Bai Gong Fang Museum

Last weekend, I went on an adventure to a strange yet fascinating museum. The 百工坊 (bǎi gōng fāng) museum is situated near to the Temple Of Heaven and roughly translates to “One Hundred Handicrafts Workshop”. The museum was set up in order to promote the traditional arts of Beijing and China; some of which are in danger of dying out. 

Liz and I started off the day, as every intrepid explorer should: with a thirst-quenching bubble tea. From speaking to locals, it seems that this museum is not very well known, so we were pleasantly surprised and slightly suspicious of how easy it was to stumble across the building from where our taxi left us. We were even more delighted that it was free entry.

The museum itself is spread out across three floors. Long corridors are dotted with doors and inside each room is a person demonstrating traditional Chinese arts. We saw many interesting handicrafts; including painted gourds, metalwork, pottery, dough sculptures, paper cutting and woodcarving. The workers were perhaps shy or nervous about speaking with foreigners; however, using the basic Chinese skills we came equipped with, some were more than happy to talk about their trade.

One particularly friendly craftsman, Mr Yao Fuying, was quite animated and passionate when talking about his job. He enthusiastically explained that from a young age, he started a special kind of embroidery work called Jingxiu. From what I could understand, Mr Yao said that Jingxiu is a skill that was passed down in his family and one piece of embroidery can take him about twenty days to complete. It is quite possible that he also told me the meaning of life, however my Chinese level is still not good enough to comprehend the technical language he used. So we thanked him and continued our journey around the museum.

On the second floor, we were incredibly intrigued (and perhaps a little perturbed) by the art of 毛猴 (máo hóu) “hairy monkeys”. It is a rather unique craft where small figures are created from the fluffy buds of magnolia flowers and the body parts of cicadas. These little models are then put into a variety of scenes depicting daily life. I felt compelled to buy a souvenir so I chose one that was wielding 糖葫芦 (tánghúlu), which is candied fruit on a kebab stick (Beijing’s version of a toffee apple).

I would definitely recommend a visit to this museum and would happily revisit at a later date - if only to buy some more máo hóu souvenirs!

On the third floor, there was a large workshop in which guests are invited to try some handicrafts in a “DIY” style. Unfortunately, there was nobody there to give us this opportunity. In fact, the entire museum was very quiet. I am not sure if this is because it was a Sunday or if it is often low on visitors. 

Munching on toast slice cigars after the museum visit.

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