Go Deep in Lijiang: Pyrographic art records elephant marching Yunnan

Last year, 15 wild Asian elephants have left their forest home in south Yunnan’s Xishuangbanna and started marching north. The elephant migration has covered more than 1,300 km crossing 3 prefectures and cities and 8 counties. The trip captured wide attention of more than 3,000 media overseas.

Recently, Wu Lihong, a pyrographic artist from Yongsheng county, northwest Yunnan’s Lijiang city, has recorded the touching story of elephants in his own way.

Wu said that he had started to create the pyrographic work from late August this year. He has named it “home-returning”. The pyrographic is about 2.44m in length and 0.6m in width.

It reveals three themes—the start of the northward migration, the scene of the elephants crossing Yuanjiang Bridge, and the return to their traditional habitat. The work was vivid and artful.

Back to ancient times, pyrographic was an art that craftsmen used heated needles to burn on wooden slices and has been passed on for thousands of years. The metal tool is like a paintbrush and the heated tip will burn the wood into black just like ink.

According to legends, the art was born in Qin Dynasty (221-207 BC). Thus, it is one of the rare Chinese folk arts.

Reporting by Hong Xuelian (Reading Lijiang); Video by He Yuanjiao; Photos by Wu Lihong; Trans-editing by Wang Yunya