Hui Ink Making Technique

The Hui-ink craft has a deep lineage: in the late Tang the master ink-makers Xi Chao and Xi Tinggui fled south to Shezhou (old Huizhou), where they refined the craft with local pine soot and were granted the imperial surname Li by the Southern Tang ruler, their ink known as "Li Tinggui ink"; by the Qing dynasty it was said that "the world's ink trade belongs to Huizhou." The technique entered the first national ICH list in 2006.

Hui ink is made by collecting soot from tung oil, flax oil, lacquer and pine, then blending it with bone glue, musk, borneol and gold leaf through dozens of steps—soot-refining, glue-mixing, dough-beating, mould-pressing, drying, gilding and waxing; each school guards its own secret methods, and the calligraphy and pictures carved into the ink moulds are artworks in themselves.

Hui ink is one of the Four Treasures of the Study, carrying a thousand-year tradition of calligraphy, sculpture and pharmacology, the core vessel of Huizhou culture and the Chinese written civilisation, with real value for the study of Chinese craft history and cross-cultural exchange.

The making and display of Hui ink can be seen at old houses such as Hu Kaiwen on Tunxi Old Street.