Hsu Kuang (徐光), an 83-year-old daughter of a “Qing Dynasty princess,” has a passion for flowers and has devoted much of her life to preserving their beauty through realistic waxed crepe paper flowers, a skill she hopes to pass on to younger generations.
Hsu said her mother had told her that her grandfather Wu Hsin-fu (吳星甫) was granted the title wangyeh (王爺, or nobleman) during the Qing Dynasty, which she said makes her the daughter of a Qing Dynasty princess.
Hsu said her mother was progressive for her generation — she pretended to be a boy so that she could attend school, and then quickly cut her long hair when the Republic of China was established in 1912.
Photo: Wu Po-hsuen, Taipei Times
Her mother fell in love with the son of a pharmacist, who was of Han ethnicity and later became Hsu’s father, she said.
Hsu was born in Beijing in 1937. She moved to Taiwan with her parents when she was two years old, and after her father died when she was 10, her mother raised her children alone, Hsu said.
Recalling a vague memory of walking with her father in Taipei New Park, later renamed the 228 Peace Memorial Park, Hsu said she would pick wild flowers to put in her hair, and she has always had a deep love for them.
However, due to her family’s economic situation, making art was only a dream in her youth, and she only began to learn to make crafts after she married and her husband encouraged her, Hsu said.
She first learned to make ribbon flowers, embroidery and leather carvings, but she unexpectedly fell in love with waxed crepe paper flowers during a visit to Japan when she was 30 years old, she said.
Hsu spent six months in Japan learning the skills to make the flowers and obtained a teaching certificate, before returning to Taiwan and holding classes to teach it on her own, she said.
Her artwork has been appreciated by former premier Hau Pei-tsun’s (郝柏村) wife, Kuo Wan-hua (郭菀華), who invited Hsu to teach members of the National Women’s League, so it could hold charity sales with the flowers they made, Hsu said.
However, these days, few people know how to make waxed crepe paper flowers, she said.
Humbly calling herself an “artisan” rather than an artist, Hsu said waxed crepe paper flowers are made of imported crepe paper and must go through six procedures to create: shaping, plastering, coloring, waxing twice and varnishing.
Each step takes about three to four hours, and each flower takes about 24 hours to complete, not including sleep or rest, she said, adding that it is sometimes easy to fail the second waxing, as the wax might crack if the temperature is too high, and it would not be transparent if the temperature is not high enough.
She said that many students often feel their effort has gone to waste when they fail at this step, so the craft is difficult to promote.
As a flower lover who hopes to “preserve flowers for eternity,” Hsu said that color plastic flowers might fade, but waxed crepe paper flowers hold their color and shine for many years, and creators can freely make their flowers in whatever shape or color they desire, so she hopes more people can learn the skill and pass it on.
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