SHEN Meigang was jailed for 18 years for offending Yan Song, a powerful, corrupt Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) politician. While in prison, he managed to rub down a piece of iron and turn it into a thin sheet. With this simple tool, he made a folding fan of bamboo.

This scholar-politician later described the fan’s value, saying it wouldn’t be defiled by the dust in the prison. He carried the fan until the day he died.

For gentlemen in China, like Shen, a folding fan was a key object that they should carry all the time. Ivory or sandalwood were too luxurious, considered even a bit of tacky, to be the framework. Instead, scholars adored bamboo.

It usually took years to make a folding fan — from meticulously burnishing to making a plain, pure and clean sector. Eventually a gentleman would find it, enjoying a sort of rapport with the beautifully painted object, taking it with refined demeanor.

“Fans have always been regarded ‘an elegant object of the sleeve’ in China, while a folding fan is, without a doubt, the most featured representative of all fans,” Wang Jian, one of the most famous fan craftsmen, tells Shanghai Daily. “It has always been affiliated with Chinese scholars and artists.”

The folding fan, according to “Record of Experiences in Painting from the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1126),” was originally a tribute item from Korea and Japan and later circulated in China.

In the early Ming Dynasty, these so-called “Japanese fans” were submitted as tributes and were much favored by Ming Dynasty Emperor Zhu Di of the Yongle reign (1403-24), who bestowed them as gifts on court officials. Hence, folding fans gradually became objects of appreciation among the various classes in society.

In the middle of the Ming Dynasty, commerce flourished in Suzhou of neighboring Jiangsu Province, leading to a huge rise in art and cultural activities.

“Folding fans were no longer treated as a tool to cool off, or even as a medium of showcasing traditional Chinese painting and calligraphy. A folding fan was a form to lodge emotions,” says Liu Jun, a Shanghai veteran collector of folding fans.

According to Liu, the diary of Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit missionary who introduced Christian teaching to the Chinese empire in the 16th century, showed that his biggest impression of China was the manner in which people would take a bow with their hands folded in front of them and a folding fan hidden in their sleeves.

Liu Rushi, a famous courtesan in the late Ming Dynasty, collected and carried fans all the time. “This was how educated women in ancient times expressed their demand of equal rights to men,” collector Liu says. “Folding fans for women were an early symbol of feminism.”

Suzhou is known for having the best fan craftsmanship in China. Late in the Ming Dynasty, the scholar and artist Wen Zhenheng (1585-1645) wrote in his “Treatise on Superfluous Things” that “in Gusu (Suzhou), fans with painting and calligraphy are most liked.”

Now near the ancient city wall of Suzhou lies craftsman Wang’s fan workshop, where mostly folding fans of bamboo are made. From picking the quality bamboo to folding the sector of a fan, Wang follows the old way of craftsmanship.

Having grown up in the old downtown area of Suzhou, Wang recalls some of his neighbors were skilled craftsmen. “As a child, I liked to observe these people doing crafts,” he says.

One day, young Wang passed by a fan factory and stood at the doorway watching the work inside. An old craftsman waved at him and showed him around, and he was quickly hooked.

“I thought it must be very fun, so I started to be an apprentice of making fans,” Wang recalls.

It was in 1981 and he was only 16. In the old days, different factories and workshops were responsible for only one part of a fan.

“So it was a workshop of making frameworks and after that you had to send them to another workshop to make sectors,” he says.

Wang has worked in different workshops to learn the whole skill of making a fan.

Bundled bamboo sticks lie everywhere in his workshop — leaning against the windows, on the floor and various shelves. Some of the fans are half done, all neatly arranged according to different colors and qualities.

Wang sits in front of his work desk, bowing his head slightly to burnish the main framework of a folding fan. He sprinkles water on a dried leaf and then swiftly scrubs the bamboo.

When asked why he uses leaf instead of sandpaper, Wang says, “In fact I have used the sandpaper before for initial processing, but it is too rough, so you have to use this special leaf to burnish the bamboo over and over again for best texture,” he explains, nearly hidden amid piles of bamboo pieces.

The leaf comes from Guizhou Province in southwest China where it adjoins Sichuan Province and Chongqing Municipality, an area said to produce the best leaves for burnishing bamboo.

“Just touch the surface of the fans and you will know the difference in texture. With natural material, the texture is more mild and exquisite. You will feel it more connected and closed with your fingers,” says the veteran craftsman.

Wang has nearly 100 tools for shaping and scrubbing bamboo, most of which were made by himself.

“Craftsmen like to tailor-make their tools, since the curve of the handle is based on my hands, specifically. Also, some traditional tools I found in the books are no longer available in the market, so I have to make my own,” he says.

The framework Wang is working on looks polished already, but to the craftsman there’s “still a long way to go.”

Wang has a long waiting list of clients ordering his folding fans.

“To make a fine fan, you need to take a huge amount of time and energy, more than one can hardly imagine,” he says.

First of all, one has to pick the right bamboo, which usually grows on the mountains at high altitude.

“It takes hours to climb up the mountain first,” Wang says, describing going deep into the bamboo forests in remote areas to find the best bamboo. “Now I don’t have the energy to carry them off the mountain so I always hire locals to carry for me. Normally when farmers cut the bamboo they roll it to the bottom of the mountain. But for making fans, they have to carry them carefully all the way back to the closest village.”

The bamboo then needs to be examined and cut right away to boil so that it will maintain the best color. Only the middle part of the bamboo can be made as framework, and if there are any flaws it will be abandoned.

“So for a long bamboo stick you can use merely a small part of it,” Wang says.

Boiled bamboo needs at least eight years of aging before it’s ready to be turned into fans. By that time the moisture is volatilized and the density of the bamboo has improved.

For the sector, Wang purchases all his rice paper from Anhui Province to ensure the best quality. The glue to mount rice paper must be handmade, using mainly flour and then adding alum to make it more pliable and tougher. “The key is to be extremely careful, patient and decisive during the whole process. Since you only know the quality of the work after the sector is all done, a craftsman has no room for mistakes,” says Wang.

The craftsman also must take note of the weather, including the temperature and even the direction of the wind, to take care of the sectors, otherwise the quality will change. “In winter and summer, we almost can’t make any sectors,” Wang says.

Once the paper is made, it needs to be stored for years before it is sold.

Sectors can also be made in silk and coated or sprinkled with gold powder, which will make them much more expensive.

The frameworks sold at Wang's shop usually have no carvings. “The bamboo when all shaped and polished is too elegant to carve anything on it. It has the same texture as fine jade,” Wang says.

Like cobblestones in running water, only if the water runs through it gently for a long time will the stone have the best glaze and texture. Fan craftsmen use the same philosophy. “Soft fire makes sweet malt.”

Prices for folding fans at Wang’s workshop start at 3,000 yuan (US$500) and rocket upward very quickly. Outstanding-quality fans — with rare bamboo material or paintings and calligraphy from great artists — can go for more than 1 million yuan.

“To appreciate the simplicity and plain, elegant curve of a folding fan, you need a long-time cultivation in aesthetics and knowledge of culture,” says Liu Jun, the folding fan collector.