We carve an entire story on an olive pit.
The windows are only 1mm thick.
If you use too much force, the windows will break.
My name is Zeng Xianpeng.
I’m a descendant of this olive pit carving
industry in Guangzhou.
It’s an intangible culture.
I’ve been working in this industry for nearly 30 years.
Since I was in kindergarten,
I grew up next to my dad’s workbench, watching him carve.
It wasn't until when I was in middle school
that I read an essay called “The Peach-Stone Boat.”
I realized what my dad was doing was something
our Chinese textbooks taught.
The essay was written in classical Chinese,
so the teacher had difficulty teaching it.
The students had a hard time learning it too.
But reading it,
I realized it was very similar to what my father was doing.
This boat is a replica of the boat mentioned in that essay.
This boat
is about 2.5cm in diameter.
It’s as big as my thumb.
Normally the olive pits we use are collected
from trees that are over 100 years old.
After we collect the pits, we need to store them
for at least five years.
If we carve on fresh pits,
they will crack or go out of shape
eventually because of the weather.
Every single olive pit is different.
For example, if we need to carve a person who’s standing,
we will normally go with longer pits.
If we need to carve a traditional Chinese woman,
we will choose longer, thinner pits.
If we need to make a boat,
we’ll use more symmetrical-looking pits.
The center should jut out a little.
That’s where we carve the cabin.
There are four steps to
turning a pit into a piece of art.
First, choose the pit and come up with your design.
Secondly, roughly carve it.
Thirdly, bring out the details.
Lastly, we polish it.
The windows on the cabin
can only be carved in humid weather,
which only lasts one month every year.
If we miss that period, we have to wait until the next year.
The windows are only 1mm thick.
If you use too much force, the windows will break.
When it’s humid, the pits are softer and
they’re able to withstand pressure a little better.
It’s hard to say how long we need to finish one sculpture.
Nowadays, young people only want to make money quickly.
So I feel happy that I have a successor.
My son is doing something different from what I was doing.
He uses his art to make USBs,
bracelets, and earrings.
And our sales have risen.
My son is now a small celebrity at school.
Once his teachers took the students to
our workshop to learn this art.
And he was the one who taught them.
Maybe in the future when
his class studies the essay I read,
he can tell his teachers “this is what my dad does.”