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craftsmen and craftswomen in Shantou

Wednesday, 12. 3. 2008  –  Category: Issue One, Neighborhood Beat, cover story, latest_stories, shantou highlight

This pages includes 3 stories of craftsmen and craftswomen in Shantou, each page has a story:

• page 1:Woman make Shahe fen in Tuopu
• page 2:The videographer
• page 3:Plaster Toymaker

Woman make Shahe fen in Tuopu

In a small, low, narrow room located in a quiet, dirty street with Chinese old-fashioned houses people lived, Lin Xia is standing near a pan on a fire making Shahe fen, traditional Chinese type of noodle.

Lin Xia, makes Shahe fen on the outskirts of the city of Shantou in Tuopu. Just like many women in the metropolitan area, the 40-year-old worked in a clothes factory when she was young. After getting married, Lin quit her job and moved to her husband’s home. She did not stay a housewife for long. She began to take over her husband’s aunt’s business to make Shahe fen. Twenty years later, she is still making and selling her noodles.

Shahe fen, noodles made of wheat is especially common among the local Chaoshan People. Many people in Shantou will use Shahe fen as offerings during the New Year and traditional festivals.

Making Shahe fen is not an easy job. Every day, Lin wakes up at 5 a.m., spending the whole day working in the disorderly room filled with tools and equipment used to make noodles, bags of sawdust to light fires and only one old fan.

Standing near the fire where a big round pan is heated, she uses a bamboo stick to take a piece of white, hot paste out of the pan. She rolls the paste around a stainless steel tube. She pours rice milk into the pan to make another paste, then sets the paste aside to cool it down. After the paste cools off, Lin spreads it flat on a large bamboo curved tray with large openings, then folds it into rectangular-shaped pieces. She also has to make sure the fire stays lit.

Lin Xia repeats the same procedure day after day, year after year.

“We had to grind the rice into rice milk ourselves before, but now we can do it by machine. It is much better now,” Lin said. Lin grinds 100 kilos of rice to make rice milk everyday.

“The noodles here are the most delicious,” said a little girl who comes here regularly to buy Shahe fen for her family.

With the development of technology, many cottage industries are replaced by factories. Lin said it’s hard to tell whether hand-made or machine-made is better because different people have different tastes, but she will continue doing this because some people prefer her hand-made food.

Lin spends most of the time alone at her job but sometimes her two 19-year-old sons come to help. “They are not very good at studying but they will come to help in their spare time,” said Lin smiling shyly.

“I will keep doing this job here”, Lin said. “You need money to raise your family.”

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