Non-genetic inheritance-Compass maker Wu Zhaoguang： Compass is a symbolic embodiment of ancient wisdom.

Wan ‘an Town, located along the Hengjiang River in the Xuxiu Basin, is one of the four ancient towns in Huizhou, named after Wanan Mountain (also known as Gucheng Rock) in the east. The embryonic form of the market town was formed as early as the Han and Sui Dynasties, with a documented history of more than 1,700 years. It was once the seat of county governance and county governance. It is close to Yicheng, and it is located in the land transportation center of yi county, Qimen and Wuyuan, Tunxi and Yansi, and Anqing, Jiangxi, Hunan and Fujian. And according to the water transport trunk road in the upper reaches of Qiantang River, the boat can go upstream to yi county Fishing Pavilion and go straight to Hangzhou, Zhejiang. Because Wan ‘an has both the convenience of horses and chariots and the benefits of boats and boats, a large amount of grain and oil, bamboo, wood, tea and other materials produced by surrounding towns are concentrated here for processing, sales or transshipment, making it an important commercial port and water transport terminal in ancient Huizhou.

After hundreds of years of development, by the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Wan ‘an Street had ranked first among the nine major markets in Xiuning County, and the people had the reputation of "a small Xiuning City and a large Wan ‘an Street". The street is about five miles long, and there are many shops on both sides of the long and narrow street, so it is also known as the "first sight" market. Even in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, there were still more than 50 kinds of industries, more than 140 shops and workshops along Wan ‘an Street, such as cloth, grain and oil, sugar mill, sauce garden, pawn, Chinese medicine, Hui ink, compass, waste mill, furnace mill and sedan chair, and we can imagine its prosperity in its heyday.

However, this is not the same. Compared with the bustling Tunxi Old Street in the center of Huangshan, Wan ‘an Street now looks depressed and desolate. There are almost no pedestrians on the street, and there is no smell of chickens crowing and dogs barking. Many old houses have been in disrepair for a long time and are uninhabited. The once busy dock has now become a laundry place for women, and there are no traces of shops that were lined up in the past. Only the blue stone road with smooth feet is still vaguely showing the pedestrians on Wan ‘an Street in the past.

Wan’ an old street

At the same time, there is also a skill that continues. From Wan ‘an Street eastward to No.70 Shangjie, the signboard of "Wu Luheng Compass Old Shop" came into view. "Compass" is the honorific title of Feng Shui master for compass. According to research, Wan ‘an Street compass manufacturing industry started in the late Yuan and early Ming Dynasties, developed in the Ming Dynasty, and flourished in the middle of Qing Dynasty. It has a history of more than 600 years, so Wan ‘an is also called "the hometown of compass". In 2006, Wan ‘an compass making skills were included in the first batch of national intangible cultural heritage list.

Wu Lu heng Luo Jing old shop

"hometown of compass"

The prosperity of Wan ‘an Compass is related to its geographical and humanistic environment and social needs. Huizhou is the birthplace of Neo-Confucianism in Song and Ming Dynasties, and its social culture is deeply influenced by Neo-Confucianism in Cheng and Zhu. Neo-Confucians Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi in the Northern Song Dynasty and Zhu Xi in the Southern Song Dynasty, as well as many later Neo-Confucians, all wrote books on Yi-ology, and there were special articles emphasizing the study of Feng Shui. Xin ‘an Neo-Confucianism, which originated from Cheng Zhu’s Neo-Confucianism, prevailed in Huizhou for nearly 700 years, and had a profound impact on Huizhou society, making the geomantic activities in this area last forever and forming traditional social customs. The Southern Song Dynasty’s Xin ‘an Annals said: "The disadvantages of its people are that it is good to appoint personnel, and it is good to bury people in mud until the age of choosing auspicious days. There are still a few doors in the market, so it is good for luck." It shows that Huizhou people at that time were very particular about the geomantic omen of buildings and tombs. In the early Qing Dynasty, Zhao Jishi, a native of Wan ‘an, Xiuning County, wrote "Send to the Garden, Send to the Place", saying that "Feng Shui is especially important for Hui people, and it is strong to settle disputes at ordinary times", which shows the prevalence of Feng Shui in Huizhou.

