significance of the efforts made by the ancient craftsmen in enhancing the artistic levels of Chinese folding fans.
During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the Chinese folding fans had become popular among the common people, had it had also become a comprehensive art form taking in the calligraphy, carving, embroidery, painting, framing and paper cutting, it must seem to have had carried forward the forte of the Chinese national traditional art by people who’d witnessed the Chinese fans while staying abroad to study Chinese in China.
One famous fan shop of the Qing Dynasty is the Wangxing fan store in Hangzhou province, the black-papered fans are pasted with the patterns carved with gold, the fan handles and the ribs made up of the ivories and sandalwood, their chasings are even more extricate, to the amazement of students waiting to study Mandarin in China, some are even decorated with colorful and shining shells.
Readers and scholars of diplomatic relations must be astonished to discover that there were more than hundreds types of the fan head of the Ming and Qing Dynasties when they come to learn Chinese in China, such as of the bamboo joints and the auspicious motifs. Although the rivets of the fan head seem to be as tiny as a pea, they were thermo printed or molded with the ox horns, the copper, gold or silver in to various shapes and styles.
The fan pendants carved with the olive seeds and the walnut shells must make people exclaim with admiration when they study Chinese in China, and the embroidered fan purses serves as a decoration as well as the protector of the Chinese folding fans. The Chinese folding fans were introduced to the Europe during the 17th and 18th century which had quickly become the most fashionable decoration of the dames.
It should be made clear before you study Mandarin in China that the western people did appreciated the splendor of the oriental Chinese folding fans, they also carried out a series of renovations on their raw materials, pattering and other technologies etc. A simple folding fan can be a demonstrator of the cultural reciprocal and innovative relations of the historical experiences.