A Taste of Home, Shaped by Hand
A Spring Festival exhibition in Beijing transforms humble steamed buns into elaborate huamo artworks highlighting the country's folk traditions, Lin Qi reports.
▲Tiger-head shoes in the traditional style and clay horse statues are among the works of arts and crafts on show at the Guo Nian exhibition at the Chinese Traditional Culture Museum in Beijing. [Photo provided to China Daily]
While professional craftsmen showcase their creative minds and dexterous fingers by carving materials such as wood and jade, others perform the same artistry in the kitchen, working their magic on a very different surface — a fluffy steamed bun.
Liu Jing, who grew up in Shandong province, says she is overcome with homesickness as she stands before a pyramid of colorful steamed buns called huamo, now on display at the Chinese Traditional Culture Museum in Beijing. Having worked in the capital for years, the sight of the buns strikes a personal chord.
Steamed buns are a staple food in her province and across much of northern China. In Shandong and several other regions, people traditionally prepare huamo — steamed buns shaped and decorated with intricate patterns, either in relief or hollowed out — as part of long-standing traditional Spring Festival celebrations.
"My family still has huamo, homemade or ordered from bakeries, for Chinese New Year. But they are not as sumptuous as these," Liu says, as she leans forward to have a closer look at the buns, engraved with an astonishing range of motifs — flowers, food, animals, mythological creatures and even Labubu toys that have exploded in popularity worldwide.
These huamo are much more complex in structure than those made for eating at home; some resemble extravagant flower baskets from a distance, with auspicious creatures and blossoms appearing to burst from their centers. Others are layered to form pyramids, with some standing more than a meter tall.
▲Tiger-head shoes in the traditional style and clay horse statues are among the works of arts and crafts on show at the Guo Nian exhibition at the Chinese Traditional Culture Museum in Beijing. [Photo provided to China Daily]
This vivid bun forest stands at the center of Guo Nian (Crossing the Year, or Celebrating the Chinese New Year), an ongoing exhibition at the museum that opened on Jan 20 and will run through March 20, bringing festive cheer as the Year of the Horse has arrived.
On Dec 4, 2024, the traditional Chinese celebrations and practices associated with Spring Festival were added to UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Two weeks later, the museum opened the inaugural Guo Nian exhibition celebrating the Year of the Snake.
The current show, though shifting to focus on the horse as the zodiac animal that followed, continues to provide a vivid narration of the diverse folk cultures and underlying philosophical understanding of the relationships between humans and nature.
Wang Chenyang, Party secretary of the museum, says the exhibition's duration reflects both the importance and cultural richness of Spring Festival: "It began on Jan 20, which corresponded with the second day of layue, the 12th and final month of the Chinese calendar. During this period, people are busy preparing for the festival — making larou (cured pork meat, from which layue, literally, 'cured meat month', takes its name), conducting clan worship and thoroughly cleaning their homes."
▲People pose in front of photos themed on the Chinese New Year on show at the same museum. [Photo provided to China Daily]
The exhibition will finish on the second day of the second month of the new year, known as Longtaitou ("dragon raises its head"), a day which in some regions marks the start of spring plowing.
Rather than asking visitors to quietly appreciate the exhibits, the exhibition — like last year's — adopts the lively format of a temple fair, a key element of festive celebrations. Arts and crafts from across the country are on display and can be purchased at stalls.
Among the most popular offerings are the culinary delights.
Guanzi, the ancient text that is more than 2,500 years old, says:"When granaries are full, people understand etiquette."
▲A huamo (steamed buns) tower surrounded by smaller huamo pyramids are the center of the Guo Nian exhibition at the Chinese Traditional Culture Museum in Beijing. [Photo provided to China Daily]
From the steamed rice cakes of Jinhua, Zhejiang province, to the intricately sculpted huamo buns from Wenxi county, Shanxi province, visitors can try foods from across the country. Together, they reflect China's abundant food resources and the development of culinary customs according to the region and the season.
Zhang Beiyuan, a sixth-generation huamo artist from Xi'an, Shaanxi province, brings his works to the exhibition not only to dazzle visitors but also to innovate. In his 30s, Zhang experiments with different shapes. Some of his designs abandon the traditional pyramid shape in favor of cubes, which can be mistaken for cream cakes at first glance. He has also adopted a comic approach when sculpting animals and figures, reflecting the deepening culture of animation, comics and games embraced by China's young people.
"Cultural heritage should not become something outdated," he says. "It lives in the moment and will live in the future, but only as long as it continues to capture the hearts of the younger generation."