Farmer and his unique bulb-engraving skill

By Li Jingrong: 0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China.org.cn, May 4, 2016

Kong Qingsi, a 44-year-old farmer from east China's Shandong Province, has developed a uniquely superb skill of engraving vivid patterns and figures on light bulbs. His works are gradually becoming known far and wide.

Kong lives in Dashiyi Village in Shiqiang Town of Zoucheng City. He started to learn stone-engraving in his 20s and, through years of painstaking effort, he has attained a high degree of skill.

Farmer Kong Qingsi engraves patterns on a light bulb with a hammer and cutter in Dashiyi Village in Shiqiang Town of Zoucheng City in Shandong Province on April 26, 2016. [Photo by Wang Qisheng/China.com.cn]

The idea for the new art form came to him one day in 2012 while he was gazing at the light bulb in his room which is surely one of the most recognizable articles of everyday use.

However, it is definitely no easy job to master this skill requiring fine workmanship and meticulous care. The glass of an ordinary incandescent light bulb is very thin, usually between two and three millimeters, while many of Kong's tools used in his stone engraving are comparatively heavy, including two hammers weighing 0.5 kilogram and 3.5 kilograms respectively and four steel cutters.

"The bulb easily shatters in the fingers if there is the slightest mistake like squeezing too hard or even a gentle vibration, so a lot of work can go to waste in this way," Kong said.

After experiments on several hundred light bulbs ended in failure, the whole family, including his wife, rose against him, complaining that he was busy engraving all day and neglecting his farming. "Bulb-engraving is no substitute for something that makes money," his wife argued.

No matter how hard his family and friends tried to dissuade him, he refused to listen. However, he went to work in the fields during the day and only engaged in his engraving at night.

To save money, Kong bought a large number of old light bulbs with their glass surface intact from waste recycling stations in order to practice. Many of his engraving tools were made by himself. He mastered and perfected his skill while working and fostering his ability to study independently. To complete a single work, sometimes he had to engrave 6,000-8,000 lines on the bulb with a cutter.

As the old Chinese saying goes, "Those who work hard will be rewarded." Kong made great progress and has now begun to reap the rewards of bulb-engraving. His representative work, "Twelve Zodiac Signs" won him praise as "the person who engraved the most animal images on a light bulb with a hammer" and a prize from "Carrying The Flag World Records."

Thanks to his efforts, the handicraft of bulb-engraving was included in the Zoucheng municipal-level intangible cultural heritage list of Shandong Province in 2015.

Kong's life has changed a lot as a result. The patterns and figures on the glass bulb look remarkably vivid and lifelike under illumination. Kong says his future has been lit up by the engraved bulbs as well.

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