the origin of chinese fans

8/2/2019 The Origin of Chinese Fans

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The Cool Story ofChinese Fans

Shaken in hand and a cool breezeembraces you, this is one

description of the cooling power ofthe delicate Chinese fan.

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TheFans


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The origin No one knows exactly how fans in

China were invented. The invention

or rather the discovery of the fanningfunction could have been asaccidental as follows: a primitiveman irritated with lots of flies andmosquitoes, picks up a big leaf off a

plant next to him to drive the pestsaway. To his delight, his effortresulted in cooling air movements


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Along with the progress made inagriculture in the Han and TangDynasties, an ample supply ofclothing material resulted. Silkand satin fans appeared and it

became a fashion among scholarsand artists to show their geniusby writing and painting on fansurfaces. Fans soon acquired

considerable social significanceand became a part of thestandard summer costume amongthe elite and the learned


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Folded fans were introduced toChina from Japan and Koreaabout 1,000 years ago. Theywere usually made with finepaper mounted on bamboo. Thescholars found it interesting topaint their poetic and artistic

expressions on the surface.


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Introduction China fan culture has a nationalprofound cultural foundation. It has

close relation with bamboo cultureand Buddhism culture .China hasalways been known as the kingdomof fan making. The fan in China,having three to four thousand yearshistory of evolution , already hasbeen developed greatly intohundreds types .


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Introduction

But generally is summarizedinto two major categories; Aping fan (that is TuanShan,KuiShan, wheat straw fan, jadeedition fan, etc) can't be folded;the other is folding fan whichcan be freely opened and folded


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The types of the

fans (1600B.C.-1100 B.C.) Atfirst made withfeather so "fan"worded "family"next "feather" wordThe first fans weremade of birds'feathers and treeleaves.


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The types of the

fans Fans were not used to keep off

the heat, but to keep off the

dust raised by wheels of a cart It was not until the Han Dynasty

(206 B.C.-220 A.D.) that fanswere used by common people to

enjoy cool air in summer


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The types of the

fans (ping fan)

In the western Han Dynasty,there was a kind of fan called

Hehuan fan, a kind of Ping fan ""


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Hehuan fan

Since thistype of fanappeared ,ithad beenbecame thetraditionalone


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Round fans (ping fan) were firstseen in China and remained themain shape of fans until theTang and Song dynasties

(618-1279 A. D.)


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The types of the

fans (the folding fan)

Folding fans were invented bythe Japanese. Introduced intoChina through Korea in the 11stcentury, and quickly gainedpopularity in China thereafter.


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The types of the

fans (the folding fan)


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Nowadays ,the fans mainly arefolding fansas we see in dailylife

However ,there are manydifferent kinds of folding fansaccording to their differentmaterials

Fans made of bamboo and paperbone and featherivory and carved lacquer wareand paper or silk.


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Fans made of palm tree leaves areboth economical and practical andare very popular among the people.

And the most precious fans arethose made of mother-of-pearls.

In 11st century ,Guangzhou was wellknown for its production of largequantities of ornamental fans. These

fans were not only sold in domesticmarkets, but also exported to foreigncountries.


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Fans made of eagles' feathers andother plumes were the major kindsfor export.

Hangzhou was famous for its foldingfans

Nanjing was famous for makingfolding fans

Ningbo mainly produced low-costpaper fans. As paper fans produced

in Ningbo had such a competitiveprice, Japanese paper fans werepushed out of the Chinese market.


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The history of Chinese fan can be dated toover 3,000 years ago, around the Shang

Dynasty ,The first type of fan, known as

Shanhan, was tied to a horse-drawn

carriage to shut out the strong sunshineand shelter the passengers from the

rainfall. The Shanhan was a bit like todays

umbrella. Later this Shanhan became a

long-handled fan made of thin and tough

silk or birds feathers, called a zhangshan

fan, which was mainly used by the

emperors honor guard as decoration.


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In fact, the fan was not used to helpcool people until the Zhou Dynasty,

more than 2,000 years ago. At that

time, fan was usually made of

feathers and called feather fan,which was only popular among the

noble class. The fan was

popularized during the Han

Dynasty .when the simple bamboo

fan and the cattail-leaf fan wereinvented.


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These fans were most popular amongthe common people during the SongDynasty .Around the same period, a silk

fan in the shape of the moon, called a

round fan, became the favorite of

young ladies, especially those in the

imperial place. Later, this moon-shaped

fan took on many other shapes, such as

oval flat round, or sometimes the shape

of Chinese plum flower or sunflower.


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. Usually, ribs of the fan were made ofanimal bones, wood or bamboo, while

the handle was engraved with

beautiful designs and decorated with

jade pendants. Beautiful scenes of

mountains and waters or flowers werealso embroidered on the face of a

moon-shaped fan. Deeply loved by

young ladies, the round fan was

popular in China for nearly 1,000years.


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The popularity of the moon-shaped fan even enhanced thedevelopment of painting itself.

From the Song Dynasty on, fanpainting became anindependent art form. Thetypical composition used in

fan painting could be seen inmany landscape paintings andfigure paintings at the time.


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When talking about fans today, weusually refer to the exquisite folding

fan, which is said to be introduced to

China from Japan during the late

Song Dynasty. It is rumored that the

Japanese invented the folding fanafter being inspired by bats wings.

As this fan could be easily folded and

carried, it soon came into fashion.

Compared to other types of fans, the

folding fans more like a piece of

handicraft.


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The ribs of folding fans weremade from valuable materials,such as hawks-bill turtle, ebony, mottled bamboo,

elephant trunk, carved intodifferent shapes, for example agrasshoppers legs. And thedifferent sizes of folding fans areclassified by the number of ribsthe fan has, usually 7, 9, 12, 14,16 or 18


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However, the most interesting of afolding fan is usually made of xuanpaper or silk and beautifully

painted. If a famous artist painted

the fan, it could be worth a lot of

money. For example, a folding fan

painted with running script of

Chinese calligraphy by Zhang

Daqian, a famous Chinese painter,

sold for HK$252,000. And manycontemporary painters, like Qi

Baishi, Xu Beihong, are known as

elite fan-painting artists.


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Today, there are over 500 kinds offans in China, of which thesandalwood fan from Suzhou,

Jiangsu Province, the damask silk

fan from Hangzhou, Zhejiang

Province, the fire-painting fanfrom Guangdong Province and the

bamboo thread fan are known as

the four most famous fans of

China. Recently, an exhibition of

Chinese fans was opened at the

Hongbaotang Gallery, located on

Antiques Street in Beijing.


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Through late August, theexhibition will display fans bymore than 200 artists acrossChina. During the exhibition,

some folding fans will also be forsale, priced from 300 Yuan to5,000 Yuan. Widely used forthousand years, Chinese fan is

still bringing people cool breezeand the scant of brilliant Chineseculture


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the origin of chinese fans

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