Modern Taiwan “Affection to Hometown” Oil-paper Umbrella with Heart Sutra Inscription Picture 1

In addition to a bamboo shaft with a coating of varnish and a handle covered with bamboo bark for better experience of holding, this umbrella has 36 ribs made of “Meng Zong bamboo”, a specialty of Zhushan and Puli in Nantou as well as Qishan in Gaoxiong, named after the filial piety model included in the Chinese literary classic Twenty-four Filial Exemplars. There is an inscription of the Heart Sutra on its coffee-color canopy, above which the ferrule is wrapped in brown cloth decorated with fringes.
This umbrella was made in Meinong, a Taiwanese town with a population of 50,000, 90% of whom are the Hakka descendants of the immigrants who migrated here from today’s Meizhou, Guangdong province 200 year ago. As a carrier of the Hakka people’s affection to their home town thousands of miles away, this hand-made oil-paper umbrella is the epitome of the Hakkas’ traditional mission of endowing handicrafts with cultural significance.