At the same time, Huizhou has a self-sustaining feng shui system since ancient times, and the most influential representative is He Lingtong. He Lingtong (922-1019), whose name is Pu, was originally a master of the Southern Tang Dynasty. According to the expert Kanyu family, during the Xiande period of the later Zhou Dynasty (954-960), he was demoted as the Xiuning county magistrate because of the unfavorable admonition of Li Jing to repair the Niushou Mountain Mausoleum. After resigning as a monk. He has done a lot in the theory and practice of "Yang Zhai" and "Yin Zhai". "Xiuning County Records" said: "Where Hui people are buried in good places, why are the Buddhist teachers?" He Lingtong’s geomantic omen has been passed down in Huizhou. For example, the You family in Jixi, Wuyuan, that is, "the learning of He Lingtong, the master of my uncle’s family", has produced many famous Feng Shui masters in past dynasties. In the Ming Dynasty, you Yuanli also wrote in "At the beginning of Yongle, Bo Tian Shoushan Mausoleum should be summoned and given back to the mountain". He Keda, a famous feng shui master in Xiuning, a descendant of He, was the planner who reconstructed the village environment and built the village water system during the Ming Yongle period in Hongcun, yi county, a world cultural heritage site.

In addition, in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, after they became rich in foreign business, Huizhou merchants returned to their hometowns to build houses, ancestral temples and ancestral graves. Before these activities broke ground, Mr. Feng Shui was invited to choose his direction, which made Feng Shui and compasses have a broad sales market. At the same time, foreign businessmen and geomancers also made a special trip to Wan’ an to buy compasses. These unique cultural, economic and geographical conditions objectively promoted the emergence and development of Wan ‘an compass, and Wan ‘an compass industry came into being, which gradually made Wan ‘an Town one of the famous compass manufacturing centers in Ming and Qing Dynasties.

compass

Skill inheritance

The compass shops in Wan ‘an history mainly include Fang Xiushui, Wu Luheng, Hu Ruyi and Hu Ping Rank. Wu Luheng’s compass shop was founded in the first year of Yongzheng in Qing Dynasty (1723), and it is a rising star in Wan ‘an compass making industry. Compasses and sundials made by founder Wu Guozhu (word Lu Heng) are popular all over the world because of their high quality and high precision, and "Wu Luheng" has also become a well-known brand in China compass industry. Later generations inherited the ancestral system, and made "foreign-style sundials" and "solar-term sundials", etc. The products were sold in China urban and rural areas, and even spread to Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia, Europe and America, enjoying a good reputation at home and abroad. In the 4th year of the Republic of China (1915), the compass and sundial jointly produced by Wu Luheng’s fifth and sixth generations, Wu Yuxian and Wu Weicang, were awarded the second prize of China’s products for the Panama World Expo, and won the gold medal at the Panama World Expo. Wu’s compass shop was handed down for six generations and closed in the 1960s. In 1990s, Wu Shuisen, a seventh-generation inheritor and later named as a national intangible heritage inheritor, returned to his ancestors’ old business and restored Wu Luheng’s compass making skills.

China prepares for the second prize certificate of Panama World Expo products.

The current "shopkeeper" of Wu Luheng’s old compass shop is the eighth generation descendant Wu Zhaoguang. Wu Zhaoguang was born in 1984. He started to make compasses at the age of 10, "looking at it for three years and repairing it for three years". At the age of 16, he basically mastered the core technology of Wu Luheng’s compass making. But he doesn’t think this is the embodiment of parents’ sense of inheritance. "Do you think farmers will deliberately train their children to farm? That’s not training, but working for the family. You are a family laborer. " Wu Zhaoguang feels that "the thing I want to do most since I was a child is to play". Learning to make a compass is forced, and I have never considered cultural inheritance. At the age of nineteen, he joined the army despite his father’s opposition and followed the troops everywhere.

When he was a soldier, a letter from his father Wu Shuisen touched him greatly. Around 2003, the environment of the whole compass industry was very bad. Wu Shuisen felt that he was too old to make a compass. He hoped that his son would come back to take over, inherit this craft and lead the compass industry to the right track. On second thought, Wu Zhaoguang returned to Wan ‘an Town after the expiration of his service and took over the operation of the old shop. He decided to "do something famous".

The first is to expand the scale of production. The compass made by Wu Luheng’s old shop has to go through seven complicated processes, including material selection and blank making, turning, dividing, liquidation, writing, oil delivery and needle installation, and each step must be made by hand. The most critical process is to install the magnetic needle: first, place the steel needle on the natural meteorite to magnetize it. When installing, the center of gravity of the magnetic needle should be accurately determined, so that the fulcrum can not produce resistance, so that the pointer can rotate freely. This process is the core technology of compass making, which can only be completed by the shopkeeper himself in the secret room.

