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Flights of kites

Updated: Apr 30, 2024 By Cheng Yuezhu China Daily Global Print
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Dragon-headed centipede kites made by Yang Hongwei, a national-level representative inheritor of kite-making techniques in Weifang, Shandong province, which is renowned as the "world capital of kites". CHINA DAILY

Flying into the future

Weifang, Beijing, Tianjin and Jiangsu province's Nantong are four major areas that are celebrated for distinctive kite-making techniques. They all boast their own unique features yet share the same dedication to preserving, inheriting and promoting traditional craftsmanship.

In Tianjin, there is a family known as "kite Wei", after late Qing Dynasty virtuoso artisan Wei Yuantai, who's widely known for crafting exquisite, lifelike kites. In 1915, 11 of his works were exhibited and won a gold medal at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco.

The Wei family's fifth generation continues to inherit and perfect the "four techniques" — crafting the frame from roasted split bamboo, pasting such materials as paper and silk onto the frame, painting images on the body and finally flying the kite.

The Wei family is proud to display their raw bamboo frameworks, which are the very basic yet fundamental structures.

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