# carpenter By [blueberry](https://paragraph.com/@blueberry-2) ยท 2022-09-07 --- ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/81b1eb7b5cc44f70a3226fbe49d13787b56ea2c23c55f125319c0266b24ab79e.png) Many years ago, carpenters were still haunting the streets and alleys of Kunming. The carpenters always give me a feeling of being from the Ming Dynasty, which for me is furniture. The brilliance of Ming-style furniture has passed through the Qing Dynasty and the Republic of China, and has been splashing with shavings, and it was not until the era I lived in that it came to an end. In fact, when I was a child, I saw many carpenters make ordinary furniture, which was inherited from the Ming Dynasty, because that kind of furniture is simple, practical and wonderful, and it has a folk standpoint. Qing-style furniture was not popular among the people because it was cumbersome and rich, and the metaphors were too complicated. ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/59286c960cb37211b8e4e961c2d9aa6b367292ced0a07fe256528df80d51d886.png) It is more and more rare to see a carpenter these days. All the beds come from the assembly line. They are not beds, but tools for sleeping. In the past, furniture was not produced industrially, and the process of making furniture was very specific. Carpenters had to go deep into every family, not only to get wages, but also to live in your home. At that time I was about to get married, and after buying the materials, I went to the street to find a carpenter. I turned two blocks and saw the carpenter standing at the corner of the street, already rolling up his sleeves, as if he had fallen from the sky. The two brothers, from Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province, are beautiful, vigorous, and look like sheep. A sense of trust arises spontaneously. There are strangers on the street. If you don't trust the carpenter, who do you trust? They are people on the edge of the forest. At that time, people didn't ask for sky-high prices. I could afford the wages that these two brothers asked. They were considerate, and the wages they asked were enough to live a dignified life on the same level as their employers. After saying that, pick up the box and follow me. Of course, there is no place for them to live in my house. There is only one new house, and most of the materials are stored. There is no place for furniture. In the compound where I live, there is a makeshift shed with a few beds and mazas. We call this shed the carpenter's house. The two brothers moved their luggage from another place and settled in the carpenter's house. The material I bought was teak wood and pine wood. What I want to do is three-door cabinets, beds, bookshelves, bedside tables, tables, and so on. The carpenter said it would take a month. ![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/8f48ee74ab62f3d7d10829236ebce8da47c1977fbf9acca08049f9b328fc859a.png) The wood was bought by my father in Ruili and shipped to Kunming in a semi-truck. The carpenter looked at my material and said it was too hard to change, but he did not ask for an increase in wages. Take out the chisel from the toolbox, set the grinding stone, pour the ink into the ink fountain, and pop a line on the board. The brothers open their arms and saw it. You pull me and push, the saw blade heats up quickly, and the sawdust spit in piles come out. They like good wood. "This material is good, this material is good," they said as they saw. Then the wood shavings began to pour in the carpenter's room, and the wood grain appeared on the board. They pushed the plane lightly and pushed the plane again to make the wood grain look the best. It was a god-like figure. Carpenters are different from other workers in that they have to know what kind of material hides the beauty. When it is thinned, the wood grain does not appear, and when it is planed, the wood grain disappears. Machine-modified wooden boards are completely different from this kind of manual work. Not much to say, only the sound of planing and chipping and the smell of resin overflowing in the carpenter's room, as if they were working in the forest. Meals are delivered to them every day, they are never picky eaters, they eat what they have. A month later, the pile of gray wooden boards has become a piece of sturdy, beaming furniture. The wages were paid in the morning, and the carpenter left in the afternoon. Before leaving, they left each other with addresses, but did not leave a phone number. There was no phone at that time. These furniture are still used in my house to this day. Although the style is far inferior to the furniture of the Ming Dynasty, they are durable. After the "Cultural Revolution", carpenters have no imagination to make furniture, just rectangular or square, but the durability is still inherited. One year I passed through the Lancang River. There was an ancient bridge on that section of the river leading to the county seat. Below, the Lancang River was combing its white hair among the stones. There is a carpenter's workshop in the east of the bridge, specializing in making saddles, and people who passed by like to rest here. I also went in and sat, and I laughed when I took a picture of the carpenter brother. He said there were fewer and fewer caravans coming to set the saddle. Many caravans killed their horses and changed their careers. After doing it for another year or two, he didn't do it, and went back to his hometown to stay. The next year, I passed by again, and this carpenter's house was closed. People who passed by had no place to rest, so they sat on the stones by the bridge and looked at the river. --- *Originally published on [blueberry](https://paragraph.com/@blueberry-2/carpenter)*