User:Jeffzzy97/sandbox

Bamboo Artisans in Ming China
Known records of famous artisan especially bamboo crafting artisan suggest that these artisans descended from the families who were either scholars or officials. Due to the four categories of the people which restrictively classified the commoners, there was rarely mobility across different occupations. As a results, bamboo artisans were likely to be practicing as artisans due to their lower status in the society which also originated from the family business. Additionally, bamboo mostly grows at tropical environment, limiting people from the south-east to be bamboo artisans.

Bamboo artisans mostly worked with bamboo on either crave on the surface of bamboo or making incense holder or brush holder out of bamboo because of its hollowed center. Sometimes they worked with animal horns and woods because of their similarities in textile. Their abilities or skills were characterized by qiao (巧) which the connotation means 'cunning' or 'crafty'. Educated bamboo artisans would crave stories or figures of the scholars on the surface of these holder to levitate their statues. Commoner bamboo artisans mostly produces daily equipment like bamboo chair, table, umbrellas and etc. Bamboo artisans achieved their goal by drilling holes on bamboo and connecting them with strips and wires without much change of the bamboo itself. Besides working on intact bamboo, bamboo artisans also knitted with thin bamboo strips into basket, steamer, hat or cut them in half to make carrying pole. These commodities were favored by other commoners so they would exchange with their products. As a result, sometimes bamboo artisans were also merchants at the same time.

Even though artisans-in-residence worked for government in a permanent fashion, they were paid the same as other lowly occupation. Bamboo artisans, who were rotating artisans, needed to visit capital Beijing once every four years and worked three months each visit to fulfill their mandatory services to the government. These rotating artisans usually lived far from the capital where the travelling would take three to four months by walking. These mandatory and unpaid services to the government didn't help with their living but an addition to their normal workload. Failing in fulfilling the service would result in heavy punishment. Many artisans bought their way out and hired substitutes to work for them.

Officials especially enjoyed those incense and blush holders because of their craving of famous stories on the surface as proofs of their connoisseur-ship and high status. But usually these craving were done by those who were also scholars. Even though sometimes commoners' bamboo work would be appreciated by the officials, the payment didn't necessarily improve their status of artisans rose to equality with the scholars or even with the merchants who could afford such art objects.

Artisan in Ming China
During the time of Late Ming and early Qing dynasty, there existed a hierarchy system to categorize which originated from between the fifth to third centuries B.C. There were four occupational groups of commoners (known as 'four people' 四民): 1. scholars, both civilian and military (shi 士); 2. farmers (nong 農); 3. artisans (gong 工); and 4. merchants (shang 商).

There were many types of artisans registered by the Ming government: 1. artisans-in-residence (zhuzuo jiang 住作匠), who came from around the capital and worked exclusively for the inner court, supplying crafts needed and being supervised by various eunuch agencies; 2. rotating artisans (lunban jiang 轮班匠), who came from outside of the capital and worked on a rotating basis once in one to five years depending on types of craft, fulfilling unpaid services in addition to their own work and supervised by the Ministry of Works; 3. military artisans (jun jiang 军匠), registered to and worked for the military on permanent basis. At the time of 1393, there had been two hundred thirty-two thousand rotating artisans of sixty two occupations in record.

Even though many artisans working for the government simply bought their way out, hiring their own substitutes after the late fifteenth century, the amount of artisans-in-residence working for the Directorate of Ceremonial in book production alone was the second largest of any agency.