In the past, Wu Shuisen completed all the processes alone. Wu Zhaoguang persuaded his father to hire people and take apprentices, and handed over the first six processes to others to improve the compass output. Secondly, to expand publicity, Wu Zhaoguang established a website to introduce the history and production process of compass, and also began to sell compass on QQ. These operations, which now seem normal, made my father feel very incredible at that time.

Two or three years later, the old shop was gradually on the right track, and Wu Zhaoguang and his father were faced with a choice: should they sell the compass to the government or a professional feng shui master? At that time, the government purchased a large number of local specialties as gifts, including Huimo, inkstone and compass, and the order amount sometimes reached hundreds of thousands or even millions. However, they feel that the relationship between government procurement and policy is too close and not safe enough. In contrast, although individual customers are difficult to do, as long as the products are well done, the accumulated reputation and resources will continue. Therefore, they positioned the product audience as professional customers. Later, the "eight regulations" strictly controlled the three public funds. Due to proper pre-judgment, the reduction of government orders hardly affected Wu Luheng’s compass store.

Many people are also playing the idea of "Wu Luheng", the golden signboard of Wanan compass. Due to Wu Shuisen’s lack of trademark awareness, "Wu Luheng" was squatted in the 1990s, and it took nearly 20 years to get the trademark back. There are also some small workshops that put the names of Wu Shuisen and Wu Zhaoguang on their homemade compasses and sell them on Taobao. In order to set the record straight, Wu Zhaoguang also opened a Taobao shop to keep informed of the inventory situation at any time to prevent customers from being cheated.

Mr. Wu Zhaoguang

Compass requires a lot of raw materials. The rivers around Wan ‘an Town are criss-crossing, and the trees are lush, which is rich in a kind of "tiger bone wood". Its material is tough and does not show texture, so it is the best choice for making compasses. However, tiger bone wood should be left for three and a half to four years, and it can only be used after it is fully dried. Compass has many sizes, large and small. Due to the limitation of raw materials, the quantity distribution of compasses of various sizes needs to be prepared when storing wood according to the change of disc demand. "We have to predict the trend of the compass market in the next 3-4 years. Different schools have different interpretations of Feng Shui, so they need different compasses. For example, in the first two years, the market was sold with great enthusiasm, and there were piles of small ones, but no one bought them; But sometimes small-cap stocks are short-selling for several months in a row, and the market does not move. A certain period of time just happens to have more training courses run by a large feng shui school, and small-sized dishes will sell more; However, if the professional society has more training, it will be different. They are more inclined to explain the broader market with more content. "

In order to understand the trends of different schools, Wu Zhaoguang often communicates with feng shui masters, but he still thinks that he can’t fully grasp the dynamics of the compass market. "We only produced more than 1,000 plates last year, but the demand is far from enough. For example, if the market demand is 10,000 and you only have 1,000, how can you ensure that 1000 is a comprehensive reflection of 10,000? Unless it is basically parallel to the market demand, it will be more reasonable to say so, but now we certainly can’t do it. " Wu Luheng’s old compass store has more than 100 kinds of samples, and the common types are Sanhe, Sanyuan, Zhonghe, Xuankong and Zhuzi. Customers mainly choose and book the dishes from the website of the old shop, and Wu Zhaoguang processes and makes them according to the customer’s needs.

Wu Luheng’s old compass shop has more than 20 employees, but it can’t be regarded as a commercial company. Wu Zhaoguang calls their production mode "manual small-scale batch production", and generally no more than 20 compasses can be made in one batch. The old shop produces three kinds of products: compass, sundial and geomantic ruler. The price of compass ranges from 400 yuan to 10 thousand yuan, mainly from 2000 yuan to 3000 yuan. The most expensive product, the sundial, can be sold for more than 300 thousand, but it takes more than one year to make. Wu Zhaoguang feels that he is relatively relaxed. There is no pressure on sales of products, and there is no need for special sales staff. Every year, he has more than 5 million sales and a considerable profit margin.

