Mastery through self-cultivation
“After my elementary-school graduation ceremony, I packed up a few items of clothing and left for Tainan with my uncle to start my apprenticeship.” The Guanghua Buddhist Statuary Store, whose carvers crafted in the Fuzhou style, is where Chen came to launch his carving dreams.
“In the Fuzhou carving tradition, you must apprentice for four years and three months before you can become a sculptor.” For more than three years, he toiled at sweeping the floor, preparing items for delivery to customers, and other menial tasks. He often was overcome by concerns that he wasn’t actually learning the craft. “In all honesty, I often thought about giving up.” One day, owing to a misunderstanding, the master scolded Chen harshly. An excitable 15- or 16-year-old, Chen immediately found tears running down his face. He ran to his little room, and his composure collapsed under a mound of perceived slights. Losing control, he covered his face and cried bitterly. Under the rules of his apprenticeship, missing a single day would have disqualified him from becoming a craftsman. Not only would he not have reached his intended goal, but he would have become an object of ridicule. “I couldn’t bring shame to my family.” Chen slowly calmed down, wiped away his tears, and quietly went downstairs and went back to work. “Being an apprentice is a grinding journey of self-cultivation.”
Small in years but big in ambition, a boy of action but few words, he was highly attentive and took great care in everything he did. “I always would sit down to sand right in the middle of them all, with the craftsmen carving on one side and the craftswomen outlining with chalk on the other. I would watch and quietly learn from them.” After a day of hard work, Chen would lie in his small attic room, staring at the ceiling, his mind awash with the various carving techniques he had witnessed that day. He would pretend that he himself was carving with them. It was only when the oldest apprentice left to do his military service that Chen finally got the chance to show what he was made of. His master, Lin Yishui, was astonished by his talent, and began to teach him personally. Less than a year later, more than four years after starting, Chen finally became a full-fledged craftsman.
“My second great career mentor was Lin Liming, the second-generation proprietor of Renlexuan.” When Chen’s talents were becoming apparent, it was his good fortune to enter Renlexuan, Tainan’s highest-quality Buddhist statuary shop. Studying intensively under Lin, who was known as the “Third Master,” Chen would become lead carver at the shop just one year later.
“It seemed as if things were playing out under Buddha’s guidance.” Suddenly Chen opens a drawer, and it is as if he has opened a window onto wisdom. The drawer is full of vivid photographs of exquisite Buddhist statues, all amazing to Chen. These are the fruits of Chen’s vacation pilgrimages to temples throughout Taiwan—as far north as the Lingquan Temple on Mt. Yuemei in Keelung and as far south as the Chi Jin Mazu Temple in Kaohsiung. “Those trips north and south had a big impact on my subsequent craftsmanship.”
(courtesy of Chen Chi-tsun)