Modern Jade-like Bamboo Fan with Carved Painting Featuring Wang Xizhi and His Beloved Geese Back

Jade-like fans are usually made of the giant bamboo growing in the Kuocang Mountain of China’s eastern Zhejiang province. After being chopped down, a piece often with a length from five or six cun to one chi (one cun equals 3.33cm while one chi 33.3cm) would be sawn off the innermost part of the bamboo, and then ironed into a smooth and flattened plate. Such a plate with a jade-like white color would makee a so-called jade-like fan after being trimmed into a shape similar to an upside-down isosceles trapezoid and attached a handle made of rosewood or ox horn.
This elegant fan, with carved landscape painting on one side and the renowned Chinese calligrapher Wang Xizhi (303-361 AD) with his beloved geese on the other, is one of the masterpieces of Luo Qisong, an arts and crafts master of Zhejiang province who specializes in bamboo craftsmanship and an acknowledged representative inheritor of the moso bamboo interior carving technique of Huangyan, listed in the state-level intangible cultural heritage.