Wu Zhaoguang is cautious about further increasing compass production. The key to increase the output is to reduce his own workload. After several years of hesitation, he made up his mind to split the most important needle installation link in the seven processes, take an apprentice in the pointer assembly, and only take charge of the most difficult pointer fulcrum production part. He hopes to increase the annual output of compass to 1500-1600. "If the technology is really liberalized, I will create competitors for myself. If I adopt a process-based liberalization, I can always leave the core technology. "

Every old shop has rules left by ancestors. There is a rule in Wu Luheng’s Compass Old Shop that requires employees to "enter the shop young and leave the shop old", and everyone is only responsible for a certain process of compass making. "The servants who followed my great-grandfather and grandfather used to work until they died. They bought two sets of clothes every year and paid monthly money. I will show them when they are sick. When they die, they have to prepare coffins for them. It is a bit like a bonded worker. I have been in charge for a lifetime." There is also "passing on the daughter-in-law but not the daughter", that is, the skill of compass making can be passed on to the daughter-in-law, but not to the daughter. "This is to keep the family’s intellectual property secret. The daughter is going to get married, but the daughter-in-law belongs to her own family, and the child born is surnamed Wu. My father’s generation is a typical’ daughter-in-law’s son’, because my grandfather passed away very early, but fortunately my grandmother inherited this skill and was able to pass it on to my father. "

Wu Zhaoguang believes that these rules are all to prevent technology from spreading abroad. "It may be the reason why we are engaged in this business. Our Wu family’s incense is not prosperous. It has only been passed down for eight generations in more than 300 years. Since Grandpa Tai, it has been’ four generations of single biography’." Mr. Wu Shuisen, the seventh generation descendant, died in 2014. Today, Wu Zhaoguang is 35 years old and has only one daughter. For the inheritance of skills, he said that he is considering it.

Fengshui culture

Wu Zhaoguang usually reads Feng Shui books and understands the basic knowledge, but he didn’t want to spend energy on research. He believes that Feng Shui is not a feudal superstition, nor a metaphysical myth, but an experience and law between man and nature summed up by ancient sages in China. The wisdom of the ancients is expressed in the form of symbols on a compass, and today, through these symbols, we can deduce the experience at that time like cracking a password.

"Whether it’s a yin house or a yang house, it’s nothing more than what kind of orientation. Why is it that changing the orientation of the door will make you’ prosperous’? In fact, it’s very simple. For example, if you walk into a street, the doors of some shops just don’t attract you, and you just can’t get in. But if you change the direction of the doors according to the terrain and environment, you can naturally go in. Isn’t this a money-sucking? There is also’ Wangjia’, that is, the wind direction of the house, the earth’s magnetic field, sunshine and other effects on the owner’s body. If the house is always out of the sun, then it must be humid, and people are prone to rheumatism. Therefore, a person’s physical condition is closely related to his living environment-the so-called Feng Shui-but the ancient Feng Shui master will not tell you, he will only tell you whether the house is good or not, and he will not tell you. In fact, I think this is a kind of science and the attitude of the ancients towards the relationship between heaven and earth. "

Hand-painted feng shui map

The rise and fall of compass industry also represents the rise and fall of geomantic culture. In Wu Zhaoguang’s view, geomantic culture was in its heyday in the Republic of China, and it entered a period of depression after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. It suffered a great blow during the Cultural Revolution, but it didn’t really stop. It just moved from the ground to the underground, and it didn’t pick up until the reform and opening up. In 2006, the production technology of Wan ‘an compass entered the national intangible cultural heritage list. At the same time, the national economy grew rapidly, and the compass industry began to take off under the joint action of culture and economy. "We are sitting here today, and we are sure what we want to eat first; Only by solving the problem of eating can we continue to want to wear; Food and clothing have been solved, and then I want to have a place to live; I can decide whether to live here or there when conditions permit. Doesn’t the prosperity of Feng Shui just reflect the improvement of our needs? "

In order to spread the compass culture, Wu Zhaoguang spent more than 10 million yuan to establish the only compass museum in China-Wan ‘an Compass Culture Museum behind Wu Luheng’s old compass shop. The museum was opened to the public free of charge in 2012, displaying nearly 1,000 pieces of cultural relics such as ancient compasses, sundials, geomantic rulers, ancient geomantic books, ancient maps, tools for making old compasses, and original award certificates of Wan ‘an Compass, and was selected as the first batch of top ten private museums in Anhui Province. In addition, considering that the raw materials for disc making have been listed as national protected tree species, they should not be cut down indiscriminately. In addition to reporting to the forestry department for purchase, Wu Zhaoguang also invested in the construction of more than 1,000 mu of raw material bases for compass materials.

Wan’ an compass culture museum