Wengang Brush-Making Technique

The Wengang brush-making craft spreads across one hundred and four natural villages of Wengang town in Jinxian county, Nanchang, with Zhoufang village as its birthplace, transmitted for more than sixteen hundred years and giving Wengang the name "brush capital of China." It entered the fifth national ICH list in 2021 under traditional skills.

The craft spans over a hundred steps—hair selection, degreasing, wet-basin sorting, binding, mounting, finishing and inscription—famed for the fineness of choosing one hair from ten thousand; the maker trims each head by feel and eye to meet the four virtues of "sharp, even, round and springy," in types from wolf-hair to goat-hair and mixed.

The Wengang brush is an important branch of China's four treasures of the study, carrying the traditions of writing culture and handcraft, and holds real value for the study of how Chinese brush-making evolved and spread; in 2023 its making base was named a Jiangxi national-ICH productive demonstration base.

Brush-making and hands-on experience can be seen in the cultural-industry quarter of Wengang town, Jinxian county, Nanchang.