Yang Fuxi, is China’s last traditional bow and arrow craftsman. His ancestors were the "baogong" or "precious bow" makers for the imperial court of the Qing dynasty.
In ancient China, the craft was considered one of the six "noble arts," along with rites, music, chariot racing, mathematics and calligraphy. Founded in the 1700s, Ju Yuan Hao, as the business was named, operated out of the Forbidden City for its first century, providing bows and arrows to the imperial court.
But as China's communist revolution intensified, Mao Tse-tung's administrators decreed that the shop be turned into a factory making sports equipment.
In 1966, when Yang was 8, Mao sent Red Guards house to house on a quest to destroy any vestiges of ancient Chinese civilization. One night, fearing for the family's safety, Yang's father and brother bundled up perhaps 100 of the traditional weapons and dumped them in the countryside.
They saved just one, made in the 1820s to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the shop's founding.
His father cut the bow in half, wrapped it in plastic and stashed it under a pile of firewood.
A few years earlier, after the Communist Party declared the Cultural Revolution a grave error, Yang's father had restored the one bow he had saved and began talking fondly about the craft over dinners.
Yang began to wonder whether the old family business was the answer to his employment troubles. He remembered something his grandfather once told him: "If you can make something, you'll never starve."
Finally, he quit his job and told his father he wanted to be a bow maker.
Fashioning a bow entails about 200 steps, starting with shaping bamboo or other wood into an arc. There are no measurements, no schematic drawings — craftsmen like Yang work by intuition.
"None of the raw materials can be bought easily in the market," Yang said.
He makes about 100 bows a year, with about a dozen in the works at any given time.
A single bow can take more than three months to complete and sell for up to $10,000. They are coveted by sportsmen, collected by celebrities such as Jackie Chan and displayed in museums.
Many scholars believe Confucius taught archery, and the scholar references it multiple times in the Analects, an anthology of the philosopher's thoughts and quotations. "The superior man has nothing to compete for," one passage instructs. "But if he must compete, he does it in an archery match."
Lindesay, who first met Yang more than a decade ago, said he's traveled to Mongolia in search of traditional bowyers as well and found only two. "These men are very few and far between," he said. "Yang Fuxi is a man standing with one foot in the past and the other in the present. It's quite extraordinary."
From Reuters, Beijing bowmaker takes refuge in ancient art
"Young people aren't willing to do the hard work, to eat the bitterness of this craft,", Yang Fuxi
From The Globe and Mail, Bows almost all that remains of Manchu dynasty
"Bow-making is handed down from generation to generation," he says. "If it is lost, it will be a great tragedy. I'm just trying to do my best to protect it, at least a little."
